Chamber and committees

Current infection control measures, plus the further steps announced on 6 August to establish standards and check compliance with them, will help protect cancer patients along with all NHS patients in Scotland. The measures I announced include a mandatory surveillance system to monitor key infections at local and national level, together with funding to increase the number of infection control nurses being trained.

NHS Trusts must ensure that they have adequate infection control arrangements in place, based on comprehensive guidance provided by the Health Department. I have recently outlined steps to establish new standards for infection control and compliance checking arrangements, to be overseen by the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland.

The Framework for Mental Health Services in Scotland encourages mental health agencies to ensure that people who use services, and their families and carers, receive the necessary support to enable them to participate effectively in planning their care. Access to relevant information, advice, advocacy and other support assists people to make informed decisions about their care.The Framework for Mental Health Services in Scotland provides a template for agencies designed to ensure that people who use services and their families and carers receive the necessary support to enable them to participate effectively in their own care. Access to relevant information, advice, advocacy and other support can all help informed decisions about individual care plans. This modernisation and responsive care agenda is continued in the forward programme of change and improvement set out in Our National Health: A plan for action, a plan for change.How that change is delivered and how people who use services are kept involved and engaged with their own care planning requires joint working between the local authorities, the NHS and other relevant organisations. The Mental Health and Well Being Support Group will continue its review of agency progress with this modernisation agenda, including the user and carer dimension and will feed into the overall assessment and accountability process announced in Our National Health.

The information requested is not held centrally.

In accordance with the terms of its remit, the Care Development Group will report to the Minister for Health and Community Care by the end of August. The Scottish Executive will arrange for the report to be published.

All long-stay hospital transfers to community-based care should follow multi-disciplinary and multi-agency discharge planning where the continuing care needs are assessed and agreed. The individual and their carer where appropriate should of course be involved in these discussions. Guidance states that if for whatever reason an element of the service response to the continuing care needs is not immediately available no transfer should take place.On a wider area need level the Mental Health and Well Being Support Group published in March this year comprehensive guidance on approaches to Needs Assessment for a Comprehensive, Local Mental Health Service, a copy of which is held in the Parliament's Reference Centre. That report sourced and listed 43 additional guidance papers on area and personal needs assessment in mental health. The Support Group, the Scottish Health Advisory Service, the Social Work Services Inspectorate and others continue to visit and report on the local agencies' strategic and service responses to assessed needs.

Information provided by Local Authorities on prosecutions has not previously identified separately specific action taken on illegal meat importation.As a result of the Food-and-Mouth Disease outbreak new arrangements on the sharing of such information between the Local Authorities, Food Standards Agency and SEERAD were agreed in April 2001. There have been no such notifications through this new system in Scotland.

Our approach to developing the workforce in NHSScotland, as stated in Our National Health; A plan for action; a plan for change continues to be one of targeted investment. That is why last year I announced 210 extra specialist nurses and 110 extra doctors and earlier this year I announced funding for a further 375 doctors and 84 Public Health Practitioners. In addition, the Executive is providing an extra £18.5 million on Primary Care over the next three years which will be mainly targeted at increasing the number of GP's and developing the primary care workforce. To ensure that additional investment is targeted where it is needed most, we are improving workforce planning in the NHS through, for example, a fundamental review of medical workforce planning and the inclusion of workforce plans in Local Health Plans.

Our National Health; a plan for action; a plan for change gave a commitment to a review of medical workforce planning, including assessing the medical student intake in Scotland. As I announced on 20 June, Professor John Temple, President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, has agreed to lead the review. He has commenced work and aims to submit a preliminary report to me, by the end of the year. Decisions on any future changes in medical student intake will be taken in light of the review. The need for any changes in the medical school intake will need to be judged against the fact that Scotland is currently a net exporter of trained doctors. In the meantime, the number of funded places on medical courses in Scottish institutions is being maintained at current levels.

Full details of changes in NHS governance and accountability, including the establishment of the new NHS Boards, are contained in the change programme Rebuilding our National Health Service, published by the Health Department in May 2001, copies of which are available in the Parliament's Reference Centre and on the Scottish Executive website at the following address:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library3/health/ronh-00.asp