Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government continues to focus on tackling disparities in deprived areas by ensuring equitable access to cancer services through the actions in our National Cancer Plan. We recognise that the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated inequalities within screening. A key Ministerial priority is reducing inequalities in access to and uptake of screening programmes. That is why we committed up to £2.45 million to the Screening Inequalities Fund to build a programme of evidence-based, sustainable and scalable projects that tackle inequalities in a systemic way.

Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Services (RCDS) have been established across three NHS Boards to date which have a key role in delivering earlier diagnosis and improving patient care. The First Minister recently announced an additional two RCDS’ are being developed.

Additionally, the development of national clinical management pathways through the Scottish Cancer Network will help reduce variation across Scotland, across the entirety of the pathway. In parallel, the first optimal cancer diagnostic pathway, led by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) was launched in December 2022, and is being funded by £3 million from the Scottish Government’s Detect Cancer Earlier (DCE) Programme.

The National Cancer Quality Steering group have overseen the development of a newly proposed QPI on 'Recurrence Following Breast Cancer Treatment' in 2022. This proposal contains 3 parts - i) local recurrence (or new cancer) following conservation surgery; ii) local recurrence (or new cancer) following mastectomy; and iii) any recurrence (or new cancer) in same breast, axilla or distant site after surgical treatment.

This QPI, along with the other revisions have recently been subject to a public engagement exercise and all comments received via this process are due to be discussed at a further Breast Cancer QPI Formal Review meeting later in January prior to final agreement.

Further to this, the Scottish Government continues its dialogue with Public Health Scotland, NHS England and the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership alongside breast cancer specialists and the charity Breast Cancer Now regarding data collection for secondary breast cancer.

The Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office (CSO) supports funding schemes for applied health research across the range of health challenges including prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Applications are assessed through independent expert review with funding decisions based on the recommendations of independent expert research committees. Currently funded projects include an investigation of a novel class of antibiotic and on targeting antibiotic use.

In addition, CSO contributes financially to a range of National Institute for Health & Care Research funding schemes so these are open to applications from researchers in Scotland. These schemes can also consider applications for research relating to infectious diseases with funding recommendations made following independent expert review.

CSO also invests through NHS Research Scotland in a range of clinical research infrastructure to support Health Boards to host and participate in clinical studies and trials, including an Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Network to support the delivery of studies in this area.

The Scottish Government has also agreed, in principle, to join a new payment and evaluation model for new antimicrobial products, led by National Institute for Health & Care Excellence and NHS England. Frameworks are set to be finalised and in place by end of March 2023, at which point, all four nations will collectively decide on the new products that will be awarded contracts. If this new model is successful, we hope it will help to address supply chain issues by incentivising industry research and development into new antimicrobials.

As committed to in the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care, we have been undertaking a data collection exercise to inform future decisions about workforce investment. This work is being led by the Scottish Cancer Network, which is engaging with local boards and professional representatives.

A final report, including recommendations, will be provided to the National Oncology Taskforce in the first quarter of 2023. The Taskforce is made up of NHS Board Chief Executives and Medical Directors, and will seek national solutions to ensure the longer term resilience of oncology services in Scotland.

Secondary breast cancer – breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body – is recorded on the Scottish Cancer Registry if it has occurred when the diagnosis is first made. The Scottish Cancer Registry uses a variety of sources of information to confirm stage at diagnosis and the quality of this work is assessed through audit and external quality assurance.

Public Health Scotland is part of an ongoing JRC-ENCR (Joint Research Centre – European Network of Cancer Registries) short life working group to improve and standardise collection of information on cancer recurrence. The aim of this work is to improve collection of secondary cancers that occur some time after the initial diagnosis. This will add to the information about secondary breast cancer at the time of diagnosis.

Several new and better sources of data on secondary cancers are being integrated into the national cancer intelligence platform at Public Health Scotland (PHS). For example, Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy data for the whole of Scotland are now collated at PHS and these include information on whether treatments for breast cancer are for primary or secondary disease.

The National Cancer Quality Steering group have overseen the development of a newly proposed QPI on 'Recurrence Following Breast Cancer Treatment' in 2022.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-13150 on 17 January 2023. 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 .

The number and proportion of telephone calls that are not connected to a Social Security Scotland client advisor are provided in the following table, as well as the average call waiting times for connected calls.

In the previous Parliament, the then Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Michael Matheson, announced on 18 June 2019 that the Cycling Action Plan for Scotland vision that, by 2020, 10% of all journeys in Scotland would be made by bike would not be met. In this Parliamentary term, the Cycling Action Plan for Scotland will be succeeded by the Cycling Framework for Active Travel. A draft version of the cycling framework was put to public consultation in late 2022 and the final version will be published this year. The Framework takes account of the independent review of the previous Cycling Action Plan, which was carried out by Professor Tom Rye in 2020 and which made recommendations for the future priorities for cycling for active travel in Scotland.

Based on the latest Annual Cycling Monitoring Data, the cycling mode share broken down by local authority is as follows:

Scottish Government communications have supported individuals with no access to the internet through a number of offline channels.

300,000 copies of the cost of living support leaflet ( https://www.gov.scot/publications/cost-of-living-support-leaflet/ ) were distributed via libraries, GP surgeries, Health Boards and other community channels. This has also been translated in a number of languages and formats such as British Sign Language and Easy read to enhance accessibility. Local and national press features as part of the national marketing campaign have allowed for an offline extension of the campaign across different areas of Scotland.

In addition, key partnerships were secured with Asda and Scotmid across 238 stores, translating to leaflets, posters and radio ads and creative assets were offered to over 600 partners, including local authorities.

Low income families who are struggling to pay for their digital connectivity can find a link to social tariff information on our Cost of Living website.

We do not have the information requested as we are still in the testing and policy development phase of the free bikes programme. In this government’s first 100 days, we established six pilot schemes with a further four running by the end of 2021. Nine of these pilots will run until the end of March 2023, testing different approaches and delivery models, including eligibility, to help inform a national rollout.

We do not record data on these projects at local authority level. However, considering bikes issued and associated training and promotion sessions, free bikes activities have taken place in 20 of 32 local authority areas. The 9 pilots are running across a range of locations including in urban, rural and island communities.