Chamber and committees

All stages of the menopause, including perimenopause, are within the scope of the menopause and menstrual health workplace policy.

The Scottish Government welcomes continued engagement with health service unions in developing appropriate proposals on pension issues. We are currently modelling member contribution rate structures for the NHS Pension Scheme (Scotland) and will shortly be consulting with the NHS Pension Scheme Advisory Board before holding a public consultation on proposals towards the end of this year.

As investigations into this matter are ongoing, it would not be appropriate to comment.

The Scottish Government is not aware of any practice by pharmacy chains offering work to Scottish locum pharmacists in other parts of the UK while agreeing to closures across the Scottish pharmacy network.

Neither the Scottish Government or Health Boards are responsible for the terms or contractual arrangements put in place between pharmacy businesses and those who provide a pharmacy locum service.

All payments as part of the national contractual framework are published annually. The latest iteration can be found at SHOW - Scotlands Health On the Web - Publications, including payments for non-activity based services delivered as part of the Pharmaceutical Services Remuneration Global Sum.

Health Boards can recover remuneration in line with the measures available as set out in the National Health Service (Pharmaceutical Services) (Scotland) Regulations 2009 and the National Health Service (Discipline Committees) (Scotland) Regulations 2006.

The Scottish Government holds routine and ongoing discussions with all Health Board Directors of Pharmacy on a range of operational and policy issues regarding the delivery of NHS Pharmaceutical Care services. These include discussions on any proposed changes to contractual framework arrangements as set out in the Achieving Excellence in Pharmaceutical Care strategy recommendations.

The Scottish Government does not have any records of meetings, correspondence and other communications between Scottish Ministers, officials and any members of the judiciary, including the current Lord President, in respect of the contents of a note reportedly submitted to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry by John Halley on 1 April 2019.

The Scottish Government is not considering the introduction of powers for Health Boards to take over community pharmacies that are struggling to meet required standards.

Any challenges faced by community pharmacy contractors in delivering existing pharmaceutical care services should be discussed with the Health Boards who will be able to consider actions to support service provision.

Over the past decade the Scottish Government has invested more than £55 million in electrical vehicle charging. ChargePlace Scotland (CPS), a publicly available network, now consists of over 2,300 charge points across Scotland.

Scotland benefits from the most public charging points outside of London, and the most rapid charge points anywhere in the UK. We now want to see greater private sector investment and involvement in line with our vision for Scotland’s public EV charging network – delivering more infrastructure faster and in way that is more accessible than ever before.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on how much each Local Authority has spent on installing electric vehicle charging points, we can only advise how much funding they have received from us.

In the last three years, we have invested over £30m across all local authorities, as shown in the table. Investment has been awarded through a range of initiatives, including innovation projects such as the £5.3m Project Pace in North and South Lanarkshire.

The former Lord Advocate, James Wolffe KC, and the former Solicitor General, Alison di Rollo KC, had sight of the note submitted to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry by John Halley on 1 April 2019.