Chamber and committees

The Directorate for Employability, Skills and Lifelong Learning had lead responsibility for developing the Child Poverty Strategy for Scotland.

The Scottish Government has no current plans to change to opting-out as the basis of organ donation in Scotland. We shall to continue to focus on the work currently in hand to implement the recommendations of the UK Organ Donation Taskforce. We remain confident that all the arrangements that have been put in place, and those that are planned, will produce real increases in transplantation activity. However, we have not ruled out legislative change in future.

Information on the number of registrations on the NHS organ donor register for each month since October 2009 is provided in the following table.

Source: NHS Blood and Transplant.

Notes:

1. Registrations were low from April to June 2010 due to a DVLA coding error. The backlog was then cleared in August 2010.

2. Registrations were low in March and April 2011 due to essential maintenance work on the Register. The backlog was cleared in May 2011.

The information the member has requested is detailed in the following tables.

Table 1: Donation after Brain Death: Solid Organ Heart-beating Donors

Source: NHS Blood and Transplant.

Table 2: Donation after Circulatory Death: Solid Organ Non-Heart-beating donors

Source: NHS Blood and Transplant.

The Scottish Transplant Group meets quarterly and its membership is drawn from the organ donation and transplant community in Scotland, including representatives of patients, the public and donor families, each of the transplant units in Scotland, NHS organisations such as the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, NHS Blood and Transplant and the Human Tissue Authority, professional organisations such as the Scottish Intensive Care Society and the Clinical Leads for Organ Donation and Specialist Nurses – Organ Donation.

The group’s remit is to provide advice and make recommendations to the Scottish Government on all matters relating to organ and tissue donation and transplantation, and its agendas reflect that remit. In January 2008, I asked the group to take on the additional task of overseeing the implementation in Scotland of the recommendations from the first report of the UK Organ Donation Taskforce.

The Scottish Government continues to work with NHS boards and others to implement the recommendations of the UK Organ Donation Taskforce. There has been significant progress in improving the infrastructure across NHSScotland, as part of the process of removing the barriers to organ donation. In particular, there are now organ donation committees in each mainland NHS board, with appropriate links to the island boards. Each major hospital now has a Clinical Lead for Organ Donation, and an additional six Specialist Nurses – Organ Donation have been appointed.

There are promising signs that, as a result of these developments, we are moving in the right direction, with an increase in donor numbers in 2010-11 compared to the previous year.

The information requested is available on the Scottish Government website, where details advertising spend from 2004-05 onwards is published. It can be accessed at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/Directorates/Communications/advertising-marketing/spend

Raising awareness of organ donation is a statutory responsibility on Scottish Ministers under the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006. This, coupled with the Scottish Government’s strong commitment to implementing the recommendations of the UK Organ Donation Taskforce, has resulted in a sequence of high-profile media and advertising campaigns.

The Scottish Government sets directly the wages and salaries for staff below senior civil service in its core directorates:

Permanent Secretary;

DG Enterprise and Environment;

DG Finance;

DG Governance and Communities;

DG Health and Social Care;

DG Learning and Justice;

and in the following Agencies and Non-Ministerial offices:

Scottish Public Pensions Agency;

Student Awards Agency for Scotland;

Transport Scotland;

Disclosure Scotland;

Accountant in Bankruptcy;

National Records of Scotland;

HM Inspectorate of Education;

Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, and

Scottish Housing Regulator

All staff in the Scottish Government main bargaining unit (including staff in the core directorates) currently receive a salary above the Scottish living wage of £7.15 per hour. Any change to salary rates would be considered as part of the normal pay review process in discussion with the Scottish Government trade unions and taking account of the public sector pay policy applying at that time.

Along with CPSLA, the Scottish Government invited key stakeholders with an interest in welfare matters to participate in a Welfare Reform Scrutiny Group. These are:

One Parent Families Scotland;

Scottish Campaign on Welfare Reform;

Equality and Humans Rights Commission;

Rights Advice Scotland;

Citizens Advice Scotland;

Independent Living in Scotland;

Carers Scotland;

Scottish Council of Voluntary Organizations;

Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy;

Child Poverty Action Group (Scotland), and

Emeritus Professor Adrian Sinfield, University of Edinburgh

This group has met twice, in February and May 2011.

The group will help develop a shared understanding of the likely impact of welfare changes on particular groups, geographies, policies and services in Scotland and explore the potential for collaboration in our efforts to exert positive change on emerging policy and legislation in respect of welfare reform.