Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to equality and diversity, and that commitment extends to ensuring that these values are fully respected by, and reflected in the operation of NHSScotland. This includes the recruitment of all staff, including the recruitment of health visitors.

We are committed to attracting a diverse range of individuals into nursing careers, including health visiting. NHS Education for Scotland (NES) continues to work with NHS boards and universities to develop resources that promote positive messages of nursing, for both men and women and to widening participation in nursing education. We continue to monitor equality and diversity nationally for all students on nursing and health visiting programmes and this monitoring includes gender.

We are engaging with stakeholders to develop a 2030 Vision for Nursing in Scotland. One of the themes being explored is modernising the public image of nursing to ensure that it is an attractive career choice for all genders and individuals from diverse backgrounds.

Our nationally agreed Partnership Information Network (PIN) policy “Embracing Equality, Diversity and Human Rights” was published in December 2013. The policy is available at http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2013/12/3747.

The Scottish Government expects NHS boards to respond to the physical and mental health needs of their population. To assist in providing effective, evidence-based treatments, the Scottish Government provides funding to NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to host the ‘The Matrix: A Guide to Delivering Evidence-based Psychological Therapies in Scotland’, an evidence-based guide for NHS boards on effective psychological treatments for a range of mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, which people with effects from inflammatory bowel disease may experience.

Crohn’s and Colitis UK’s report ‘Scotland Leading The Way: a National Blueprint for Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Scotland’, launched with the support of the Scottish Government in June 2016, also contains best practice recommendations related to improving psychological support for IBD patients.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland funded the SAPPHIRE (Social Science APPlied to Healthcare Improvement REsearch) group at University of Leicester to carry out an independent evaluation of the sepsis VTE collaborative. The evaluation report was published in 2015 and is available on the Scottish Patient Safety Programme website: (http://www.scottishpatientsafetyprogramme.scot.nhs.uk). Information on the breakdown of results by NHS board is not held centrally.

It is for NHS boards to plan and deliver clinical services and ensure that they have the correct staff in place to meet the needs of their services and ensure high quality patient care. As part of this, we expect NHS boards to have robust workforce plans and recruitment and retention policies in place which take account of midwifery vacancies and retirements.

We have increased student midwifery intakes for five years in a row including another 4.9% for 2017-18. We are also providing funding of £450k over 3 years to retrain former midwives and nurses through our national Return to Practice scheme. However, we recognise that challenges still remain and we will continue to work with the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) and NHS Boards, including NHS Lothian, to ensure we have the right number and mix of midwifery trainees and staff.

To make sure our NHS has the right skills mix, we will introduce national and regional workforce planning. On 1 February 2017 we launched the National Health and Social Care Workforce Planning Discussion Document. We are inviting responses to this consultation by 28 March 2017. The Discussion Document will inform the National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan, which will be published in Spring 2017. The consultation is available at the following link:

https://consult.scotland.gov.uk/health-workforce/national-health-and-social-care-workforce-plan/

In addition, our innovative midwifery and workforce planning tools - a UK first - have helped to ensure that NHS Scotland continues to meet the RCM recommended midwife-to-birth ratio. Application of the tools is mandatory across NHS boards.

SIGN guidelines are distributed within the NHS in Scotland via a network of Guideline Distribution Coordinators in each NHS board. Implementation is the responsibility of each individual NHS board and local ownership of the implementation process is crucial to success in changing practice.

It is not possible to answer, from centrally held information, whether SIGN guidance has directly led to a change in venous thromboembolism (VTE) incidence, the collective name for Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) and Pulmonary Embolism (PE).

It is the responsibility of individual burial authorities to maintain accurate burial records and registers. The information requested is, therefore, not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The figures in the table have been provided for local authority burial authorities. No information is held for private burial authorities. The figures show where more than one burial has taken place in the same lair at the same time. These figures do not include the interment of ashes or shared burial for early pregnancy loss.

No multiple burials took place in Angus, Edinburgh, Glasgow, highland, Moray and Orkney Islands in the time scale.

The information is not recorded by Aberdeen City, Clackmannanshire, Dundee, East Ayrshire, East Renfrewshire, Fife, South Lanarkshire, and South Dunbartonshire. The information could only be obtained by carrying out a physical search of all the paper based burial registers in North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire and West Lothian.

No response was received from Falkirk, Midlothian and Renfrewshire councils.

The Scottish Government expects Health Boards to work with practices as constructively and as flexibly as is appropriate to ensure that all patients have access to GP services. Edinburgh’s Health and Social Care Partnership, NHS Lothian and the team at the practice are working together to ensure that Inverleith Medical Practice patients continue to receive safe, effective and timely care.

NHS Lothian has made the Scottish Government aware of concerns around particular recruitment issues in Lothian which will be taken into account as the 2017 GMS contract negotiations. Additionally as part of the Primary Care Fund we have invested over £2 million to test a range of GP recruitment and retention initiatives, including within Lothian taking forward an early career GP fellowship.

In 2017-18 the Scottish Government has committed £72 million of investment for improvements to primary care and GP services, going towards an additional £500 million being invested in this area each year by the end of this Parliament. This commitment will mean that by 2021-22, for the first time, more than half of the NHS frontline spending will be in our Community Health Service.

The information requested cannot be identified from the Criminal Proceedings database. Offences involving cases of people shining (a) laser pens and (b) other laser devices at transport operators would be prosecuted under either the common law offence of culpable and reckless conduct or, with regards to aircraft, as a contravention of a statutory Air Navigation Order. In addition, legislation does not separately identify lasers from other lights and our database does not contain further detail with regards to the common law offence.

The Scottish Government holds information on the number of convictions under the air navigation order 2009 (Article 222). The following table contains data on convictions for offences relating to endangering aircraft and lights which dazzle or distract.

Source: Scottish Government Criminal Proceedings database.

The Scottish Government does not have plans to launch a consultation on introducing fixed recoverable costs in lower value clinical negligence claims. However, under current plans, from September 2017, as part of the new Simple Procedure in Scotland, there will be limits to the awards of expenses in all cases with a monetary value of under £3000.

The Expenses and Funding of Civil Litigation (Scotland) Bill, which will be introduced in May, will implement Sheriff Principal Taylor’s 2013 Review of the Cost and Funding of Civil Litigation in Scotland and is an important part of the Scottish Government's commitment to making the civil justice system more accessible, affordable and equitable. It will introduce measures to make the costs of civil action more predictable, to extend the funding options for pursuers, and to bring more equality to the funding relationship between claimants and defenders in personal injury actions.