Chamber and committees

The Lanarkshire Breastfeeding Initiative (LBI) is a charitable organisation which works in partnership with NHS Lanarkshire to promote breastfeeding in Lanarkshire and receives some funding from the board. We would expect NHS boards to evaluate any work which they commission.

NHS boards are held accountable for all their actions within the broader accountability framework which is in place to monitor and assess their performance, including local delivery plans and annual reviews held with ministers. In addition, there is regular and ongoing dialogue with tobacco programme leads within NHS boards regarding tobacco programme delivery, including in relation to prevention.

£4.5 million was made available to support NHS boards over three years (2008-09 to 2010-11) to support local delivery of the smoking prevention action plan, the key aim of which is to dissuade children and young people from smoking.

A similar amount of £4.5 million was allocated to local authorities to enable them to step up enforcement activity.

Smoking Prevention Distribution to NHS Boards, Allocation Per Annum from 2008-09 to 2010-11

NHS Board	£
Ayrshire and Arran	115,400
Borders	40,800
Dumfries and Galloway	53,800
Fife	104,100
Forth Valley	82,900
Grampian	135,400
Greater Glasgow	344,300
Highland	98,200
Lanarkshire	157,800
Lothian	196,900
Orkney	15,800
Shetland	16,300
Tayside	118,400
Western Isles	19,900
Total	1,500,000

 

The public health objective is still a new concept and the government is encouraging those with an interest in public health to discuss with licensing boards what information they can provide but also enter into a dialogue over how such evidence should be presented to enable licensing board decisions to be made from an informed and evidenced standpoint.

Licensing board decisions made on the grounds of protecting and improving public health are no more prone to appeal than those based on preventing crime and disorder. To minimise such risks licensing boards must ensure that the necessary decision making procedures are followed and that decisions are consistent with the licensing board''s policy statement or reflect the views presented at a board hearing.

The Social Responsibility Levy Working Group last met on 24 June 2010. Representatives of the Scottish Retail Consortium, individual retailers and producers, Scottish Grocers Federation, Scottish Licensed Trade Association, Scottish Beer and Pub Association and BII attended. Apologies were received from other bodies. Further meetings with individual stakeholders were held subsequently.

These meetings informed the proposals included in the Alcohol etc (Scotland) Act 2010 and the current consultation issued on 8 November 2010 entitled, Initial Consultation on Social Responsibility Levy.

Local Alcohol Profiles were produced by ISD in both 2004 and 2006. These were replaced with a Local Drug and Alcohol Information publication which was first published in 2008 and subsequently in 2010. This publication incorporated information previously included in the Local Alcohol Profiles and Corporate Action Plan Information Packs and provides links to relevant local level information and also additional analysis of some data at local level.

Additionally, ISD publishes Alcohol Statistics Scotland biennially, with the most recent version being published in February 2011. This publication provides a wide range of statistics on alcohol with information shown at a local level where possible. All alcohol-related publications are available at http://www.alcoholinformation.isdscotland.org/alcohol_misuse/1407.html.

ISD Substance Misuse Programme is currently consulting with stakeholders to seek views on existing products and services - including frequency, format and content of publications - and will be producing an action plan to take forward any identified changes.

£4.5 million was made available to NHS boards to support local delivery of the smoking prevention action plan and in particular, to focus on reducing smoking uptake through health promotion related activity. No detailed breakdown of board expenditure is available centrally, although through ongoing dialogue with tobacco programme leads within NHS boards we are aware that the funding supports a range of activities. This includes, for example, activities to engage with children and young people within a broad holistic approach to health and wellbeing

Immunological conditions such as lupus are covered in the trainee GP curriculum and are assessed as part of the GP e-portfolio, a training resource overseen by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP).

Existing GPs are contractually committed to an annual educational appraisal and to developing their own learning needs. If a GP has recognised lupus as a learning need, this should form part of their Personal Education Plan.

The Strathclyde Lupus Group has been awarded a grant of £17,969 from the Self Management Fund, administered on our behalf by the Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland, to deliver a series of lupus awareness workshops aimed at student doctors at the University of Glasgow Medical School. The workshops will give people living with lupus the opportunity to inform the next generation of doctors about managing the condition effectively.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-39858 on 9 March 2011. 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/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The updated Sheffield Alcohol Pricing Model for Scotland (published in April 2010) is based on actual 2008-09 price distribution data of off-trade alcohol in Scotland. Scottish survey consumption and off-sales price distribution data is not collated on an annual basis making it impossible to construct a robust time-series from 2005-06 to 2009-10. Survey consumption estimates are required to estimate the potential impact of any changes in price on health and other outcomes.

The model does not extend to an analysis of the effect of price changes to real wages as the level of detail for wage data which would be required for the Sheffield model (at the individual level) is not available.