Chamber and committees

An Incident Management Team was stood up on 27 November specifically for Omicron. The team has met daily since and continues to do so. The group is chaired by Public Health Scotland’s Incident Directors. The team meets with other UK nations and wider partners to share intelligence on a four nations basis. The team’s composition does not extend to international public health agencies but they do receive information on the latest international situation with Omicron.

On 14 December I confirmed in my statement to Parliament that the implementation date of Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme will be 16 August 2023. Accordingly, revised regulations were laid on 15 December which will change the date by which producers are required to register with SEPA to 1 March 2023 (instead of 1 March 2022). Once the revised regulations come into force, the registration window for producers is in effect changed to the period from 1 January 2023 to 28 February 2023.

Limited information is published in the Stage of Treatment publication on cancellation by service rates. You will find this information at: Stage of treatment waiting times - Inpatients, day cases and new outpatients 30 November 2021 - NHS waiting times - stage of treatment - Publications - Public Health Scotland

Information covering October 2021 to December 2021 will be published by PHS in February 2022.

The information requested relating to how many Hospital Infection Incident Assessment Tool Red reports it received in respect of aspergillus infection at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and on what date is not centrally held by the Scottish Government due to potentially patient identifiable information.

The information requested is not centrally held by the Scottish Government. Information on case reviews is held by the appropriate health board for local learning and quality improvement purposes.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government, due to the possibility of patient identifiable information.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government, due to the possibility of patient identifiable information.

Information on cataract procedures is set out in the acute hospital publication available through the link below. However, this does not cover the full time period requested as the latest publication shows procedures during the 2020-21 financial year. Information on the other conditions you have asked about is not held centrally.

https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/9294/table-7-procedures.xlsx

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-04922 on
17 December 2021. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

We have committed, both in the Programme for Government and in our initial response to the Social Renewal Advisory Board’s report, to a full, independent review of the Scottish Welfare Fund. The review will examine many areas of the Fund including accessibility, funding levels, local authority administration and statutory guidance. In order to do this we are commissioning independent research, findings from which will be reported before the end of 2022.