Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring the sustainability of the NHS and in March 2022 we published, in partnership with CoSLA, the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care . The Strategy outlines our shared vision: a sustainable, skilled workforce with attractive career choices where all are respected and valued for the work they do. To ensure all Health Boards have sufficient capacity, planning guidance has been issued to support the production of new Three Year Workforce Plans, supported by local systems’ workforce data.

Staffing across NHS Scotland is at record levels, having increased by 23.5% under this Government. There are also record high numbers of nursing and midwifery staff, up by 14.8% since September 2006, and numbers of student nurses entering Scottish Government funded degree programmes will increase by 9% in 2022-2023, the 10 th successive increase in recommended student numbers.

We are investing £11 million over the next five years in new national and international recruitment campaigns and have established a national Centre for Workforce Supply to support the development and implementation of resource strategies and services across the system. We are also carrying out work to promote service innovation and redesign, such as utilisation of Associate Physicians, Advanced Nurse Practitioners and Health Care Support Workers; all of which will support maintaining appropriate staffing levels.

The Scottish Government recognises that recruitment and retention of nursing staff is key to the provision of safe and high-quality health care services. We published our National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care in March 2022, which outlines our shared vision: a skilled workforce with attractive career choices where all are respected and valued for the work they do.

We are investing £11 million over the next five years in new national and international recruitment campaigns and have established a national Centre for Workforce Supply to support the development and implementation of resource strategies and services across the system. There are record high numbers of nursing and midwifery staff, up by 14.8% since September 2006, and numbers of student nurses entering Scottish Government funded degree programmes will increase by 9% in 2022-2023, the 10th successive increase in recommended student numbers.

We are firmly committed to supporting a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable health and social care workforce, with a strong leadership that promotes wellbeing. There is no place for bullying or harassment in the NHS - or anywhere else - and we have made it clear to Health Boards that this behaviour is unacceptable and expect them to ensure any reported incidents are taken seriously and fully investigated.

There is also no place for discrimination; we will publish a refreshed overarching Fair Work action plan later this year focusing on minority ethnic and disabled people’s employment and tackling the gender pay gap. We will also publish a new ethnicity pay gap strategy which will set out our approach for employers in addressing racial inequality in the workplace and will underpin our actions related to this within the refreshed Fair Work Action Plan.

Our National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care detailed the launch of a new National Leadership Development Programme (NLDP) which will work to influence culture change across health and social care. It also included establishing a National Minority Ethnic Forum for the NHS and a new proposed accelerated development programme for minority ethnic staff working in the NHS and Social Care.

Domestic Abuse remains a high priority, and Police Scotland are committed to proactively target perpetrators and to protect victims and their families from the harms of domestic abuse. Police Scotland have a well-established National Domestic Abuse Taskforce to target perpetrators and local domestic abuse investigation units are located in the 14 divisions throughout Scotland.

Despite UK Government austerity we have invested over £10 billion in policing since the creation of Police Scotland in 2013, and remain committed to working closely with both the SPA and Police Scotland to ensure we continue to have a safe, protected and resilient Scotland. We have made a total investment across the justice sector of over £3.1 billion in 2022-23 to further strengthen and reform vital services.

Under the implementation of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018, the Scottish Government provided £825,000 to support the training of 14,000 police officers and staff, and advanced training of 700 Domestic Abuse Champions to embed training and sustain organisational change. Officers are now much more aware and informed around the dynamics of domestic abuse. Police Scotland are also undertaking Divisional Reviews on their policing response to domestic abuse across the country, which includes partnership and multi-agency engagement.

There is no evidence to support the claim that primary school pupils in Scotland are falling behind pupils in England and due to the differing education systems and curriculums, direct comparisons cannot be made. The reports referred to by Monica Lennon relate to views expressed in relation to the closed Scottish Parliament petition PE01668. This petition related to phonics teaching in Primary schools in Scotland.

The UK government has sought to embed the teaching of phonics in all English primary schools and on 28 April 2022 published updated essential core criteria for systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programmes to be used in schools. In Scotland, as with all of Curriculum for Excellence, schools, supported by their local authority, plan the reading curriculum to meet the needs of the learners within their own local context. In Wales and Northern Ireland schools are also provided with the flexibility to make informed decisions about the needs of their learners.

On 14 December 2021, I announced that a group would be set up as a National Response to Improving Literacy, which mirrored the already-existing National Response to Improving Mathematics. The group’s remit is currently being drafted but will look to examine the existing landscape in Scotland and to seek opportunities to enhance the professional learning for teachers and the classroom experiences for young people. It is anticipated that the first meeting of the group will be early in the next academic year.

The group is a partnership board led by Scottish Government, ADES and Education Scotland. Early gathering of stakeholder views indicates that teacher confidence in their knowledge and expertise and in selecting the best pedagogies to teach literacy could be a key theme explored by the group when formulating their recommendations.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on how many crimes were reported in connection with the use of e-scooters.

Police Scotland collect data on road traffic accidents that were a) reported to the police and b) involved someone being injured or killed. Figures for 2021 are provisional and final figures will be published in October 2022. Figures for 2022 are still being collected and verified and are therefore not currently available.

The following table shows the number and severity of casualties in 2021 who were injured in road accidents that involved an e-scooter and the location of the accident.

Our absolute priority is ensuring the wellbeing and safety of displaced people from Ukraine. It is not the case that anyone was removed from accommodation against their will. A number of weeks ago, a small group of displaced people from Ukraine volunteered to change hotels to make rooms available for those arriving late at night into Edinburgh airport. The Resettlement Team ensured everyone understood this was a voluntary arrangement and that rooms were available should they decide to stay.

The Scottish Government is working to ensure that there is temporary accommodation available in cities where people may arrive late at night. This, as well as the temporary nature of some of the hotel availability means that in some cases, people will be requested to move into another hotel. The Scottish Government is working to reduce this need and to support people to move on from hotel accommodation into longer-term accommodation.

Many local authorities across Scotland already discourage smoking near children’s play areas and near schools. We are currently refreshing our Tobacco Action Plan and considering, among other initiatives, the introduction of nationwide bans on smoking in these areas and will learn from experiences in countries like Wales, where this has already been implemented .

The £1 million International Students’ Emergency Fund announced on 14 April was introduced to support international students who had already chosen to study a course of Further or Higher Education in Scotland who were facing financial hardship as a result of a significant change in circumstances, such as but not limited to global conflict. These funds are administered directly by Scottish colleges and universities so could not be used to support students who are studying remotely with a university out with Scotland.

Scottish domiciled students who are studying via distance learning are considered for funding purposes as part-time students reflecting the fact that students undertaking part-time or distance learning courses are generally more likely to be able to support their studies through some form of paid employment or will be entitled to support from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

We are aware that some Ukrainian nationals who are now resettled in Scotland who are continuing studies with a Ukrainian intuitions remotely studying remotely with their Ukrainian university may be unable to access financial support that other Ukrainian nationals are due to their being categorised as full-time students by the DWP.

We consider that Ukrainian students who are studying via distance learning at a Ukrainian institution should be treated in the same fashion as Scottish domiciled students. Accordingly, I have written to the UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to urge her to review the DWP position.

We also continue to consider how we might be able to provide further support for Ukrainian nationals studying in Scotland.

There is a total of 193 charge points registered on the ChargePlace Scotland network for the Central Scotland Parliamentary Region. Location of sites for the charge points can be provided separately by contacting ChargePlace Scotland if required.

Out of the 193 charge points in the Central Scotland Parliamentary Region 131 are free to use.