Chamber and committees

Work is currently underway in the Scottish Public Health Workforce Development Group to assess needs and agree priority actions in relation to the public health workforce. A programme of leadership development has already started with local Directors and Deputy Directors of Public Health, along with Public Health Scotland, working with Scottish Government. A further programme of succession planning will be developed this year.

Scottish Directors of Public Health have been prioritised within the Scottish Government Leading to Change Programme for bespoke and sustainable leadership development support. Their knowledge, expertise and leadership are recognised as central to Scotland’s success in the recovery and re-building of the health of the nation post COVID.

Within Leading to Change we are also developing a programme of NHS Board CEO, Executive and Director Succession Planning. The Succession Planning workstream aims to create a diverse, values driven senior health workforce, by supporting existing and aspiring CEOs, Executives and Directors, and developing and implementing a consistent national approach to NHS Board Succession Planning that ensures a pipeline of candidates for future senior leadership roles, who are equipped to realise our ambitions as set out in the Health and Social Care Delivery Plan. We have created a Leadership Success Profile (LSP) for NHS CEO roles and will be creating an LSP for Executive and Director level roles in early 2023.

An expert Menopause and Menstrual Health Policy Working Group has been established to progress this action.

The Scottish Government is aware of this matter and has engaged with relevant stakeholders, including trade association Liquid Gas UK, on the sufficiency of gas volumes available in the sector, and with the upstream partner choosing to reduce LPG supply via Mossmorran to better understand their commercial decision.

Security of energy supply, including LPG, is a UK Government reserved matter and Scottish Government officials are in contact with counterparts at the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to confirm that quantities of gas being processed are more than sufficient to meet demand – and that BEIS continue to monitor the picture closely in communication with suppliers to ensure there remains adequate availability of LPG for distributors in Scotland.

Further, I have written to the Secretary of State for BEIS to outline members’ concerns raised with me, and to seek UK Government’s express reassurance on Scottish LPG supplies for 2023 and beyond. I have also requested clarity on the UK Government’s plans to extend existing levels of support through the Energy Price Guarantee to help struggling rural households with rising energy costs, asking the Secretary of State to urgently confirm whether the £200 Alternative Fuel Payment (AFP) to help households who use alternative fuels such as LPG will be repeated during 2023-24.

The Energy Saving Trust maintains the Renewable Heat Database for the Scottish Government. The following table presents figures for the number of renewable heat installations in homes in the Highlands and Islands over the past five years using Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) data.

Table 1: Number of annual domestic renewable heat installations by technology class and local authority for the Highlands and Islands (2017-2021).

‎ Source: Energy Saving Trust (10 January 2023) based on MCS data.

The figures in the table above come with the following caveats:

• MCS certification is not a mandatory requirement, so MCS data does not capture all small-scale renewable energy installations in Scotland. However, as MCS is often a route to government incentives, it is likely to represent a significant proportion of deployment.
• Most installations registered with MCS are in the retrofit market. However, MCS may capture some new-build installations if contractors have chosen to register their installations with MCS.
• The number of installations above may include a small number of non-domestic installations which could not be cross-referenced against non-domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) data. This is unlikely to significantly impact the numbers as MCS data is skewed towards domestic installations.

We know that meeting our interim climate change targets will need over 1 million homes across Scotland to convert to zero emissions heat by 2030. This is not split by region in order to allow a flexible approach that can meet our targets as efficiently as possible. In the meantime, we are providing additional support to rural and island communities to reflect the higher costs of installation.

The Scottish Government does not hold information regarding the number of properties in the Highlands and Islands region that are currently yet to receive a broadband connection. Ofcom, as the regulator for communications services, produces an annual Connected Nations report, together with an interactive dashboard, showing a breakdown of coverage by nation, local authority and both Holyrood and Westminster constituency. This was last updated in December 2022 and can be accessed here: Interactive report - Ofcom .

We are also unable to provide a full target connection level in each of the next six years as we do not hold details of commercial coverage plans over that time period. However, provided below is a breakdown of the number of premises currently planned to be connected through the Scottish Government Reaching 100% (R100) North contract in the Highlands and Islands Region over the next 6 years.

The security and resilience of the UK’s telecommunications network is reserved to the UK Parliament.

The Scottish Government works closely with UK Government, industry, Ofcom and other Devolved Administrations through the Electronic Communications – Resilience and Response Group (EC-RRG), which helps to plan for and respond to disruptive events.

Scottish Government officials also regularly engage with individual telecoms operators around disruptive events, such as Storm Arwen and the recent subsea cable break impacting Shetland, to help coordinate response and debriefs.

Our £28.75 million investment via the Scottish 4G Infill Programme is delivering new mobile infrastructure in 55 locations, which is improving 4G coverage and strengthening resilience of networks serving rural and island communities.

We understand the importance of appropriate staffing to provide high quality care for people with chronic pain. As set out in our National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care published in March 2022, we are committed to supporting the delivery of new training pathways for pain management to enhance and expand our pain-skilled workforce.

In July 2022 we published our Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery – Implementation Plan which sets out the actions we are taking to improve care and support for people with chronic pain, including through developing the pain management workforce. In support of this we have established a new national multi-disciplinary Chronic Pain Education Group which is focused on developing and promoting resources to enhance the knowledge and skills of healthcare professionals across Scotland.

In addition, we are working with the Faculty for Pain Medicine to support the development of new credentials to increase the availability of pain management specialists across our NHS. We are also supporting work to develop a credential for Advanced Care Practitioners in pain management which will support GPs, paramedics, Allied Healthcare Professionals and other key roles gain the knowledge and skills to provide holistic, effective support for people with chronic pain in their communities.

The National Clinical Skills for pharmacists programme supports registered pharmacists take on new and extended clinical roles, however it is the Independent Prescriber course which allows community pharmacists to qualify as Independent Prescribers. In 2020-2021 NHS National Education for Scotland (NES) commissioned a total of 115 Independent Prescriber (IP) places for Community Pharmacists to undertake an IP qualification during 2021.

In 2021-2022 NES commissioned a total of 222 IP places for Community Pharmacists to undertake an IP qualification during 2022.

The Pharmacist Independent Prescribing qualification takes on average 12 months to complete and courses run 4 times a year, therefore to date 111 community pharmacists from these cohorts have qualified as an Independent Prescriber.

The Glasgow Science Centre (GSC) is owned by the GSC Charitable Trust, a wholly owned subsidiary of Scottish Enterprise (SE). The Scottish Government is providing £5.5 million to SE to cover refurbishment work to GSC’s main buildings. A further £800,000 has been allocated to the work from SE’s budget. The work includes replacement of the titanium roof covering, installation of a new building management system and partial renewal of external glazing. The work does not include the IMAX Theatre.

Scottish Government officials continue to work with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to ensure that policy proposals for Split Payments are deliverable within the technical constraints of the DWP’s Universal Credit system. We have also carried out work with other external organisations and people with lived experience of Universal Credit to ensure the policy proposal is robust and meets the policy intent, which is to provide everyone in Scotland with access to an independent income and create barriers to potential domestic abuse or financial coercion.