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The Scottish Government continues to support community pharmacies, including rural pharmacies, by delivering the largest ever increase to funding two years in a row. This has delivered a total of £422 million in guaranteed funding for community pharmacies across Scotland in this financial year.

In addition, there is a Guaranteed Minimum Target Income for essential small pharmacies, most of which are rural, and a pharmaceutical needs weighting payment which acknowledges both demographics and deprivation- associated with a patient’s postcode. Both of these measures help support rural pharmacies by ensuring they are not disadvantaged because of their location.

When community pharmacies close or transfer ownership this is a business decision taken by the community pharmacy owner. The Scottish Government has not undertaken an impact assessment on closures. Health Boards are the bodies responsible for ensuring that there is adequate provision of NHS pharmaceutical services within their area.

There is a wide range of education and training programmes for those delivering palliative care suitable to their role. These training programmes encourage those delivering palliative care to be aware of cultural factors and how these can impact on individuals and their families.

Our draft palliative care strategy aims to build on this work and includes a number of recommended actions for the provision of palliative care education and training to support all healthcare professionals delivering palliative care services.

Community organisations in rural areas and elsewhere are uniquely placed to identify and address the issues that keep individuals in their local communities healthy.

A place-based approach is the foundation of Community-Led Local Development (CLLD). Communities are empowered and supported to design and implement the solutions to the challenges and opportunities they identify in their local area, which can include community led health and social care provision.

Through the Communities workstream within the wider Place and Wellbeing programme we are also working with the community and voluntary sector to enhance the capacity of community organisations (in rural areas and elsewhere) to complement the actions of the public sector in keeping people well. As part of the Communities Workstream we are exploring how we can increase the influence of local community organisations in the decisions that impact on the health and wellbeing of their communities.

We have also introduced participation requests as part of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, which provide a mechanism for communities to seek dialogue with public service providers including NHS Health Boards on their own terms and become meaningfully involved in local service delivery.

Glasgow Prestwick Airport operates on a commercial basis and at arm’s length from the Scottish Government and Ministers do not intervene in operational matters.

This information is provided in Glasgow Prestwick Airport’s annual accounts.

Glasgow Prestwick Airport has published annual accounts for each year since the shareholding was acquired by Scottish Ministers. It is a statutory requirement that these are laid in Parliament.

The Scottish Government works in partnership across Health and Social Care organisations to ensure a consistent strategic approach to improving the vital digital and data skills for continuing staff development and service transformation. The provision of specific training for managing and accessing digital medical records in accordance with the Health & Social Care Records Management Code Of Practice that can be found at is the responsibility for NHS Boards as employers.

The Scottish Government provides the policies, frameworks and resources for high quality healthcare, and it is for each individual NHS Board to decide how best to utilise funding, to meet local health needs. Over the last five years, the number of Allied Health Professionals (AHP’s) across Scotland have increased by 17.8% including a 20.6% increase in Physiotherapists as at June 2024.

It remains the ambition of the Scottish Government to deliver a National Low Vision Service. This would deliver a range of services to people with visual impairment including both the provision of assistive technology and support for the use of technology already openly available (e.g. applications available for download/use on a smartphone/tablet). The Scottish Government is unable to take this forward at the present time due to financial constraints.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6W-26919 on 30 April 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government does not hold data on satisfaction rates on the provision of palliative care services across Scotland.

However, to inform the development of the draft strategy on palliative care, we carried out surveys mapping palliative care delivery across Scotland. These indicated that ways of working and reporting on general palliative care and specialist palliative care services varied by NHS Board areas.

Further to this, we also looked at research studies exploring lived experiences of palliative care, and we commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to gather views from people in Scotland with experience of palliative care or caring for someone who has received palliative care. This included gathering views from people in rural and island communities.

The outcomes of all of these pieces of work are available at