Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25557 on‎ 25 March 2024. 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

In 2019 the Scottish Government instituted a period of legal reform for the framework underpinning Scottish road works, expanding and strengthening the range of existing powers roads authorities have.

Since 2023 Scottish Ministers have taken action on enforcement powers, through empowering roads authorities by endorsing a new Code of Practice for reinstatement, which introduced a UK leading six year guarantee for utility works. We have committed to a review of road works Fixed Penalty Notices (the fines to be levied), due to start in 2024.

Authorities already have an existing power to undertake any outstanding work directly and recharge all costs, should the utility fail to act. These are all discretionary powers, and it is for each roads authority to determine whether it is appropriate to use those powers in each situation.

We do not know the numbers of children affected because the information has not been collected historically.

In response to the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review (IMMDSR), the Scottish Government commissioned Public Health Scotland (PHS) to establish a medicines in pregnancy surveillance asset. This resource will support monitoring and reporting to progress improvements in the safe use of valproate and other teratogenic medicines in Scotland. Its first output is due to be published by PHS in April 2024 and will include prescribing data and trends for valproate and other anti-seizure medicines.

Following careful consideration by the HIV Transmission Elimination Scoping Group, and the advice of clinical and public health experts, the Scottish Government is not planning to introduce a national HIV testing week at this time. Given Scotland’s relatively low HIV prevalence, the potential benefits of a national testing week would primarily be in addressing stigma and promoting testing rather than finding and supporting individuals with undiagnosed infections. Our HIV Transmission Elimination Delivery Plan sets out our approach to addressing stigma and promoting testing on a consistent, year-round basis.

We will review the potential costs and benefits of a national testing week once priority actions to expand capacity and improve access to testing have been progressed.

There are no imminent plans to expand emergency department opt-out blood borne virus testing to other areas. It is important that decisions about any further expansion are based on the best available evidence. The Scottish Government will use evaluation data from the current pilot projects, combined with other evidence, to determine whether further roll out would be acceptable, deliverable and cost-effective in Scotland.

Local evaluation will be conducted by the team at NHS Grampian and will be followed by an overarching review of the three emergency department opt-out testing projects announced by myself last November.

Public Health Scotland estimates that approximately 500 individuals, equivalent to 7% of the cohort living with HIV in Scotland, are undiagnosed.

A range of testing initiatives are being implemented to encourage people to access HIV testing. The Scottish Government’s Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Action Plan, published in November 2023, has a focus on improving access to sexually transmitted infection and blood borne virus testing across Scotland. To support this, we have funded a range of projects to expand access and promote uptake of testing, including the development of a national online postal self-sampling service, HIV self-testing and community-based services delivered by the Terrence Higgins Trust, and piloting emergency department opt-out testing in NHS Grampian, NHS Lothian and NHS Highland.

Our HIV Transmission Elimination Delivery Plan sets out further actions to encourage people to access testing and to identify optimal approaches to finding people living with undiagnosed HIV.

The Scottish Government takes the findings of the report very seriously. The mental health and wellbeing of children and young people is an absolute priority for the Scottish Government.

We continue to support our local authority partners with £16 million in funding to ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services. All school pupils aged 10 and above have access to school counselling services.

The Scottish Government has also provided guidance and professional learning for school staff to support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people in schools.

Finally, we are also providing local authorities with £15 million per annum to provide community-based mental health and wellbeing supports and services for children and young people, with many of these delivered through primary and secondary schools.

Thanks to an additional £80 million of funding from the Scottish Government in 2023-24, Police Scotland have invested in their workforce - recruiting almost 600 officers in 2023 alone and around 1,480 new officers since the beginning of 2022.

Police Scotland will be welcoming an additional 200 officers in March with further intakes planned throughout the year.

Police Scotland statistics indicate that 355 officers were in the Dumfries and Galloway Divisional area on 31 December 2023 an increase of seven officers on the same point in 2022.

The recruitment and deployment of resources is a matter for the Chief Constable, who is accountable to the Scottish Police Authority, and it is for Police Scotland to determine recruitment and retention approaches both locally and nationally. I am pleased that the Chief Constable has confirmed that the 2024-25 budget will enable Police Scotland to retain numbers in the region of 16,500 to 16,600 officers.

Specific evaluations of the Childsmile programme are undertaken by the University of Glasgow. Publications can be viewed online at https://www.gla.ac.uk/ .

More broadly, the National Dental Inspection Programme (NDIP) monitors the general oral health of children in Scotland. The latest NDIP statistics published in October 2023 showed that 82% of P7 children have no obvious decay, compared with 53% in 2005. In addition, the difference in the percentage of children with no obvious decay in the most and least deprived areas decreased from 26.3 percentage points in 2009 to 16.1 percentage points in 2023.

This shows the success of our flagship Childsmile Programme. Fluoride varnish is a key element of Childsmile and there are no plans to remove this aspect of the programme.