Chamber and committees

The Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010 prohibits the display of tobacco related products inside retailer premises. No advertising of branded tobacco products is permitted either inside or outside a premise but stores are allowed to have generic, unbranded signs stating they sell tobacco on in-store gantries, and outside of buildings, however the latter is actively discouraged.

Any concerns around the compliance of a particular premises with Scottish law should be directed to the local authority. The Scottish Government provide funding of £1.34 million annually to councils for the enforcement of the legislation around the sale and purchase of tobacco and NVP’s. Local authority trading standards services treat the enforcement of legislation as a high priority issue.

We know that it will take time and a series of targeted actions to build back capacity and redesign patient pathways to bring treatment times back within targets for orthopaedic patients.

As part of the NHS Recovery Plan , which is backed by an overall investment of £1 billion, the Scottish Government is investing over £400 million to deliver 10 National Treatment Centres (NTCs) which will create protected elective capacity for an additional 40,000 surgeries and procedures across 12 specialties per year. The first of these opened at the Golden Jubilee in November 2020 and next three NTCs are due to open in NHS Fife, NHS Forth Valley and NHS Highland in 2022. These centres will be crucial to increasing orthopaedic capacity, which will in turn reduce the length of time patients are waiting for treatment.

Services are also embracing new ways of working, including virtual clinics and Active Clinical Referral Triage, which will support shorter time to diagnosis and treatment and continue to ensure patients receive the appropriate advice and support.

At the heart of our licensing scheme is a set of mandatory standards which will help to protect the safety of guests and neighbours in short-term lets across Scotland. Provided an operator continues to comply with their licence conditions, which will often just be the mandatory safety conditions, their licence would normally be renewed. As the licensing scheme requires licence holders to comply with mandatory safety conditions, and they cannot continue to operate if they do not, it is reasonable to assume that lenders will have regard to this as part of their due diligence, alongside other considerations such as turnover and profitability.

The 2022-23 Scottish Budget delivers record funding of £18 billion for the health portfolio to support our vital health and care services, including those services that are supporting the needs of people living with long COVID, chronic fatigue syndromes and chronic pain.

We have published ‘Scotland's long COVID service’, which sets out our approach and 16 commitments to improve care and support for people with long COVID in Scotland.

In addition, our £10million ‘long COVID Support Fund’ will provide NHS Boards with additional resource to respond in a flexible and tailored manner to the needs of people with long COVID.

In light of the final National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome ME/CFS being published, we are pleased to confirm that a formal stakeholder consultation project will begin in early 2022. The main focus of this is to work collaboratively with key stakeholders towards implementing the recommendations within these guidelines, in Scotland.

We are continuing to work with Health Boards to ensure the remobilisation of appropriate pain management support as quickly and as safely as possible. As part of this we providing funding to enhance the capacity of pain management care through the Chronic Pain Winter Support Fund. We will shortly announce the outcome of this funding call. The projects we fund will boost the support available for people with chronic pain at the national and local level to help them maintain their health and wellbeing over the months ahead.

Funding provided by the Scottish Government (Chief Scientist Office) for research falls into three broad areas of activity, i.e. research studies, capacity building and supporting infrastructure.

The specific amounts provided by condition are set out below although it should be noted that research studies (funded by non-commercial and third sector organisations) would also have benefited from the provision of service support costs and other generic resources which are not routinely recorded by condition.

Research Grants

The Chief Scientist Office supports response mode grant committees and a small catalytic grants scheme (2016-19). The committees which comprise independent experts as well as public representatives consider applications across broad research remits to address health and care challenges in Scotland. Applications are subject to independent expert peer-review with funding recommendations made by the committees. It should be noted that (1) funding rounds were significantly impacted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic which saw a significant research response and (2) for 2021 to date only one of the two funding rounds has been completed.

We have not made a direct assessment of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the detection of atrial fibrillation. However, we regularly assess statistics on Covid-19’s impact on cardiovascular services more widely to inform our work.

Public Health Scotland Statistics on COVID-19’s impact on the health care system including cardiovascular procedures can be found at:

https://scotland.shinyapps.io/phs-covid-wider-impact/

To address the wider impacts of the pandemic our NHS Recovery Plan, backed by over £1bn of investment, sets out our plans for health and care over the next five years. Through the plan we will take forward our aim of increasing NHS capacity by at least 10% as quickly as possible to address the backlog of care and meet the ongoing healthcare needs for people across the country.

We have established a process for individuals who have received one of their first coronavirus vaccinations outwith Scotland which allows them to upload official proof of vaccination from that country to their Scottish Vaccination record through NHS Inform . This will allow those individuals to receive a combined fully vaccinated status to show for international travel and domestic purposes.

Individuals who have been vaccinated in England or Wales can provide confirmation that they are fully vaccinated through NHS COVID Pass for domestic purposes.

The requested information on how many people were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), broken down by NHS board is not held centrally.

The Scottish Multiple Sclerosis Register provides information on new diagnoses of MS. The latest publication of the register shows 450 new patients with a confirmed diagnosis of MS were added to the MS Register in 2020.

I can confirm that the project remains on budget. There is no change to the estimated total project cost of £49.5m at Q4 2018 prices, of which the construction contract value is £18m, as reported in the Infrastructure Investment Plan updates.

Construction cost updates for the project are published on the Scottish Government website every 6 months via the Major Capital Projects update.

Data published by Public Health Scotland covering the period 01 January 2020 to 30 September 2021 shows that in NHS Grampian 83.7 % eligible referrals started treatment within the 62 day standard in 2020 and 78.2% in 2021. Representing 1081 of 1,291 referrals in 2020 and 815 of 1,042 referrals in 2021.

Further breakdown of this data can be accessed at Cancer waiting times - 1 July to 30 September 2021 - Cancer waiting times - Publications - Public Health Scotland .

Boards are continuing to prioritise new cancer patients being referred with a suspicion of cancer - this is closely monitored through weekly performance meetings with officials and reflected in Boards’ Remobilisation Plans.

A refresh of the Framework for Effective Cancer Management is underway and will support clinicians and NHS managers to drive improvements in cancer pathways, providing Health Boards with the tools to effectively manage cancer patients and ultimately recover waiting times.

£10 million of funding has been directed to support cancer waiting times improvements in NHS Scotland across 2021-22, including up-skilling nurses and investing in diagnostic tests to extended working days and weekend working, to increase capacity and see/treat cancer patients as timely as possible. NHS Grampian received £974,000 as a share of the funding.