Chamber and committees

Data published by ISD on 13 August shows that across NHS Scotland 25.3% of lung cancers were diagnosed at stage 1 or 2, with the highest proportion diagnosed in those living in the most deprived areas (26.7%). Following the success of the lung cancer awareness campaign featuring Sir Alex Ferguson work is underway through the Detect Cancer Early Programme to develop a new lung cancer public awareness campaign to ensure that more cancer patients are diagnosed at the earliest stages.

The Scottish Government Cancer Strategy runs until 2021 and consideration of any new targets or actions will be given following consultation during 2020 to inform strategy development.

The information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government, and should be requested from NHS Boards.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S5W-26479 on 3 December 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

HEPMA has already been successfully implemented in four Health boards across Scotland and all remaining Health Boards are on track to roll it out within the next three to five years.

Scottish Government has invested over £10m in 2019-20 to support the implementations of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (£5.093m), NHS Lothian (£3.261m), The State Hospital (£335K) and the 6 Board, North of Scotland, collaboration (£1.637m).

The Scottish Government is committed to reducing the number of medication errors and resulting serious harm to patients. There is a specific Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) Medicines work stream which includes promoting safer prescribing across all care settings to mitigate against harm to patients with multiple and/or high risk medicines and supporting teams in the practise of realistic medicine.

BS 8414 is a large scale fire test method. The pass / fail performance criteria is contained in the publication ‘Fire performance of external thermal insulation for walls of multi-storey buildings (BR 135)’. BS 8414 should therefore be read in conjunction with BR 135.

It is common for manufacturers of construction products to test prototypes of their materials, products or systems as part of their research and development phase when introducing a new construction product, system or material onto the market. This means that data and evidence gathered from fire tests is often used to improve the products, systems or material properties when subjected to fire.

Manufacturers own the data gathered from the fire tests they sponsor and will have intellectual and / or copyright legal agreements in place.

It is important to note that test failures cannot be used as evidence of compliance with building regulations. Local authority verifiers can refuse to grant a building warrant where there is insufficient test evidence to prove compliance with the regulations.

From 1 May 2005, Scottish building regulations have required cladding on domestic buildings with any storey over 18 metres to be non-combustible or to pass a large scale fire test (BS 8414 and BR 135).

The Scottish Government have just completed a review of building regulations. Advice from the national and international panel of experts was that there was no need to change mandatory standard 2.7 that requires fire spread on the external walls of a building to be inhibited.

Guidance that came into force on 1 October embraces a range of measures to improve fire safety which will make Scotland’s high-rise buildings even safer. These include:

• Further restricting the use of combustible materials on taller buildings, applying provisions that previously applied to buildings over 18 metres to all buildings over 11 metres to align with fire-fighting from the ground;
• Tighter controls over the combustibility of cladding systems on hospitals, residential care buildings, entertainment and assembly buildings regardless of building height;
• Introducing evacuation sound alerts, floor and dwelling indicator signs and two escape stairs in all new high rise domestic buildings.

We have also made a commitment to introduce a mandatory requirement to install sprinkler systems in all new build flats, certain multi-occupancy dwellings and social housing from 2021.

All British Standard and European harmonised fire tests cited in building regulations (including BS 8414) are carried out by United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) accredited fire test houses. UKAS is independent of Government, but is appointed as the national accreditation body by the Accreditation Regulations 2009 (SI No 3155/2009) and the EU Regulation (EC) 765/2008 and operates under a Memorandum of Understanding with the UK Government through the Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

Accreditation determines the technical competence and integrity of organisations offering testing, inspection, calibration, verification and certification services.

All fire tests cited in building regulations are scenario tests used to assess materials, products, systems or components under laboratory conditions. Real fires are highly variable which cannot be replicated. The purpose of a fire test is therefore to determine the fire performance of a material, product or system to ensure repeatability and consistency of outcome. For example, measures for reaction to fire include ease of ignition, fire growth, flame temperatures, flame spread, sustained flaming, mass loss, calorific value and heat release rates depending on the fire test.

Testing provides information on system performance which can then be used by a competent designer in the specification and detailing of that cladding system on a proposed building.

BS 8414 is one of the most robust fire tests in the world. The fire exposure is representative of an external fire source or a fully developed (post-flashover) fire in a room venting through an opening such as a window. The fuel load for the test has been validated by real fire tests at Dalmarnock in Glasgow conducted by the Building Research Establishment Centre for Fire Engineering at Edinburgh University.

The Scottish Government is committed to increasing the number of Community Links Workers (CLW) by 250 by the end of this parliament. The CLW is a generalist practitioner based in or aligned to a GP practice or cluster, who offers non-clinical support to patients, enabling them to identify and access local community services.

The CLW maps local services and will have previous experience working with communities and third sector organisations. Additionally, the role of Welfare Rights Advisors is to embed welfare rights and money advice in General Practice and wider primary care services.