Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government made a commitment that the Scottish budget 2017-18 deliver investment in mental health that exceeds £1 billion for the first time, and will in future years grow at a rate above the overall growth in the frontline NHS budget.

As stated in response to S5W-09861, it is for each NHS Board to decide best how to utilise resources while taking account of priorities to meet local health needs. We expect NHS Boards to plan their facilities and workforce to deliver these services, ensuring the provision of safe, effective and high quality patient care, delivered by the right professional at the right time.

The National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan published on 28 June sets out a range of actions, including actions on recruitment and retention, which will help strengthen and harmonise workforce planning practice, taking account of the future demand for safe and high quality services for Scotland’s people and work to accurately identify gaps in supply. These are complex issues which will require an incremental approach. The production of a National Plan will be the first step in this process, with future benefits and improvements impacting on all service users across Scotland.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s performance of 83.3% is below what we would expect and while the median wait for treatment was 42 days we must continue to do more to ensure timely access to diagnostics and treatment for those patients who did not receive their treatment within 62 days.

Challenges remain to the 62-day cancer access pathway with known capacity pressures in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde particularly for the colorectal and urological cancer pathways. The Scottish Government continues to support improved performance across NHS Scotland and are actively engaging NHS boards where there are challenges to sustained delivery against the 62-day standard. This is backed by additional funding of £2.85m released in June 2017 to NHS boards to support cancer waiting times performance with a focus on providing swift access to diagnostic investigations for suspected cancer patients.

The Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013 represents a long-term, challenging transformation in how Scotland plans and delivers social care and, as such, is taking time to fully embed.

The Scottish Government continues its role to support and facilitate Health and Social Care Partnerships, social care providers and other partners to effect these changes. In December 2016 we published a new implementation plan which was developed in collaboration with social care providers, social workers, people who use services and their carers from across Scotland. It sets out priorities and firm actions to accelerate the pace of change and is supported by a financial commitment of
£9.5 million in 2017-18. This is in addition to £58.8 million since 2011.

We have taken a series of actions to help address issues around teacher recruitment. These include the launch of a new teacher recruitment campaign, increasing student intake targets for the sixth year in a row, taking steps to maintain teacher numbers as a central part of our priority to improve education and developed, alongside Scottish universities, a package of innovative routes to teaching to help encourage more graduates to become teachers.

The Teaching Makes People recruitment campaign was launched in February this year and targets the 20,000 STEM undergraduates who qualify from Scottish universities each year. It is an on-going, multi-year campaign and includes visits to careers fairs and face-to-face engagement with undergraduates on university campuses.

Due to the impacts on my constituents, I made representations both to the Council and at a public hearing, in my capacity as the constituency MSP for the area. I have not made any representations in my capacity as Minister for Transport and the Islands as per the Ministerial Code.

Internet safety is a reserved matter. However, Scottish Ministers do have significant scope to develop and implement policy relating to child internet safety as a direct result of devolved responsibility for education, policing and child protection.

The Scottish Government's National Action Plan on Internet Safety for Children and Young People published on 21 April 2017 sets out a number of actions to improve internet safety. Its priorities include equipping children and young people to build their own personal resilience to stay safe online, supporting professionals and parents and carers and continuing to work with digital and social media providers to ensure children are not exposed to harm.

Action 14 of the National Action Plan specifically sets out our commitment to work with digital media providers and industry to ensure parents, carers and families, as well as children and young people, have access to appropriate information and support. We have successfully made links with social media providers including Snapchat to discuss how we can better promote safety for the children and young people who use their platforms. My officials have also spoken to Snapchat who have confirmed that their support and guidance materials for parents and carers has been updated to reflect the concerns around Snapmap.

The Scottish Government will continue to participate in the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet safety (UKCCIS) and explore with social media providers how we can improve child internet safety in Scotland. A meeting to discuss how we progress this important issue is currently being arranged by the co-chair of the UKCCIS on digital resilience and will take place in the Autumn.

My officials are working with Police Scotland to produce a joint children and young people-friendly safety message which will raise awareness of how to stay safe online, including specifically the safe use of App's, amongst children and young people, parents and carers and professionals and ensure that they are equipped with the information and support they need. We will also work with Education Scotland to promote this message in schools. This will complement the existing online safety materials available to children and young people, parents and carers and schools.

The Scottish Government is committed to reinvigorating the core strengths and principles of general practice.

On 10 March , the Scottish Government announced that in 2017-2018 £71.6 million will be invested in direct support of general practice, helping transform the way services are delivered in the community. As part of this the GP Recruitment and Retention Fund has been increased five-fold - from £1 million to £5 million in 2017-18. This investment is enabling us to expand and continue to explore with key stakeholders the issues surrounding GP recruitment and retention across Scotland through a range of initiatives that will test and develop solutions and recommendations.

As I have previously confirmed, the cost of the recent delay is being determined by Network Rail and the EGIP Alliance contractors.

Once this work is complete I will provide Parliament with an update regarding both the cost of the delay and the estimated final programme cost.

Homelessness Statistics produced by the Scottish Government on homelessness applications and assessments generally define youth homelessness as relating to young people aged between 16 and 24 years, however information on the number of young people aged 16 to 24 in Temporary Accommodation is not currently collected.

Based on information collected on the number of children in Temporary Accommodation, as at 31 March 2017 there were 6,041 children aged 16 and under in Temporary Accommodation.

Temporary accommodation is a key part of the safety net of the homelessness legislation and ensures all people have accommodation if they become homeless.

Scotland’s strong statutory homelessness rights mean that most homeless households are placed in temporary accommodation while they wait for appropriate, sustainable permanent accommodation.

We have strengthened The Homeless Persons (Unsuitable Accommodation) (Scotland) Order to ensure accommodation is wind and watertight. We will strengthen this further by introducing a cap of 7 days (currently 14 days) for families with children and pregnant women living in B&B accommodation unless there are exceptional circumstances. The consultation exercise to strengthen the Order is underway, with Ministerial signature of the Order planned for summer 2017.