Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Ministers have not attended any meetings to specifically discuss pre-eclampsia in 2023.

The Women’s Health Champion Professor Anna Glasier has met with a variety of organisations and experts across various sectors to drive forward improvements in women’s health. This has involved discussions relating to the actions within the Women’s Health Plan on heart health including where relevant pre-eclampsia in the context of the reproductive life course.

More information about the work of the Women’s Health Champion can be found in the Women’s Health Champion quarterly blogs .

The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee has asked for the Scottish Government’s views on public petition PE 2046. Working closely with National Records of Scotland, we are currently preparing a response to the Committee.

This information is not held centrally.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The SPS anticipate the Strategy will be finalised by the end of October and will be published at the end of this year.

Continued competing priorities impacted stakeholder capacity to contribute within the planned timeframe, and a need to divert SPS resources to support several acute cases of mentally unwell people in SPS care have contributed to a delay in publication.

The revised date now reflects the impact of those delays, whilst ensuring sufficient time is allocated in order to analyse the evidence gathered from consultation with mental health experts and those in our care with lived experiences.

The Reach programme, one of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) funded Access to High Demand Programmes (ADHP), was initially founded in 2010 to improve progression to higher education (HE) and targeted specific schools with lower rates of progression to HE.

In 2017 the targeting criteria for ADHP were expanded to ensure that certain disadvantaged pupils in all schools could benefit from the programme, not just pupils in schools with lower progression rates. This decision was informed by the Commission on Widening Access’ final report, A Blueprint for Fairness, and SFC-funded research looking at the attainment and socio-economic profiles of pupils in all schools in Scotland.

Targeting criteria for AHDP is set by SFC and AHDP partners. Since 2017, the eligibility criteria are:

• Live in an SIMD decile 1-4 (SIMD 20/40); or

• Are care experienced; or

• Are estranged from family and living without family support; or

• Have caring responsibilities; or

• Are seeking asylum in the UK; or

• Have refugee status.

Reach partners may also consider extenuating circumstances outwith the above at their discretion.

I understand that local authorities are keen to get clarity on Phase 3 of the Learning Estate Investment Programme (LEIP). We wrote to councils to explain that consideration of potential Phase 3 projects was still ongoing.

It is important to recognise that we are trying to make these important investment decisions against a backdrop of market volatility on current projects, which has meant that we have agreed to provide an 11% adjustment to 20 Phase 1 and 2 projects, and this was communicated to local authorities on 3 August. The incidences of RAAC in a small number of our schools is also a factor we are taking into consideration.

These are big decisions, it is important that we get them right, and I have committed to updating the Parliament by the end of October.

LEIP is an important part of our investment in education provision and will build on this government’s proud record in improving our school estate, which has saw the number of schools in Scotland in good or satisfactory condition rise from 61% in 2007 to 90.7% today.

All staff have the right to a rest break if they work more than 6 hours a day. I recognise the challenges this poses for ambulance crews and a protective measure has been put in place. Where they have passed their rest break window and/or been called out whilst on a rest break, a fully protected rest break should be offered to these staff.

Compliance with rights to rest breaks are matters for employers and I have been clear that all trade union partners need to work with the Scottish Ambulance Service to resolve any ongoing issues.

We continue to work with leaders across health, as well as hearing directly from trade unions to understand where the current pressures are, and what further actions can be taken to mitigate the impact on staff.

Since the start of the pandemic we have worked collaboratively with Public Health Scotland and National Services Scotland to continuously update and improve our NHS Inform information , the online booking portal and access to the National Vaccination Helpline.

For the helpline we continuously monitor call wait times and when they rise above expected service level agreement wait times, we increase the numbers of call handlers to bring these down (to note this cannot be done immediately, as we need to bring in more staff which can take over 24 hours). The helpline also work closely with the scheduling team so that when a large number of invites go out to groups that typically use the helpline as opposed to the online portal, such as those of older age, we pre-emptively step up the number of call handlers to meet expected demand. We have automated messages explaining the current queue length and time, so that people can choose to call back at a quieter time. For those who cannot speak for long amounts of time, we have a mechanism whereby a nominated individual can speak on another person’s behalf.

We have continued to make the online portal as user friendly as possible. The latest development in 2023 was to make it easier for users to see the next available appointment is at their clinic of choice. We also include a person’s username in their appointment letter and this contains a QR code that will take them straight to the Winter vaccines | NHS inform landing page. NHS Inform contains helpful step-by-step videos on how to use the portal to book or change an appointment and we constantly monitor feedback from the public in regards to the portal to inform future changes and developments.

Ahead of the proposed legislation, the Scottish Government has increased the voluntary sector Short Breaks Fund by £5m to £8m in 2022-23, to expand easy-access short breaks support, and has maintained the fund at £8m for 2023-24. This is in addition to £88.4m per year Carers Act funding in the local government block grant.

Local authorities have responsibilities to promote a variety of short break provision in their areas. We are funding work to assist them and share good practice and have commissioned a study to improve our understanding of the issues facing the short breaks sector. The National Care Service will set out national standards with the aim of greater consistency of provision across Scotland.

The Financial Memorandum to the National Care Service Bill sets out estimates of the additional costs the Scottish Government expects for additional support to meet the right to breaks from caring, building up over a 10 year period. We expect demand to grow steadily over this period with additional short break provision growing alongside.

The 2023-24 Programme for Government reiterates our commitment to establish the right to breaks from caring and continue the Short Breaks Fund.