Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government acknowledges Alzheimer Scotland’s 2019 Fair Dementia Care report – referenced in the Chief Executive of Scottish Care’s article in the Herald - which claimed that people with dementia are paying care costs amounting to approximately £50m per annum, with approximately £49m of those care costs related to residential care charges.

Adults who have been assessed as requiring personal care do not pay for this service, regardless of their condition or means. Nursing care is also of course free at the point of delivery. The Local Authority normally pays the free personal and nursing care for self-funding care home residents assessed as needing them directly to the care home provider.

The Scottish Government has increased Free Personal and Nursing Care payments above inflation for the last two consecutive years to recognise the increasing cost of care. For 2022-23 these rates are set at £212.85 per week for personal care and £95.80 per week for nursing care.

The Scottish Government appreciates that the costs of residential care can be high. Everybody in a care home, whether publically funded or self-funded, will pay a contribution to the cost of their care. The amount that they pay will be based on their individual financial circumstances. If a person has capital over the upper capital limit they will be classed as self-funding their own care. When a person is self-funding their care the amount that they pay to the care home is a contractual matter between them and the care home provider. This agreement is protected by consumer protection laws.

We recognise that the Fair Dementia Care report also focusses on the quality of and access to appropriate healthcare. We are committed to improving outcomes for residents in care home including those with dementia and cognitive impairment. We are going to publish a Healthcare framework in June which will provide a series of recommendations that aim to transform healthcare by full integrating the health and social care system that wraps around care homes. Critical to this will be a multi-disciplinary work approach that is pro-active and coordinated. The framework is not confined to ‘clinical’ provision or ‘clinical’ models of care, as it is recognised the health and wellbeing of someone living in a care home is influenced by a wide range of factors including, friends, family and the local environment.

The framework is an important step to change as we transition towards the National Care Service.

The First Minister is hosting a summit on abortions on 27 June, and an invitation has been offered to the Scottish Trade Union Congress.

In addition to this, Scottish Government has publically stated that it will work constructively with Gillian Mackay MSP on her forthcoming Member’s Bill on buffer zones. Prior to the launch of her consultation, Ms Mackay met with trade unions to discuss her proposal. Ms Mackay also met with myself and the my working group, to discuss her proposal and seek the views of members.

We are currently refreshing our Tobacco Action Plan and considering a range of evidence-based interventions. One of the actions we are considering within the next Tobacco Action Plan is to introduce more ‘SmokeFree’ spaces. This could include beaches, amusement parks, playgrounds, hospitality venues etc. The addition of these measures, would not only reduce the prevalence of the use of tobacco products in these areas, but would also reduce the visibility, and impact of single-use plastics such as cigarette butts on the environment.

The Scottish Government are also currently running a call for evidence on single-use food containers and other single-use items, including single-use plastic tobacco filters. This call for evidence will be used to gather evidence on a selection of single-use items used in Scotland to aid future decision making on actions that could be taken to reduce the impact they have on the Scottish environment.

An implementation timetable for the Health & Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 has been published. Implementation will be a collaborative and iterative process with frontline staff, taking account of the learning from the pandemic whilst recognising the new environment within which services will now operate. The timetable sets out an intended full implementation date of April 2024.

The Bus Priority Rapid Deployment Fund (BPRDF) ran from July 2020 until June 2021 and was designed to support local authorities – working closely with bus operators - to respond to congestion with interventions such as temporary bus lanes or gates. 41 bus priority projects were implemented across Scotland.

Though the Fund was for short-term measures, it provided an opportunity for local authorities to test interventions as they developed plans for longer-term investment in bus priority, to lock in benefits for bus passengers, the bus industry and the environment. Learning and evidence from BPRDF informed local authority applications to the Bus Partnership Fund, which opened in July 2021 for bids to develop and deliver permanent bus priority infrastructure on local roads.

To date our commitment to provide long-term investment of over £500 million on bus priority infrastructure has taken the form of the Bus Partnership Fund (BPF) and the Bus Priority Rapid Deployment Fund (BPRDF). Both funds aim to support local authorities – in partnership with bus operators – to tackle the negative impacts of congestion on bus services.

In March 2020, the BPF was paused as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The BPRDF provided funding to local authorities to deliver temporary bus priority measures during the pandemic. The BPF relaunched in November 2020 for proposals for permanent priority measures on local roads. Through BPF, an initial £25.8m of funding has been awarded to eleven partnerships covering 28 local authorities for initial appraisal work to develop ambitious new bus priority infrastructure.

