Scottish Government funding of weight management services: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for the following regarding obesity medicines:

• for Scottish Government spend on fighting obesity
• for data held on purchased/bought weight loss drugs by NHS Scotland

Response

In response to your query on spend to treat obesity, the Scottish Government funds weight management services by providing core baseline funding to NHS health boards. As of April 2025, £8.2 million is provided annually to fund weight management services. The Scottish Government also announced an additional £4.5 million in funding for a new digital Type 2 Diabetes Remission programme, which will help people with or recently diagnosed with T2D achieve remission through weight loss.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested on obesity medicines bought in the NHS. However, you may wish to contact Public Health Scotland (PHS) directly who may be able to help you directly with this information. Information on contacting PHS can be found here: Contacting Public Health Scotland.

Annex

The Scottish Government does not hold some of the information requested.

The Scottish Government does not have this information because it does not collect or hold this data and was not found in searches undertaken through the corporate record by officials.

As such, I hereby provide you with formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.