Chamber and committees

In the last twelve months two individuals, and one MSP on behalf of a constituent, have written to Scottish Ministers about the provision of dental services in Oban.

In the last twelve months one parliamentary question (S4W-21447 answered on 12 June 2014) has been tabled about the provision of dental services in Skye. 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

The National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978 places a duty on every NHS board, in accordance with the regulations, to make arrangements with dental practitioners to provide NHS General Dental Services (GDS).

In the event that service provision is inadequate, NHS boards can put in place other arrangements. These can include provision of NHS GDS by the Public Dental Service, or the board can make special arrangements with an independent contractor to provide NHS GDS at suitable centres or in the homes of persons requiring such services.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that patients who wish to have access to NHS dental services are able to do so, regardless of geography.

Considerable progress has been made by boards with regard to access to an NHS dentist in rural areas. The following table shows the proportion of people registered with a NHS dentist in September 2014 (the latest figures available), compared with September 2007, for a number of rural board areas:

Source: Information Services Division, MIDAS, November 2014

I am pleased to announce that funding amounting to a total of £457,207 will be provided to the 15 organisations from our small grants programme 2015-16 for projects to commence in April 2014.

Total amount of recommended funding – programme year 2015-16

Recommendations for funding after assessment by country and grant type – programme year 2015-16

The small grants programme 2015-16 attracted 21 applications before the deadline on 26 November 2015. One application was received after the closing date which was not assessed due to its lateness and not meeting our criteria. A further two applications were rejected as outwith our eligibility criteria, and therefore were not part of the full assessment process. One application was withdrawn prior to assessment. The remaining 18 applications were fully assessed, three of which did not meet our assessment criteria and were therefore not awarded funding.

The full list of the projects to be funded is available on the following web link:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/International/int-dev/smallgrants

The Scottish Government is committed to developing self-directed support as a way of giving individuals and their families flexibility, choice and control over the support services they receive. The Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013 gives people a range of options for how their social care is delivered and places firm duties on local authorities to give people informed choice as to how they will receive their support.

The Scottish Government has invested £28.52 million between 20110-12 and 2015-16 in service transformation within local authorities to enable individuals to direct their own support. A requirement of this funding is that local authorities work closely with users, carers, providers and wider communities to plan, agree and implement local strategies to support self-directed support. It is vital that the approach is co-produced. The Scottish Government recognise co-creation of local delivery is a major strategic challenge that will take time to establish.

Allocation of the transformation funding is at the discretion of local authorities. Some local authorities have funded user and carer engagement activity to build their capacity and skills to engage with local council self-directed support strategies.

The Scottish Government is committed to developing self-directed support as a way of giving individuals and their families, flexibility, choice and control over the support services they receive. The Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013 gives people a range of options for how their social care is delivered and places firm duties on local authorities to give people informed choice as to how they will receive their support.

The self-directed support statutory guidance provides a general steer to local authorities and states that they should consider their strategy for investing in preventative and universal services - interventions which prevent or delay the need for formal social care and support.

Whilst each individual local authority holds the responsibility for allocation of their funding, the National Self-directed Support Strategy requires that:

Councils should invest an appropriate amount of funding in effective preventative and universal services.

Services should meet the needs of funded clients and the wider population, thus helping to prevent the escalation of needs.

The Scottish Government is committed to developing self-directed support as a way of giving individuals and their families, flexibility, choice and control over the support services they receive. The Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013 gives people a range of options for how their social care is delivered and places firm duties on local authorities to give people informed choice as to how they will receive their support.

In order to aid the successful implementation of self-directed support the Scottish Government have provided significant investment of £6.3 million over four years from 2011-12 to 2014-15 to third and independent sector providers of social care, helping them to build capacity for self-directed support. This includes providers in rural areas. Further funding of £1.1 million for the financial year 2015-16 has been confirmed and we are currently in the process of assessing funding bids from a number of providers.

In addition to this the Scottish Government currently funds two umbrella bodies to provide on-going support, advice and assistance to both providers and support and information organisations throughout Scotland. Self Directed Support Scotland receive core funding to work closely with support and information organisations and The Coalition of Care and Support Providers Scotland receive core funding to engage with provider organisations. Both umbrella bodies provide an extremely worthwhile service supporting these organisations running regular information sessions and training workshops. They are also key stakeholders of the policy team and are pro-active members of a number of working groups aiming to aid the successful implementation of the self-directed support policy.

Vessels over 12 metres in length are required by EU Regulation to report their position to their Flag State every two hours, via a Vessel Monitoring System.

Marine Scotland has commissioned a trial of an Automatic Identification System fishing vessel monitoring system on 300 inshore vessels of less than 12 metres in length. The intention is that the trial, which benefits from European Fisheries Fund support, will establish whether such a system would be a suitable fisheries management tool in some circumstances in Scottish waters.

The outputs of the trial together with the conclusions from the recent consultation exercise on the management of marine protected areas will inform Marine Scotland’s consideration of options to help manage fishing activity around the country.

The new contract will take effect from 1 October 2016. I will make an announcement shortly confirming the approach and project timeline, including the key stages of the tender process.

Loch Sunart to Sound of Jura marine protected area (MPA) that was designated in July 2014 does recognise that common skate is critically endangered with declining numbers worldwide. Common skate was identified as an MPA search feature due to its endangered status as well as for its relevance to Scottish waters. The prohibition on landing common skate was introduced in 2009 and as such there has to date been an insufficient time series to statistically assess whether common skate is currently stable, declining or increasing in our waters. A survival rate of 0.64 is low, but the report cited by the member also states that there is considerable uncertainty surrounding this figure. Nevertheless it suggests the species still requires further protection and we hope to be able to do our part to help this iconic species retain its place in our seas.

With regards to fishing we have recently ended a consultation on approaches to management within the MPAs which includes Loch Sunart to Sound of Jura MPA. The approaches for the MPA that were presented for consultation were for the conservation of more features than just the common skate – management has also been proposed for benthic features that would also confer protection for common skate. As a result of this wider protection, there are a range of depths from the shallows of Loch Sunart to the deeps of the Sound of Jura being proposed in the MPA management approaches that would provide protection to the common skate. The approaches that relate to tickler chains are being proposed as there is evidence that this type of gear can cause damage to the common skate, and the purpose of this proposed measure is to ensure this is not used in this area by other fleets in the future. There have however been very few studies of damage caused by nephrops trawls on skate so at this stage there is little evidence available to support stricter approaches that relate to nephrops trawls. As with the other designations there is not a target for coverage of fisheries management; instead the aim is to have management in place that achieves the conservation objectives and the approaches we have consulted on reflect the views of our scientific advisers to achieve the objectives. The next stage in considering the management is to analyse the responses we have received from the consultation and a decision will be made following this analysis on the levels of management required to achieve the conservation objectives for the common skate in the MPA. The aim is to implement these measures by the end of 2015.