We welcome Leukaemia Care’s report and its recommendations to improve patient outcomes. We are pleased to say that we are closely aligned to the recommendations found in this report. Our Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer, published in January 2019, ensure patients on active monitoring are accounted for in planning cancer care and support primary care clinicians in recognising cancer symptoms, including chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

We continue to work with health professionals and the Scottish Primary Care Cancer Group to raise awareness of symptoms and promote referral best practice.

Alongside this work, funding of up to £2.5 million has been issued over 2021-22 and 2022-23 to support 12 pilot programmes across Scotland to deliver a single point of contact (SPoC) for cancer patients. This contact will support patients to discuss questions or anxieties related to their clinical care from the point of diagnosis, receive timely and accurate advice on their appointments, test and results, have the chance to discuss what non-clinical support may be available for them and their family following a cancer diagnosis, understand their treatment plan and expected timelines for treatment delivery, self-manage (aspects of) their condition, and access available services as appropriate following discharge.

Additionally, we have worked with the Scottish Cancer Coalition (SCC) to produce a patient leaflet to highlight the work of the charities which are members of the coalition and the support they can provide to patients.

Building on the success of the bus priority on the M90 / M9 Queensferry Corridor Actively Managed Hard Shoulder (AMHS) for buses, Transport Scotland recently opened an additional section on the M8 eastbound approach to Hermiston Gait.

Through the Bus Partnership Fund, Transport Scotland has awarded £25.80m of funding for local bus partnerships to design and deliver bus priority measures on both local and trunk roads. This initial funding is for appraisal work to support local transport authorities towards developing business cases for further bus priority investment in their regions. Next steps will be dependent on the outcomes of this work.

Transport Scotland is also currently finalising the strategic business case for the Glasgow managed motorway network, which includes consideration of bus priority on the M8 alongside the M80, M77 and M74. This will be published along with information on the next steps, once the second Strategic Transport Projects Review has been finalised.

All these measures are aimed at reducing the negative impacts of congestion on bus services and addressing the decline in bus patronage.

The Scottish Government acknowledges the recent research publication Thyroid Dysfunction – Can it Help Explain the Gender Wage Gap? and notes the implications that hypothyroidism can have on women’s labour market opportunities. We are committed to ensuring that people living with hypothyroidism are able to access the best possible support and benefit from healthcare services that are safe, effective and put people at the centre of their care. Information on symptoms and treatments are available at NHS Inform .

We are currently working with stakeholders to inform a refresh of our Gender Pay Gap Action Plan alongside and aligned with our Fair Work Action Plan and Disabled People’s Employment Gap Action Plan, to ensure that we take appropriate focussed and intersectional actions to tackle the Gender Pay Gap.

The Scottish Government welcomes the Promise Scotland’s Oversight Board report and the continued focus and momentum across all stakeholders to Keep The Promise.

The Scottish Government remains committed to Keeping The Promise by 2030, working in partnership with Local Authorities, The Promise Scotland, third sector, health boards and importantly the care community.

The Scottish Government Keeping The Promise Implementation Plan published on 30 March 2022 sets out a wide range of actions over a range of areas including education, health, justice and child poverty and how we will continue to work with The Promise Scotland, COSLA, Local Authorities. This includes actions on data gathering and monitoring.

The setting up of the Promise Collective as a strategic forum to ensure alignment of all Scottish Government funded delivery and improvement initiatives that are working to Keep The Promise. The group will be co-Chaired with COSLA, Scottish Government and The Promise Scotland.

The Scottish Government has committed £500m over the course of this Parliamentary term, beginning with £50m in 2022-23, to preventative spend through the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding. We will evaluate the impact of this funding on supporting transformational change and this will inform future policy, planning and development.

Working with The Promise Scotland to build an evidence base to understand the best governance, financial arrangements and models of care to assess how we can best Keep The Promise. This will explore the options for the future of children’s services from an evidence based position and enable us to assess the best way to Keep The Promise.

We are developing an Outcomes Framework for Children, Young People and Families which will provide a holistic understanding of what we mean by wellbeing, based on what children and families have told us matters, and rooted in GIRFEC and children’s rights.