Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorate requested that Scottish Futures Trust review the accounting and budgetary classification of the East Ayrshire Community Hospital PFI project contract signed with Cumnock Special Purpose Vehicle Limited. The preliminary assessment under European System of Accounts 1995 indicated that the asset should remain on the government’s balance sheet for national accounts purposes.

Scottish Government officials and Scottish Futures Trust have also assisted by providing advice and opinion at a number of the discussions held between one or more of the parties to the contract variation. The main parties to the discussions have been the board, the Special Purpose Vehicle parent company and the funding bank.

The Scottish Government’s guidance on the Procurement of Care and Support Services recognised the need for commissioning bodies to work in partnership with service providers to make the best use of available funding whilst maintaining the quality of services and meeting service users’ needs and expectations.

The guidance was published following a two-year review of the procurement of social services. In addition, Audit Scotland is currently undertaking a performance audit of the commissioning of social care services in Scotland. Pending the outcome of this work, we do not intend to initiate a further review of the procurement of social care services.

This information is not collected or held centrally to the level of detail requested. It is for NHS boards to determine spend on services from their allocations and in accordance with the needs of their population. This will vary from board to board and region to region.

Data on the mortality rate for male and female lung cancer patients, broken down by health board since 1985, is publicly available on the Information Services Division (ISD) website:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Cancer/Cancer-Statistics/Lung-Cancer-and-Mesothelioma/m_cancer_lung_mesothelioma.xls?1

This information is not available at cancer network level due to reasons of potential disclosure.

Data on the mortality rate for lung cancer patients, broken down by age group and health board since 1985, is publicly available on the Information Services Division (ISD) website:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Cancer/Cancer-Statistics/Lung-Cancer-and-Mesothelioma/m_cancer_lung_mesothelioma.xls?1

This information is not available at cancer network level due to reasons of potential disclosure.

Source: Information Services Division.

The Scottish Government has funded National Services Scotland to produce the outline business case for the National Staff Banks/Erostering. In the meantime, five NHS boards in Scotland have established or are in the process of establishing a board AHP Bank, pending the national bank infrastructure becoming available, to facilitate cross board working.

Work to gather statistics in relation to the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 is currently being undertaken and will be published in due course.

The Scottish Government measures progress against reducing poverty through its national poverty indicator within Scotland Performs. Information on this can be accessed at:

http://scotland.gov.uk/About/scotPerforms/indicators/poverty.

The source of information is the Department for Work and Pension's Family Resources Survey, Households Below Average Income datasets.

The Scottish Government has also signed up to the UK Child Poverty Act which contains four measures of child poverty. Progress on these measures are reported on in the annual Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland publication at:

www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/933/0116722.pdf.

The Scottish Ambulance Service has provided the following table setting out rostered resources for these stations.

Notes:

o/c = on call from home address.

PRU = Paramedic Response Unit.

The Scottish Ambulance Service have confirmed that the accident and emergency ambulances operating from the stations at Vale of Leven, Helensburgh and Arrochar are rostered to be double crewed by a paramedic and a technician. The Paramedic Response Unit that operates from the Vale of Leven Station is rostered to be crewed by a Paramedic.

It is not possible to provide the information in the format requested. However, the Scottish Ambulance Service has provided the following information which sets out all shifts not covered. These may be seen in the context of over 5,500 rostered shifts for this time period across the three stations. Reasons for shifts not covered will include staff sickness.