Chamber and committees

Over the last five years the gender pay gap in the Scottish Government main bargaining unit and Senior Civil Service has not exceeded 3%. This is within the limits as suggested by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Caring for people of all ages with mental health problems is a national priority for the Scottish Government and we continue to work with our partners to advance this important agenda.

This commitment to mental health has resulted in a new mental health strategy being launched (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/08/9714/0) Child and Adolescent Mental Health is one of its four Key Change Areas. This work builds on our previous mental health policies and action plans.

Through the strategy we have made commitments that:

We will work with NHS boards to ensure that the CAMHS HEAT target that by March 2013 no one will wait longer than 26 weeks from referral to treatment for specialist CAMHS services, or longer than 18 weeks by December 2014.

We will make basic infant mental health training more widely available to professionals in the children’s services workforce.

We will work with stakeholders to develop the current Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Balanced scorecard.

We will work with clinicians in Scotland to identify good models of Learning Disability service delivery in use in Scotland or other parts of the UK which could lead to prototypes for future testing and evaluation

We will focus on reducing admissions of under 18s to adult wards across Scotland.

We have committed to supporting the development of The Psychology of Parenting Programme (PoPP). The programme aims to improve the availability of high quality evidence based parenting programmes for families with young children who have elevated levels of problem behaviour.

We have put in place a set of national health indicators for children and young people in Scotland. The indicators provide for the first time a means of assessing and monitoring the mental health of Scotland’s children and young people over a time and will enable the development of the first national health profile for children and young people (from pre-birth to 17 years). Updated every four years, the profile will result in a greater understanding of the current changing picture of mental health within this population and the factors that influence it.

The routine health and development checks which are provided for children up to the age of five are set out in the Health for All Children (Hall 4) Guidance.

The guidance recommends that all children should have contact with Health professionals within the first 24 hours for a full physical health check; within the first 10 days of life for a blood spot test for particular illnesses and a general check to ensure there is no cause for concern; within the first 28 days of life for a hearing test; at six to eight weeks for a full physical health and development check, including weight; at two, three, four and 12 to 13 months for immunisation and to check weight; between the ages of three to five years for immunisation and to check weight; between four and five years for an eye sight test, usually at pre-school; and between the ages of four to six, usually in school year Primary 1, for a full physical health check including height, weight and dental check.

A Childsmile dental assessment should take place between 10 days and three months.

A New Look at Hall 4, The Early Years, Good Health for Every Child introduced a 24-30 month review to pick up a range of development issues including speech, language and communication skills, personal, social and emotional development (including behavioural issues), and registration with a dentist. The aim is for NHS boards to roll this out from 1 April 2013. Guidance on the review will be issued later this year.

The National Care Standards for Early Education and Child-care underpin the work undertaken by the Care Inspectorate in this sector. These standards reflect the aspiration of ensuring that all children are in receipt of a positive experience which meets their own individual needs. Therefore, the notion of “good mental health and well-being” is one which underpins many of the standards rather than featuring in it. In particular, Standard 3 looks at “Health and Well-being” where issues such as continuity of care, anti-bullying, healthy lifestyles etc are looked at. Similarly, Standard 6 “Support and Development” considers how well services are doing in meeting children's emotional, educational and physical needs. Through inspection and other regulatory functions there is often a resulting dialogue as to how services can perform better as well as identifying the many examples of good practice in this area. One of the Quality Themes reported on in each inspection report is “Quality of Experience” and this offers an opportunity to focus on how respective services are working to meet the needs of children attending.

As well as at individual service level the Care Inspectorate has systems for meeting with large providers (including local authorities) to discuss overarching care issues. So there are a number of routes through which this discussion can be progressed.

Although the term “good mental health” is not one commonly used in relation to very young children it is certainly the case that the Care Inspectorate is very much involved in the aim of ensuring services are meeting the needs of all Scotland's children.

In addition to the Care Inspectorate methodology the work we do jointly with Education Scotland also covers the Health and Wellbeing strands in curriculum for excellence.

Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS), the Scottish Government’s waste policy delivery programme, has been taking forward a range of work on this issue. It recently published the Glass Collection & Re-processing Options Appraisal in Scotland, available on the ZWS website (www.zerowastescotland.org.uk), that assesses current collections of household and commercial container glass for recycling in Scotland. Based on this and related work, ZWS is planning a number of interventions and is able to make recommendations to local authorities and waste management companies to improve the quality of recycled glass available.

For example, the Cabinet Secretary announced at the Scottish Waste and Resources Conference on 3 October, ZWS will soon be able to provide extra funding to support to local authorities in increasing either kerbside or collection point capability for colour separated glass.

In addition, ZWS is launching a Priority Materials Fund to provide capital investment to stimulate growth in the resource management industry. Its aim is to capture and manage more of Scotland’s waste within Scotland, enabling local job creation and business growth. Funds can help businesses either to develop new market opportunities or to expand their existing operations for dealing where research has identified particular opportunities, including enhancements in processing to enable higher quantities of recycled glass to be suitable for "closed loop" or added value applications.

The Scottish Government is also consulting on a range of options that will seek to drive up the quality of recyclate flowing into and out of materials recycling facilities. If implemented these proposals should ensure that greater volumes of higher quality materials, including glass, are available.

(a) 2011-12 employee and employer contribution rates for the eight schemes referred to above (there are currently two police schemes and two fire-fighters schemes) are shown below.

(b), (c) and (d)

2011-12 scheme accounts for the NHS, teachers’, police and fire-fighters’ pension scheme are not yet available. They will be published in due course.

2011-12 accounts for the Local Government pension scheme are the responsibility of the eleven lead local authorities for that scheme. The Scottish Government has yet to receive the Local Financial Returns for 2011-12 containing the figures requested.

The Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme is the responsibility of the UK Cabinet Office. The Scottish Government does not have information to enable it to answer these questions.

We are working closely with Network Rail to deliver Phase two of the Highland Main Line Improvements Project in the next five years which aims to support an hourly service in both directions between Inverness and Perth extended to either Glasgow or Edinburgh with an average end-to-end journey time reduction of around 10 minutes in both directions.

We will expect bidders of the new ScotRail Franchise from 2014 to work with local stakeholders to identify opportunities for journey time reductions across the network, including services between Inverness and Caithness.

Journey times for services operating between Glasgow/Edinburgh and Inverness will be reduced by up to 17 minutes. These reductions will be delivered from 9 December 2012 as part of Phase one of the Government’s Highland Main Line Improvements Project.

None of the public sector organisations within the Scottish Government accounting boundary, nor any of the Scottish Government’s executive non-departmental public bodies, currently have any long-term borrowings. Details of local authority debt was provided in my response to question S4W-06643 answered on 3 May 2012. The indebtedness of other organisations within the devolved public sector (e.g. Scottish public corporations) may be ascertained from the annual accounts of the individual organisations concerned.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.