Chamber and committees

Since 2004, NHS Scotland guidance has recognised the necessity for appropriate on-call facilities for anaesthetists and this was extended in 2007 to include all senior on call staff. HBN 26 - 'Facilities for surgical procedures (2004)' says:

5.59 Anaesthetist on-call facilities are required within the department. Facilities should include a bed, en-suite shower/WC, clothes storage, a hand-wash basin, a desk and chair, and a computer with connection to IT services. This space should be linked into the staff communication system.

SHPN 22 - 'Accident and emergency facilities for adults and children' (2007) states:

4.11 For senior on-call staff, a minimum of one single en-suite bed/sitting room that provides overnight accommodation is required within the department. The planning team should decide on the number, size and location of rooms following local consultation.

The Scottish Government believes that this guidance provides sufficient clarity as to what rest faclities need to be provided for medical staff and this would be provided and managed locally by NHS Boards. Compliance against these standards is measured through the Statutory Compliance Audit and Risk Tool (SCART) which is there to enable NHS Boards to measure their level of compliance with a range of legal and best practice guidance and produce a prioritised high-level summary for consideration at Board level.

All submissions that have been provided on this matter have been to inform ongoing policy development and will not be published at this time.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-20424 on 18 December 2018. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

This information is not held centrally. Local authorities can and do collect the information locally. Local authorities with military bases, or with Service family accommodation connected to military bases, are likely to account for the greatest number of children from forces families.

This information is not held centrally. Local authorities can and do collect the information locally .

Officials will continue to regularly meet representatives of the MoD to discuss a wide range of matters, including education matters, as part of our commitment to working in partnership with the MoD to improve outcomes for the people of Scotland. The UK-wide Education Support Fund has been discussed at several of the Scottish Service Children Strategy Group quarterly meetings chaired by the Scottish Government.

The Additional Support for Learning (ASL) Act places duties on education authorities to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs, long and short term, of their pupils. The supporting statutory Code of Practice is clear that additional support needs encompass a wide range of issues, including those which might impact on children from forces families such as interrupted learning and parental deployment.

The Act makes specific provisions to enable all children and young people with additional support needs, including those from forces families, to receive help in preparation for transitions in school. The support provided and the way that it is managed will depend on individual circumstances and is a matter for the education authority, school and family.

There are no plans to implement a Service Pupil Premium in Scotland. The Education Support Fund has been additional to, not instead of, the existing, and different, UK policy measures which support armed forces children’s education. These include Additional Support for Learning legislation in Scotland and the Service Pupil Premium in England.

The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 defines information as "recorded in any form”, so information held on any new form of communication developed since the introduction of the Act may be within the scope of a Freedom of Information request.

Scottish Government guidance is explicit that official information held in media including, but not limited to: email accounts, social media accounts (eg Facebook, Twitter), text messaging, mobile messaging (eg WhatsApp, Skype, Snapchat), cloud storage and collaboration tools, is subject to the Act.

Our guidance is available to view on an external sharepoint site that can be accessed from the Scottish Government FOI webpage: https://www.gov.scot/publications/freedom-of-information-document-collection/.

At a Spending Review, Barnett consequentials are determined on a departmental level as opposed to a programme level, it is therefore not possible to isolate the financial impact of individual spending decisions.

Whilst is not possible to determine the specific impact, any consequentials from Pupil Premium, of which Service Pupil Premium is a sub programme, were reflected in the Scottish Government's total allocation announced in the 2010 Spending Review.