Chamber and committees

There are currently no plans to introduce grants for medical students similar to the Paramedic, Nursing, and Midwifery Student Bursary.

The Scottish Government Programme for Government made the commitment to consult on phasing out the use cages for gamebirds and laying hens. This work is now progressing and the consultation on phasing out cages for laying hens and the call for evidence on gamebirds and quail are expected to go live in the early spring.

The proposed consultation on phasing out farrowing crates for pigs was originally intended to have been delivered jointly across all UK administrations. However, progress on a number of important pieces of animal welfare legislation have been significantly delayed or has ceased due to delays in UK Government timetabling, such as the Kept Animals Bill. DEFRA have confirmed that it now has no immediate plans to take forward the work on farrowing crates.

Regardless, the Scottish Government is pressing ahead on improving the welfare of all animals in Scotland, including pigs, and on 20 November 2023 published the Scottish Government Guidance for the Welfare of Pigs . We are also in the process of updating the Welfare of Farmed Animals (Scotland) Regulations 2010 to include this updated pigs’ welfare guidance.

We continue to listen and work with the industry and stakeholders on how best to achieve improvements in animal welfare as well as monitoring industry information to allow us to determine how to ensure best practice is delivered.

This is a matter for Public Health Scotland (PHS) as our national health protection body. Given the serious nature of measles and the current risk of importation and onward transmission, the Scottish Government is working with Public Health Scotland and NHS Boards through the Scottish Vaccination and Immunisation Programme (SVIP) on a range of measures to promote vaccination uptake.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with the industry and stakeholders to find ways for producers to transition towards implementing improved animal welfare methods and practices.

This information is not held centrally. This is a matter for Public Health Scotland (PHS), which, through the Scottish Vaccination and Immunisation Programme (SVIP), is responsible for oversight and leadership of vaccine delivery in Scotland. The Scottish Government is part of SVIP and is working closely with PHS and NHS Boards to support increased uptake of both doses of the free MMR vaccine to keep people safe from measles by preventing the spread of this very serious disease.

Table 1 provides information on total number of inpatient, daycase and outpatient hospital episodes where an emergency eye surgery procedure was recorded, at the Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion by financial year from 2004-05. It is not possible to provide figures for 1999-2003, as prior to 2004 activity at the Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion was recorded under the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh along with activity from other facilities on the Lauriston Place site.

Table 1: Number of emergency Eye procedures at the Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion, 2004-05 to 2022-23

The Scottish Government welcomes the report from the Chartered Institute of Buildings (CIOB) into social housing retrofit. Its findings and recommendations will help inform our thinking on how we continue to support the sector to help achieve our climate targets. Both the report and our current consultation on proposals for a new Social Housing Net Zero Standard will provide valuable feedback and insight on how the social housing sector can continue to build upon its progress on energy efficiency.

The Green Heat Finance Taskforce is also exploring ways to encourage a greater flow of private finance to help support the transition to clean heat, and its part 2 report this year will include consideration of financing options to enable social housing retrofit. All these sources of information will inform future decisions around funding support for energy efficiency and clean heat upgrades in social housing.

The Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund (the Fund) has already undergone a review to ensure it is providing the best support to social landlords in the transition to net zero. As part of this, the Fund’s support for “Fabric First” only projects has been extended until March 2026 in response to calls from the sector. The Fund welcomes consortium bids from multiple housing associations and local authorities to help deliver retrofit on a larger scale.

The Fund can be used alongside Area Based Schemes to carry out whole retrofit of a multi-tenure block if the properties fit the criteria of both Schemes. There is also financial support for owner occupiers through Warmer Homes Scotland and the Home Energy Scotland Grant and Loan scheme which can reduce the costs of taking part in whole building works.

The Scottish Government commissioned Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) is playing a central role in working with Health Boards to ensure that they are able to continually identify new ways to increase capacity, and to respond to demand through service innovation and redesign.

CfSD programmes have developed strong clinically-led Specialty Delivery Groups (SDG), including one for Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT), which promote multidisciplinary team working, and support local adoption of service improvement programmes. These groups are now well established and have supported several new and innovative pathway developments to free-up additional capacity in the NHS system, many of which are now being successfully scaled up across Scotland. For ENT this includes Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT), Discharge Patient Initiated Review (PIR) and Opt-In Pathways.

We know there is more to do but we are making progress; since the introduction of our long wait targets in July 2022, ENT waits over two years have reduced by 93% for new outpatient appointments and by 54% for inpatient and day-case patients.

The anticipated spend on the HMP Kilmarnock transition project for 2023-24 is £1.5m.

In 2024-25, the total running costs of HMP Kilmarnock are anticipated around £18.6m, to accommodate around 600 people. This figure excludes the uplift for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 pay rise which is currently being processed. Final costs will depend on the date of any harmonisation of the existing staff group to SPS terms and conditions, and the actual spending within the financial year.

The price of the HMP Kilmarnock contract in the final year of the contract (year 25) is £19.5m for 596 prisoner places. This figure does not include the direct public sector costs of managing, monitoring and supporting the contract. There is no comparable price for private operation of HMP Kilmarnock in 2024-25 as the contract would have been retendered in this scenario using different pricing models. Hypothetically, if the existing terms of the contract went into a notional 26 th year, indexation of around 5.1% would have been applied.

CalMac currently expects that there will be two tankers a week per vessel to operate the service. CalMac will review the fuel requirements once the new vessels are in operation and make any necessary changes to supply requirements.