Chamber and committees

Disclosure Scotland checks and shares information about people's criminal records. This helps organisations to employ the right people for certain types of work, like working with children or protected adults. The requirement for disclosure checks is unlikely to apply to all individuals involved in the decision making process for the health and wellbeing census. Further information about the circumstances which require disclosure checks is available from Types of disclosure - mygov.scot

In terms of accessing individuals’ information, for the purposes of safeguarding, only a small number of individual staff within each local authority will have access to the responses provided by children and young people in the Census, and be able to actually identify an individual based on their Scottish Candidate Number by accessing a separate management information system which holds this information. No other persons (e.g. Scottish Government analysts) who will have access to the individual responses provided by children and young people would be able to do this, as they do not have access to any systems that store the names of individual pupils. Analysts are also required to comply with rules and regulations that are set out for when processing individual level data for statistics and research purposes.

It would be expected that anyone carrying out 'regulated work' including teaching or supervising children and/or protected adults or working directly with children and/or protected adults would have membership of the PVG Scheme.

The Scottish Government is aware of the significant impact that Omicron has had on the culture and major events sector. The Scottish Government has announced a financial package worth £65 million for this sector. The split of the funding is as follows:

• for cultural businesses, organisations, venue and independent cinema support and grassroots venues - £31.5 million
•  National Performing Companies (for Christmas losses and touring fund re-purposing) - £2 million
• Freelancers - £10 million
• Events sector - £19.8 million
• Museums, galleries and heritage - £1.7 million

Applications for the Covid19 cancellation fund for freelancers was launched on 6 January 2021. Further information on this is available at the following link: COVID-19 Cancellation Fund for Creative Freelancers | Creative Scotland

The other funds will take more time to establish but work is being done to expedite this process.

There have been exemptions for airline pilots and crew in place since the international travel regulations were introduced in June 2020. Currently, pilots and crew have exemptions on testing before and after arriving in Scotland, as well on self-isolation and completing the Passenger Locator Form (PLF). After arriving in Scotland, they are still expected to follow domestic rules and workplace guidance.

Further details on the exemption can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-international-travel-quarantine/pages/sectoral-exemptions/

The Scottish Government’s commitment to the early diagnosis of cancer is reflected in our £44m Detect Cancer Early (DCE) Programme, which adopts a whole-systems approach to diagnosing and treating cancer as early as possible – ranging from screening and public awareness campaigns to diagnostics and data. The NHS Recovery Plan, published August 2021, commits an additional £20m for the Programme.

In terms of data, Scotland already publishes a range of quality data-sets which include blood cancers. Some examples of these are our quarterly published Cancer Waiting Times data which includes lymphomas, our annually published Cancer Mortality data which has blood and lymphatic cancers included, and our annually published Cancer Survival stats which includes blood cancers.

In addition to this, the National Cancer Data Group is an established advisory group containing relevant clinicians and stakeholders, and meets regularly in order to seek improvements in data collection to, in turn, improve cancer outcomes in Scotland.

Our officials are currently in discussion with the Blood Cancer Alliance to arrange a meeting early this year, to explore how further improved outcomes for patients diagnosed with blood cancers can be achieved.

The Scottish Government remains committed to transparency on this important issue. Since the last update to Parliament on 15 September, I can confirm that:

• As was the case in September, no invasive cervical cancer has been detected in any individuals who were written to over the summer on this issue and who have subsequently attended either for screening or gynaecological exam.
• Work in reviewing exclusions has continued to be prioritise based on risk, and in early autumn, an audit of all records where an obstetric hysterectomy has been performed was carried out. All individuals identified as either having been or likely to have been wrongfully excluded have now been contacted and re-instated in the screening programme or invited for examination as required.
• Work is ongoing to review the remaining exclusions; the NHS is committed to completing this as quickly as possible, and I will update Parliament on progress in due course.
• Dr Karin Denton is a consultant pathologist with North Bristol NHS Trust and leads the laboratory service for Cervical Screening in the South West of England. She has been appointed to chair the Healthcare Improvement Scotland review of the systems and processes of exclusions in the cervical screening programme. It is anticipated that the review findings will be published in autumn 2022.

The Scottish Government’s commitment to the early diagnosis of cancer is reflected in the £44m Detect Cancer Early (DCE) Programme. The NHS Recovery Plan – published August 2021 – commits an additional £20m for the DCE Programme, to provide greater public awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer and supporting the development of optimal cancer pathways to improve earlier diagnosis rates. Research will be undertaken in the coming months to better understand the possible barriers and levers to early diagnosis that any new DCE campaigns should focus on.

An overarching DCE social marketing campaign 'Survivors' was previously developed in close consultation with the Scottish Cancer Coalition in 2018. The campaign aimed to reduce fear around cancer and empower people to take early action, be it visiting their GP practice or attending screening when invited. To coincide with the campaign, a symptom-checker tool was developed on DCE’s website (getcheckedearly.org) to raise awareness of the early signs and symptoms of cancer, including blood cancer.

The National Cancer Plan, published on 9 December 2020, includes 68 actions and has been backed with up to £114.5 million. This includes a flagship innovation of the introduction of Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres (ECDC), with three Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres (ECDC) already established in NHS Scotland this year. The Centres provide primary care with a new referral route for patients with non-specific symptoms suspicious of cancer (i.e. weight loss, fatigue, nausea), which don’t meet site specific Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer. The Clinical Lead for two of the Centres are Haematologists, reflecting the role that this new model can play in diagnosing blood cancers in Scotland.

The establishment and implementation of ECDCs are overseen by a national oversight group, of which the Scottish Cancer Coalition (that includes blood cancer charities) has representation on.

Officials are currently in discussion with the Blood Cancer Alliance to arrange a meeting in the new year, to explore how further improved outcomes for patients diagnosed with blood cancers can be achieved.

Table 1 shows the number of secondary teachers in each Local Authority at the time of the census and who did not hold a post in the following year's census. Some teachers may be double counted if they are recorded as working in two different local authorities.

Table 2 shows the number of secondary teachers by their main subject at the time of the census and who did not hold a post in the following year's census. Some teachers may be double counted if they have a post at more than one schools and are recorded as having a different main subject at different schools.

In both tables teachers who were not teaching at the time because they were either on leave or seconded from their post (e.g. on maternity leave) are counted as holding a post. The total figure in table 1 and table 2 are different as some teachers may be double counted.

There are a number of reasons why a teacher would not hold a post in the following year's census, these include resignation, retiring, end of contract, moving to independent schools etc.

Table 1

The number of Nurses employed by NHS Ayrshire & Arran in the last five years can be found on the NHS Education for Scotland (NES) website on the following link: Nursing and Midwifery | Turas Data Intelligence (nhs.scot)

The number of GPs in each board is available at Table 2 of:

General Practice - GP Workforce and practice list sizes 2010 - 2020 - General Practice - GP workforce and practice list sizes - Publications - Public Health Scotland

The next update, including figures for 30 September 2021, is published on 14 December.

The number of Doctors other than GP's including Consultants, doctors in training and other trained doctors employed by NHS Ayrshire & Arran in the last five years can be found on the NES website on the following link:

Medical and Dental | Turas Data Intelligence (nhs.scot)

Booster information was made available in the international travel section of the NHS Scotland Covid Status App on 9 December, and on paper/pdf certificates from 13 December.