The Alexander Thomson Hotel is used by Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership (GHSCP) to provide temporary accommodation to people experiencing homelessness, in line with their statutory duties. We are aware that this has at times included asylum seeking families with children, who have not accessed Home Office asylum accommodation, and that concerns have been raised about the suitability of bed and breakfast accommodation for families and the length of time families were accommodated at the hotel.

GHSCP has responded to these concerns and has now secured temporary furnished accommodation for families who had been accommodated in the hotel for an unsuitable period of time. They have also undertaken a review of practice in relation to access to accommodation in circumstances where asylum seeking families with children present to homeless services. The Home Office has a duty to provide accommodation to people who would otherwise be destitute while awaiting a decision on their application, and this duty takes precedence over local authority provision of temporary accommodation.

Asylum is reserved to the UK Parliament and handled by the Home Office. This includes the provision of asylum accommodation. As far as the Scottish Government is aware, the Home Office has not used the Alexander Thomson Hotel to provide asylum accommodation. The Scottish Government has not, therefore, engaged with the Home Office regarding the standard of accommodation at this hotel for people seeking asylum, but has raised significant concerns with the Home Office about its use of hotels to accommodate people seeking asylum and will continue to do so.

GHSCP has committed to ending the use of bed and breakfast accommodation in the city overall through the implementation of their Temporary Accommodation Strategy. However, while they continue to use this type of accommodation in emergency situations, they will prioritise dispersed temporary furnished accommodation for families with children and will minimise the time families spend in unsuitable accommodation.

The Scottish Government has also taken action to ensure temporary accommodation in Scotland is high quality, is only used for short periods and meets all the household’s needs. In May 2020 we extended the Unsuitable Accommodation Order to all homeless households so that no homeless household should be placed in unsuitable accommodation, such as hotels or bed and breakfast accommodation, for more than seven days. In October 2021 we established the Temporary Accommodation Standards working group to produce a standards framework for temporary accommodation and to consider how this can be regulated and legally enforced. This will ensure that temporary accommodation used by local authorities to fulfil their duty to accommodate homeless households is safe, warm and of good quality, and that there is a consistency in the standard of temporary accommodation across all local authorities in Scotland.

Junior Doctors are a valuable part of the NHS Scotland workforce. The Scottish Government has implemented a 4.5% pay uplift this year which is in line with the independent DDRB recommendations. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care is aware of Junior Doctors concerns in relation to this pay award and wishes to ensure fairness across the NHS pay system.

The Scottish Government has been working with BMA and NHS Employers to take forward the Expert Working Group recommendation and key priorities within the BMA Wellbeing report. A Joint Statement on Junior Doctor Health and Wellbeing was agreed between all parties on 1 June 2022 and work is now underway to implement this important work.

The Scottish Government is not removing funding for Primary Care implementation plans. Reserves that have been built up over four years by HSCPs are now being used so that recurring funding for recruiting multi-disciplinary teams can be maintained. It is prudent to reinvest these public funds given that these reserves have been steadily accumulating over a number of years, especially at a time of considerable inflation. At the same time, we have increased the recurring funding for primary care improvement to £170m in 2022-23.

Reserves held by Integration Authorities, comprising Primary Care Improvement Fund (PCIF) funding from previous years, have been utilised in funding this year's PCIF allocation, resulting in a one-off benefit. The distribution of these reserves is set out in the following table:

Health Board expenditure and staff numbers are set out in Annual Accounts which are available on Board's websites.

With regards to reserves, Health Boards are not permitted to hold reserves.

The Emergency Budget Review (EBR) sets out in-year redistribution of funding within the Health and Social Care Portfolio. Future years funding will be set out in each year’s Scottish Budget, with the 2023-24 Budget to be published on 15 December 2022.

The Scottish Government has taken the decision to locate the Registrar of Independent Schools within the new national agency for Scottish Education.

We have considered a range of options, including Professor Muir’s recommendation to locate the Registrar within the Scottish Government, and have undertaken further consultation with a range of stakeholders.

On balance, it is clear that there are significant benefits to locating the Registrar within the new national agency. For example, the Registrar’s location in the Scottish educational landscape is now well understood by those involved with independent schools, and this has worked extremely well in terms of knowledge and resource sharing, developing relationships and building trust. This includes the sharing of expertise and enhanced knowledge of the sector for all involved.

This decision will also ensure that the functional and organisational separation between the Registrar and the Scottish Government will continue to inspire trust and confidence within the sector as a whole.

The budget allocated to the Cladding Remediation programme is £400 million in total, this includes the £6 million identified in the Emergency Budget Review. The focus of funding in this financial year has been on expanding our pilot towards 100 surveys, surveys cost less than remediation but are a key commitment and an essential step before remediation work can start. There has been no impact on projects or on the overall budget.

Junior Doctors are a valuable part of the NHS Scotland workforce. The Scottish Government has implemented a 4.5% pay uplift this year which is in line with the independent DDRB recommendations.

The Scottish Government has been working with BMA and NHS Employers to take forward the Expert Working Group recommendation and key priorities within the BMA Wellbeing report. A Joint Statement on Junior Doctor Health and Wellbeing was agreed between all parties on 1 June 2022 and work is now underway to implement this important work.

NHS 24 will have recruited an additional 41.81 Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) staff by 1 December 2022. These additional posts support the recruitment priorities set out in the Winter Resilience Plan.

The following table shows the breakdown by role of the total number of WTE staff joining NHS 24 through to 1 December 2022. The role of Call Operator was re-created in September 2022 to supplement NHS 24's call handling capacity.

The most recent estimate for whole time equivalent of GPs can be found in the General Practice Workforce Survey 2019 , published by Public Health Scotland in October 2021. This estimated that there were 3,613 GP whole time equivalents (WTE) in Scotland in 2019. This is an increase from an estimated 3,520 WTE in 2017, with 8 sessions per week equating to one WTE.

The latest data on GP WTE is scheduled to be published by Public Health Scotland, they have pre-announced publication of this analysis report for 29 November.