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The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring our children and young people have access to healthy and nutritious food when at school. The Scottish Government ensure that all food and drink served in education authority and grant aided schools, including free and paid for school meals, meet these high standards through the Nutritional Requirements for food and drink in schools (Scotland) Regulations 2020. The Regulations are based on scientific evidence and dietary advice and designed to ensure children and young people can access an appropriate amount of energy and key nutrients as part of their school day to support their healthy growth and development.

The Regulations require 2 full portions of vegetables and 1 full portion of fruit to be served as part of a primary school lunch and a secondary school analysed lunch, building on the previous standards which required a variety of fruit and vegetables to be on offer but did not specify a required portion size. In addition, portions of fruit and vegetables must be made available in any place within school premises where food is provided at other times of the school day for example morning break provision or tuckshops. Compliance with the Regulations is monitored by Education Scotland Health and Nutrition Inspectors as part of their annual inspection programme.

As set out in our Programme for Government, we will continue to work with local authorities to ensure that school meals meet the highest standards of nutrition, recognising that this is vital to our children’s effective learning.

The Scottish Government is currently working with Local Authorities on the roll out of the next phase of Free School Meal expansion therefore ensuring more of our children and young people are provided the opportunity to benefit from healthy and nutritious meals.

Food and nutrition is an integral part of our national educational curriculum set out in the health and wellbeing experiences and outcomes detailed in Curriculum for Excellence. This will help to ensure that children and young people are provided with the knowledge, skills and experience they need to make positive dietary choices, including why it is important to consume plenty of fruit and vegetables as part of a balanced and nutritious school lunch.

The decision on whether to appoint a local women’s champion or advocate sits with local authority areas. As such, the government does not hold a list of champions or advocates. The government is, however, fully committed to working with local authority areas to ensure that we take, when appropriate, a gendered response to substance use. That is why we have committed more than £5.5 million to establish two houses, run by Aberlour, which are designed to support women and their children through recovery. In addition, we are providing more than £6 million to establish a training and social enterprise based residential rehabilitation programme at River Garden Auchincruive which will have a separate unit to support women through recovery.

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way. Many of the milestones are being delivered through the National Mission and others are being picked up as part of more recent Government commitments.

The Scottish Government is working closely with key stakeholders, including Education Scotland, to review and revise resources available for substance use education to ensure they are in line with best practice. This is part of wider work to provide schools with the right resources and support, through implementation of the Personal and Social Education Review, to address the issues facing children and young people today.

Completion of this work will support delivery of the recommendation from, where relevant, the Rights, Respect and Recovery Action Plan 2019-2021 as well as the similar recommendation from Drugs Death Task Force.

The Scottish Government will not work with the alcohol industry on provision of education in schools. Our wider approach to joint work with the industry will be based on the principles of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol, which recognises industry’s role as developers, producers, distributors, marketers and sellers of alcohol products.

Instead, the Scottish Government is committed to taking forward substance use education work in our schools through Curriculum for Excellence. Children and young people learn about a variety of substances including alcohol, medicines, drugs, tobacco and solvents. They will explore the impact risk taking behaviour has on life choices and health.

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way. Many of the milestones are being delivered through the National Mission and others are being picked up as part of more recent Government commitments.

The to Reduce the Use of and Harm from Alcohol and Drugs which was approved by COSLA Leaders and Scottish Ministers in 2019, sets out clear arrangements for quality assurance and quality improvement work to be undertaken at a local level.

The Drugs Death Taskforce recommended in their final report, , that; The Scottish Government should develop a National Specification outlining the key parts of the treatment and recovery system that should be available in every local area, ensuring it also delivers on the principles of quality, choice, access and parity of treatment with other health conditions.

We have made a commitment in our that we agree that a National Specification for services would help set these requirements out more clearly. This would also provide more accountability, particularly for those with lived and living experience and their families who will be able to see clearly what they can expect to be available in the treatment and recovery system.

We are working with partners to scope out the components of a Specification for further development and consultation. This process will need to involve a range of local and national partners and most important amongst those will be people with experience of using the services and their families.

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way.

In July 2022 the Scottish Drugs Deaths Taskforce ‘Changing Lives’ Report, was published. This report recommended that The Scottish Government should develop a workforce action plan. In response to this recommendation, Scottish Government’s Drugs and Alcohol Workforce Action Plan will shortly be published, setting out the steps we will take to address prevailing challenges.

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way. Many of the milestones are being delivered through the National Mission and others are being picked up as part of more recent Government commitments.

The Prison to Rehab pathway was established in the summer of 2020 to support individuals into residential rehabilitation services during the unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We conducted an internal review of the pathway in 2021-2022 which was complimented by an evaluation from one of our commissioned third sector organisations, the Scottish Recovery Consortium. The published evaluation can be viewed . The review and the evaluation informed a new version of the Prison to Rehab protocol to ensure it continued to be fit for purpose. This was published in March 2023 and can be viewed here .

The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way. Many of the milestones are being delivered through the National Mission and others are being picked up as part of more recent Government commitments.

As part of the National Mission, Public Health Scotland established the Rapid Action Drug Alerts and Response (RADAR) system. The first published report was issued on 11 October 2022 and that has been followed by quarterly publications. It reports on drug-related indicators in order to inform action to prevent drug harms and deaths.

The National Development Project Fund (NDPF) forms part of Scottish Government's investment in services to reduce problem drugs and alcohol use and reflects the priorities of the Rights, Respect and Recovery strategy. In January 2019, Ten projects were awarded NDPF funding to address gaps in advocacy, family inclusive services, and start-up investment for new approaches to recovery.

In October 2019, the Scottish Government commissioned Iconic Consulting to evaluate the NDPF.

In March 2021, the Scottish Government published an evaluation ( ) of those projects which were supported through the NDPF. Of the ten projects evaluated, six were Advocacy based.