Chamber and committees

Third sector groups are engaged in the development of the Respiratory Care Action Plan including Chest, Heart & Stroke Scotland and the British Lung Foundation. We are also engaging with respiratory experts, such as consultant clinicians, physiotherapists, specialist respiratory nurses, anaesthetists and representatives from the Scottish Ambulance Service.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-20583 on 20 December 2018. 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 . .

The Scottish Health Survey provides annual estimates of smoking prevalence at national level.

The Scottish Surveys Core Questions provides annual smoking prevalence data for health boards, local authorities and smaller subgroups of the population.

The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) ended 1 April 2016. Removing the link between achievement and payment by dismantling QOF did not remove or reduce the obligation on general practitioners to treat patients in a clinically appropriate way and practices still maintain their disease registers.

The Scottish Government provides secretariat support to the Task and Finish Group. The Group is chaired by a consultant physician in respiratory and general internal medicine.

The cost for the secretariat is met within existing resources.

Lipoedema can be a distressing and painful condition and the Scottish Government is committed to ensuring everyone living with it can access the best possible care and support. We welcome any opportunity to help raise awareness of lipoedema and will continue to work with organisations to raise awareness of all long term conditions across Scotland.

There are a range of treatment options available on the NHS in Scotland, including compression, exercise and weight management programmes, and in some circumstances liposuction. It is important that anyone who thinks they might have lipoedema speaks to their GP to discuss their symptoms and the treatment options available to them.

There is one surgeon in Scotland who specialises in tumescent liposuction surgery, based in NHS Tayside. We are in discussion with NHS Tayside about the numbers of referrals received for this surgery in order to consider future service needs.

As Cabinet Secretary for Health I have met with representatives of women experiencing complications from mesh. In light of the views and experiences I have heard from patients I have taken action as set out elsewhere and, in doing so, I have kept the First Minister fully informed of all developments. The First Minister has given her full support for the action that I have taken.

The Scottish Access Collaborative Programme recently published a report setting out recommendations to sustainably improve chronic pain patient pathways and outcomes that will be taken forward with NHS Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships. Based on the recommendations set out in the report, the Scottish Government are developing a quality improvement approach which will be developed in partnership with the Modern Outpatient Programme. Workshop participants will be involved to develop Driver Diagrams, aligned to the Scottish Pain model, before the end of July 2019.

Third sector colleagues are taking forward the establishment of a Chronic Pain Patient Reference Group, and a scoping meeting is being scheduled for August 2019. The Chronic Pain report will be distributed more widely across the chronic pain community and wider stakeholders over the coming weeks and it is anticipated that further connection events and learning opportunities will take place following the summer break to share good practice and to co-produce the implementation plan and progress actions.

Delivery of access to free sanitary products in schools has been devolved to local authorities. This approach enables local authorities to shape delivery of access to free sanitary products in line with local need, encouraging innovative approaches and we expect local authorities to take account of their home-schooled population in considering delivery models. For example, they should ensure that the provision which is put in place for access at weekends and during the holidays is also accessible to home schooled children.

Furthermore, due to our £4 million investment announced in January, home-schooled and excluded pupils should now also be able to access free sanitary products from other local authority settings within their communities.

My officials are in regular contact with NHS Lanarkshire about the dispute which has arisen between ISS UK, who sub-contract to provide facilities management services at University Hospital, Hairmyres under PFI arrangements, and their staff.

I wrote to ISS UK on 8 April and 2 May urging the company to engage fully with the Staff Side to resolve this dispute, but have not so far received a response. I have written again to ISS UK and GMB suggesting the involvement of ACAS as an independent body to try and resolve this dispute. I also met with the unions involved, Unison and GMB, on 23 May to hear their concerns.

There have been calls for the Scottish Government to provide direct financial assistance to the staff involved but it should be noted that, as the staff affected are employees of a private company, there is no mechanism to do so. Any such intervention would require primary legislation to be put in place.

Whilst not able to directly help staff financially, the Scottish Government was able to provide assurances that support will be provided for any bid by NHS Lanarkshire to bring contracted out services back in house when the present contract ends.

The Scottish Government has provided over £3.3 million since 2006 to Health Improvement Scotland (HIS) to support NHS Boards, to deliver sustained improvements.

From this funding, NHS Tayside have benefitted from Improvement Advisors who undertake diagnostic work and develop and implement an improvement plan to improve waiting times.

In addition, HIS are providing bespoke support to NHS Tayside to continue to help them to build on the detailed Demand, Capacity, Activity, Queue (DCAQ) diagnostic analysis that was carried out by ihub in 2018. The information from this continues to inform the improvement planning process.

In March 2019, HIS along with Scottish Government Officials, met with the Chief Executive and senior staff from NHS Tayside to support the development of a wider mental health improvement plan across psychological therapies and children and young people’s services, and HIS are providing support to services to implement this.

The Scottish Government continues to engage with NHS Tayside and other relevant organisations to ensure that appropriate resource is provided to ensure the delivery of high quality mental health services.