Chamber and committees

Under current legal aid provision, BSL interpreting costs can be paid as an outlay where legal aid or advice and assistance is in place. When a person requires such support to access legal services, the Legal Aid Fund will meet these costs. The Scottish Legal Aid Board is currently undertaking a consultation on its approach to accounts assessment, within which it has proposed to continue to assess BSL interpreting as part of its general outlays policy.

The Scottish Legal Aid Board has also promoted the availability of ContactScotland BSL service to solicitors. This Scottish Government funded service, has expanded to allow BSL signers across the country to make phone calls in their first or preferred language. It is a VRS (virtual relay service) for making phone calls, or conversation where both parties are not in the same place. It is available 24 hours a day throughout the year.

The Scottish Government has established a British Sign Language Justice Advisory Group, as part of its BSL National Plan 2017-2023. The role of this BSL-led justice advisory group is to provide expertise and guidance to justice agencies. The Group is to play a key role in developing and delivering a programme of improvements to help the justice agencies better meet the needs of BSL users.

The list of companies set out in the privacy notice relate to the Vaccine Programme and the Covid Certification service as a whole, and not just the Covid Status App. So for example, Royal Mail are involved in posting printed certificates to individuals – they have no connection to the Covid Status App.

The Scottish Government and NHS Scotland take privacy and data security seriously. Robust measures have been put in place to ensure all systems and processes within the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccination Programme have been designed with these in mind.

As with most technology of this nature, it is necessary to share some very limited data to ensure services operate effectively. However, NHS Scotland and the Scottish Government have control of this data at all times, and service providers do not have access to the data they process.

The published privacy notice explains:

• the key organisations responsible for the data;
• how those organisations process personal information in relation to coronavirus vaccinations, exemptions and certificates;
• the rights in relation to privacy and personal data; and
• what data is shared with our trusted parties and the reason as per their role in the vaccination programme.

We will only share personal information when the law allows us to do so and to the minimum extent possible.

No. If, and when, any additional functions are added to the NHS Scotland Covid Status App then the privacy information will be updated accordingly. For more detail on the current privacy information, I refer the member to the answer to questions S6W-04212 and S6W-04213 on 25 November 2021. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

There is a range of digital and non-digital routes available to access COVID-19 Status Certificates, and currently the choice to obtain a certificate is voluntary.

The data processing complies with data protection principles of lawfulness, fairness and transparency, purpose limitation, data minimisation, accuracy, storage limitation, security and accountability as per the Data Protection Act 2018. As the processing of data is necessary for the purposes indicated in the privacy notice , an opt out is not applicable.

The Scottish Government will hold a debate in the Scottish Parliament before the end of the year to set out its plan to deliver this commitment.

The plan will detail how every General Practice across Scotland will have access to a Mental Health and Wellbeing Service by April 2026, creating 1,000 additional dedicated staff who can help grow community mental health resilience and help direct social prescribing.

In our NHS Recovery Plan we have committed to provide sufficient funding for around 320 additional staff in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) over the next 5 years.

Since May 2021, we have allocated approximately £40m to NHS Boards to support CAMHS and the implementation of the National CAMHS Service Specification. Through this funding, NHS Boards have started to recruit additional staff to implement the Specification and to build professional capacity to support children and young people with neurodevelopmental support needs. NHS Boards will recruit a variety of staff in different roles, based on individual service needs.

The breakdown of CAMHS workforce is published on a quarterly basis through the NHS Education for Scotland (NES) CAMHS Workforce publication. This data can be found on the NES Turas Data Intelligence platform and provides a breakdown of staffing per NHS Board in CAMHS, including breakdown of professional role.

The Scottish Government is not responsible for the recruitment of NHS staff. It is NHS Boards’ responsibility to recruit workforce. The Scottish Government has provided guidance to NHS Boards, through the National CAMHS Service and Neurodevelopmental Specifications, on the appropriate roles and professionals expected to be employed within Boards.

Aspiration is not recommended in Scotland and the rest of the UK for the administration of intramuscular COVID-19 vaccines. The clinical recommendation that trained COVID-19 vaccinators work to in Scotland and the UK is to administer the vaccine to the deltoid muscle and not drawing back before injection.

As outlined in the Green Book, Chapter 4, the Chief Nursing Officer recommends the deltoid muscle for COVID-19 vaccine administration and, as there are no large blood vessels in this area, it is not recommend to draw back.

The Green Book, Chapter 4 contains further information on this and is published here: Immunisation procedures: the green book, chapter 4 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) .

The information requested is available at:

General Practice - GP Workforce and practice list sizes 2010 - 2020 - General Practice - GP workforce and practice list sizes - Publications - Public Health Scotland

Table 2 shows the number of GPs in each board.

Table 4 shows the registered number of patients in each board.

As announced in the NHS Recovery Plan, by the end of 2021 the Scottish Government will publish a National Workforce Strategy.

We are co-producing this strategy with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA). We continue to work closely with a range of partners, both individually and collectively, and specifically through cross-sectoral reference groups including the National Workforce Planning Group, National Workforce Forum and the Scottish Partnership Forum (which includes representatives from across health and social care trades unions). Amongst others, we have engaged with the following organisations: (As engagement is on-going, this list will not be exhaustive)

Allied Health Professions Federation Scotland

British Medical Association

Care Inspectorate

Coalition of Care and Support Providers Scotland

Edinburgh University

GMB

NHS Scotland Health Board Chief Executives Forum

NHS Scotland Health Board HR Directors Forum

Integrated Joint Boards

Royal College of Nursing

Scottish Academy of Royal Medical Colleges

Scottish Care

Scottish Social Services Council

Skills Development Scotland

Social Work Scotland

Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers

Society of Personnel and Development Scotland

Unison

Unite

We continue to take representations on the content and scope of the strategy, and welcome views from across the sector.

Thrombolysis is already delivered nationwide in a number of hospitals across Scotland.

The rate of thrombolytic treatment and door to needle (DTN) times for thrombolysis are measured through the Scottish Stroke Care Audit (SSCA).

The SSCA 2021 report can be found here: Scottish stroke improvement programme 2021 national report - Scottish stroke improvement programme - Publications - Public Health Scotland . It concluded that variations in thrombolysis rates were a reflection of the different acute stroke pathways and variable access to stroke specialist assessment and management. It highlighted that improving access to early specialist assessment in emergency departments would increase the overall percentage of stroke patients treated and reduce the DTN times.

The Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme team work closely with services and NHS boards to use learning from SSCA to support improvement across the whole stroke pathway, including timely access to thrombolysis.