Chamber and committees

Government farm inspections have been falling steadily since 2006 demonstrating the Scottish Government’s commitment to reducing the regulatory burden on the farming community while continuing to meet EU inspection requirements.

The following table gives a detailed breakdown:

Note: *Figures are for on farm inspections carried out by the Scottish Government Rural Payment and Inspections Directorate and its predecessors since 1999. Figures dropped considerably in 2001 due to inspections being postponed due to Foot and Mouth disease. Some inspections for the 2005 year have been counted against 2004 due to the transitional arrangements for the introduction of Single Farm Payment and. 2011 figures are only for inspections completed up until end July 2011.

Scottish Government takes every opportunity to ensure that the interests of Scottish agriculture are taken into consideration by the European Commission. Achieving a fair and proportionate sanction system for Scottish farmers is ongoing and is a subject which my officials have at the top of their agenda. For example, Scotland was recently successful in securing some flexibility from Europe in relation to Sheep EID.

TThe specific information requested is not available centrally as it is not possible to identify operations cancelled for non-clinical reasons.

Information, although limited, is available on the number of hospital stays where operation/procedure were not carried out following admission to hospital. This information for the calendar years 1999 to 2010 is provided in the following table.

Operations may be cancelled due to a number of reasons such as a particularly high level of emergency admissions, staff sickness, patient is unfit for treatment on admission or the patient has failed to follow pre-admission advice such as fasting before admission.

The Total Number of Hospital Stays and The Number of Hospital Stays Where A Cancelled Operation Or Procedure Not Being Carried Has Been Recorded^1,2,3 In the Years 1999 To 2010^p

¹Source ISD Scotland (SMR01) –information derived from non-obstetric and
non-psychiatric hospitals.

²Up to six diagnoses (one principal and five secondary) are recorded on SMR01 returns. All six diagnoses diagnoses positions have been used to identify cancelled operations. The following Internal Statistical Classification of Disease and Related Health Problems 10^th Revision (ICD – 10) code has been used to identify cancelled operations/procedures – Z53: person encountering health services for specific procedure not carried out.

³ Cases where an operation or procedure was cancelled prior to the patient being admitted to hospital are excluded.

^p Provisional

The funding to be made available for independent drug rehabilitation schemes would be a decision for Scotland’s Alcohol and Drug Partnerships. The Scottish Government provides funding for frontline drug treatment and support services and in 2011-12 this totalled £28.6 million.

The following table provides historical funding for drug treatment and support services:

Any future funding decisions (for 2012-13 and beyond) on funding will be subject to a spending review and parliamentary approval.

This information is not held centrally.

Some information is available from the Practice Team Information (PTI) scheme, which can provide national estimates of the number of patients consulting a GP or practice-employed nurse where depression was noted as one of the reasons for consulting, other information is available from hospital admissions data. People with depression may however be seen in other settings for which there is no data available.

PTI records do not indicate if patients are treated and are based on information obtained from a sample of Scottish general practices participating in PTI This sample covers around 6% of Scottish GP practices representative of the full range of age, sex, and deprivation classes existing in Scotland. PTI data is available from
1 April 2003.

Estimates are based on a sample of practices and the 95% confidence intervals give an indication of the uncertainty around the estimates. The sample of practices may vary between years.

Table 1. Estimated number of patients aged under 18 years consulting a GP or practice employed nurse for depression.

* The PTI estimates for numbers of patients seen for depression decrease considerably from 2003-04 to 2006-07, but the decrease is much smaller over the more recent years. The decline is likely mainly a result of clinicians having become more precise in their clinical coding.

Information of people aged under 18 year with a diagnosis of depression who have been admitted to psychiatric inpatient facilities in Scotland is shown in table 2.

Table 2. Number of patients aged under 18 with a diagnosis of depression admitted to psychiatric inpatient facilities

The data source for table 2 is SMR04 admissions to discharges from Psychiatric specialties in Scotland.

The number of people under the age of 18 with a diagnosis of depression who have been admitted to an adult ward since 1999 is

1998-1999 52

1999-2000 49

2000-2001 48

2001-2002 51

2002-2003 51

2003-2004 40

2004-2005 32

2005-2006 32

2006-2007 36

2007-2008 28

2008-2009 29

2009-2010 37

The data source for the above is SMR04 admissions to and discharges from psychiatric specialties in Scotland.

There are some reasons why it may not always be possible for a young person to be admitted to a specialist child and adolescent bed – for example, a crisis admission out of hours where there are concerns for the young person’s safety, or where a specialist facility might be a considerable distance from family support that could help recovery.

The majority of these admissions are among young people aged 16 or 17 where an adult facility might in certain cases be clinically judged to be the more appropriate setting.

This information is not collected.

The decision on which intervention is best suited for an individual will be made only after a full assessment by a multidisciplinary team. These interventions may include pharmacological, talking therapies, social support or a combination of all three. Support will be offered by the team to help the patient and clinician make a decision based on the best evidence available to improve outcomes in the patient’s condition.

Figures from 1999 for the number of malicious false alarms made to Scotland’s Fire and Rescue Services.

Notes:

p – provisional

r – revised

1 – does not include incidents that occur during national industrial action in November 2002, January 2003 and February 2003

Source: Fire Statistics Scotland – 2008-09, 2009-10.

Guidance on exclusions published by the Scottish Government in March 2011 confirms that pupils must be formally excluded when being sent home from school for reasons relating to behaviour or an incident. There are therefore no separate figures for this.

The available information on the number of primary and secondary pupils excluded from school for substance misuse in each year since 1999 is given in the following tables. It is not possible to supply any information on pupils excluded for substance misuse prior to 2004-05 as these were not separately identified.

In order to prevent disclosure of information about individuals any figure based on fewer than five pupils is shown as * rather than as the actual figure. In addition, due to the small number of pupils involved, the number of primary pupils excluded for substance misuse is shown at a national level only.

Number of primary pupils excluded for substance misuse, 2005-06 to 2009-10

Number of secondary pupils excluded for substance misuse, 2005-06 to 2009-10

Information on the number of patients who did not attend (DNA) a first outpatient appointment at a consultant-led clinic in the calendar years 1999 to 2010 is provided in the following table.

The latest available information for 2009-10 shows that the average cost of an attendance at a consultant outpatient clinic was £124.

Prior to the introduction of the New Ways of Defining and Measuring Waiting Times, DNA information was only available for first outpatient appointments from Scottish Morbidity Outpatient Records. DNA information is now being published from the New Ways dataset for both first outpatient appointments and for inpatient and day case treatment.

Latest published information from New Ways shows that for the quarter ending
March 2011, there were 33,525 missed first outpatient appointments at a
consultant-led clinic, a DNA rate of 9.5%. For the same period, there were 2,532 missed appointments for inpatient and day case treatment, a DNA rate of 2.5%.

Source ISD Scotland , SMR00 (Outpatient attendance)

^pData for 2010 are provisional