Chamber and committees

The Patient Safety Commissioner is a Parliamentary office-holder and is being recruited by the Scottish Parliament. They will be appointed by His Majesty on nomination of the Scottish Parliament.

As the Commissioner will be an independent public advocate for patients on issues of safety the Scottish Government does not have a role in the recruitment process. The Commissioner will champion the value of listening to patients and will hold organisations to account for their responsibility to take patients’ concerns seriously.

The Scottish Government’s HIV Transmission Elimination Delivery Plan sets out our approach to ensuring that people living with HIV have equitable access to high quality care and treatment to support them to live well.

We are aware of the recent HIV Outcomes Beyond the Virus report and will be working with the HIV Transmission Elimination Delivery Implementation Group and the Scottish Health Protection Network’s HIV Clinical Leads Group to consider its recommendations and ensure that psychological support for adults living with HIV meets the high standards we would expect.

The Scottish Government is also providing NHS Education for Scotland with around £30 million in 2024-25 to deliver multidisciplinary education, training and workforce expansion for staff supporting adult and children’s mental health and psychological wellbeing. In September 2023, the Scottish Government published the National Specification for Psychological Therapies and Interventions and the Core Standards for Mental Health. These set out the standards to which we expect psychological therapies and mental health services to be delivered, including appropriate staffing.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-31702 on 4 December 2024. 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

Early intervention and prevention are key priorities for the Scottish Government in taking forward our approaches to mental health and wellbeing, and HIV transmission elimination. We recognise that physical and mental health can be influenced by many factors, including home life, work, physical environment and housing, income, communities, relationships, difficult or traumatic life experiences and inequalities.

We are therefore working across government and with partners from a range of different sectors to better understand and address the social determinants of health. In relation to HIV, this specifically includes working with public sector and third sector partners to address barriers to prevention, testing and treatment and investing in interventions to ensure equitable access to high quality care that supports people to live well.

The Scottish Government is committed to evidence-based policy making. National Mission activity undertaken to date has been based on the evidence available and informed by people with lived and living experience, as well as the National Mission’s Clinical Advisory Group and National Mission Oversight Group.

For example, our approach to setting up the UK’s first Safer Drug Consumption Facility has been based on evidence from 300 existing safer drug consumption facilities already in operation around the world.

To ensure that our future strategic plans are evidence-based, they will be informed by the National Mission evaluation due to be published in 2026.

We will ensure that any new approaches to reducing deaths and harms is accompanied with evaluation as a matter of course, such as the Safer Drug Consumption Facility (The Thistle Service), which is due to open in the near future.

A full evaluation of the Thistle Service will be carried out, details of the evaluation package will be made available shortly but it will use a range of data to examine the impact of the facility on health, social, community, environmental, and economic outcomes.

Tackling alcohol related harm remains a priority for Scottish Government, and we are treating our policies to reduce alcohol and drug deaths as twin public health issues in Scotland.

We are working to ensure that people who experience harms as a result of alcohol use receive the same quality of care and support as people who experience harms as a result of drug use. We work closely with Alcohol and Drugs Partnerships and regularly monitor services through the annual ADP survey. The most recent one, reflecting activity for 2023-24, was published on 12 November 2024 and notes the following on data surveillance.

Almost all ADP areas reported having specific groups or structures in place at ADP level to inform surveillance and monitoring of drug harms or deaths. All but two (93%) of ADPs reported having a drug death review group and 77% reported having a drug trend monitoring group or early warning system.

Fewer ADPs reported groups relating to alcohol, with a quarter (27%) reporting having an alcohol death review group and 30% reporting having an alcohol harms group.

A third of ADPs reported having other structures in place for informing surveillance, which included multi-agency groups working on drug death prevention and action plan groups, wider public health monitoring which included drug and alcohol harms and sudden death groups whose remits include both drug death reviews and suicides reviews. Several ADPs indicated that alcohol harm and death review groups are currently in development.

It is our expectation that future Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) funding letters will ask ADPs to undertake local alcohol death review. This message will also be reinforced in our National Specification for treatment of drug and alcohol misuse in Scotland, which is currently in development and will build on the recommendations of the forthcoming UK Clinical Guidelines for Alcohol Treatment.

The Scottish Government remains committed to progressing work on protecting children and young people from exposure to alcohol marketing. It was clear from our earlier public consultation that there was a wide range of views on alcohol marketing proposals, including uncertainty about the existing evidence base for many proposals.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) are being commissioned to carry out a review of the evidence for the range of options that are available to the Scottish Government under devolved powers. This will ensure that our work is evidence based and will deliver clear public health outcomes. We will consider PHS’ findings, and consider where the evidence supports further action or consultation on alcohol marketing restrictions.

If the evidence supports it, the Scottish Government will return with a further consultation on a range of targeted proposals. Ensuring public health policy is based on clear evidence is vital in delivering progress on alcohol harm and ensuring that the right balance is struck between improving population health and the potential impacts and effects on the economy, business and industry.

As the Cabinet Secretary set out to Parliament, Public Health Scotland (PHS) are being commissioned to carry out a review of the evidence for the range of options that are available to the Scottish Government under devolved powers. This important step will ensure that our work is evidence based and will deliver clear public health outcomes.

The final commission will be published in due course, and will set out the timelines for that review activity. The Scottish Government will consider PHS’ findings, and consider where the evidence supports further action or consultation on alcohol marketing restrictions. Once the evidence review is concluded the Scottish Government will consider any areas where evidence supports further consultation. No decisions have been taken yet on what these areas may be.