Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has issued guidance to Health Boards setting out our expectation that Health Boards will ensure Ukrainian refugees have access to local dental treatment and GP practices. Ukrainians living in Scotland have access to the same level of primary and secondary health care services as everyone else and these are designed to ensure that their health needs are identified and addressed appropriately and effectively.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-17723 on 17 May 2023. Parliament will be updated once the review has completed. 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 .

The following table shows the average processing times for the cases which settled during each quarter since April 2022 and how many of those were processed within the requested timescales.

Rediscover the Joy was set up in 2019 with the creation of the Shetland Hub, this was followed by the creation of the NHS Highland Hub in 2021-22.

GPs are recruited directly into the hubs and they assist with matching GPs to vacant posts. There are currently 7 health boards signed up to the project. NHS Shetland, NHS Tayside, NHS Highland, NHS Western Isles, NHS Grampian, NHS Orkney and NHS Dumfries and Galloway.

The number of GPs recruited to the hubs since 2019 are:

Scottish Government do not provide direct funding to STV as they are an advertiser funded broadcaster.

We do however provide funding to Screen Scotland who have themselves provided funding to STV Studios. STV Studios is separate to the broadcasting element of STV and is the television production arm of the STV Group plc. They work with a range of broadcasters and streamers, not only STV. All funding decisions of Screen Scotland are made independently of Scottish Government.

In addition, all Scottish Government media buying and planning is undertaken via agencies appointed through the Media Planning, Buying and Associated Services 2019 to 2023 framework. Therefore, this is not conducted directly with STV.

1. Diversion is a process by which prosecutors are able to refer a case to social work or other identified agency as a means of addressing the underlying causes of offending when this is deemed the most appropriate course of action.

2. Such intervention can be particularly effective in cases of children’s offending, changing the direction of young lives for the better and is consistent with the obligations on the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

3. I have ordered a review of how prosecutors deal with diversion from prosecution in cases of serious sexual offences such as rape. The review is timely in ensuring we are continuing to consider the rights of both accused and complainers particularly where they are children.

4. COPFS uses a live, operational database to manage the processing of reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. It is designed to meet business needs in the processing of criminal cases, rather than for statistical analysis, and the information within it is structured accordingly.

5. Due to the way that decisions on diversions are recorded on this database, in order to provide an accurate response to the question regarding rape cases, a manual check of the relevant cases has been undertaken.

6. Based on the results of those manual checks, the following table has been compiled. It includes numbers of cases in which the accused was offered diversion and following that offer, the diversion was considered completed, or is still considered ongoing.

7. The overall numbers of cases containing an allegation of rape (which have not been checked) are provided as a point of comparison.

There are different types of affordable housing programmes and schemes in Scotland and across the UK, and statistics on stock levels for each of these different types are not readily available. Information is published on social sector housing stock levels across each of the countries.

The following table sets out information on the number of social rented dwellings compared to population figures, based on the latest available comparable year of data for 2020 from UK housing stock tables published by the Office for National Statistics.

This shows that the 608,000 social sector dwellings in Scotland in 2020 equates to 1,112 dwellings per 10,000 population, higher than the equivalent per head of population figures of 729 in England and 726 in Wales in the same year.

All applications to HOSF are tested for eligibility for both Mortgage to Rent (MtR) and Mortgage to Shared Equity (MtSE). Due to the circumstances of individuals there have been no Mortgage to Shared Equity cases since 2015, in particular many applicants have high levels of complex unsecured debts and low earnings.

The following table shows the number of applications received during each quarter since April 2022 and the number of applications successfully completed. Mortgage to Rent is a voluntary scheme and participation from applicants, lenders, trustees and social landlords is required for a case to succeed.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-10237 on 7 September 2022. 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 .

The Scottish Government provides baseline funding to NHS Boards, which Boards use to best meet the healthcare needs of their resident population.

Funding is not ring-fenced for neurology services. It is not therefore possible to provide this proportion of health board funding.