Chamber and committees

The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent advisory group which makes recommendations on all screening programmes in the UK, have never recommended routine breast screening for women over 71 years. The Committee has concluded that there is not clear evidence that the benefits of screening women in this age group outweigh the potential risks of harm.

Nonetheless, prior to the COVID pandemic, women over 71 could self-refer to be screened if they chose. As the service continues to recover from the pandemic, Women aged 71-74, and those over 75 with a history of breast cancer, are once again eligible to self-refer for a screening appointment. There continues to be a pause in self-referral appointments for women aged 75 and over without a history of breast cancer.

The Scottish Government understands the wish to widen self-referrals to include those over the age of 75 without a history of breast cancer. However, before doing so we need to understand the impact of current self-referral appointments on wait times for women between 50-70 for whom screening has clear benefits. These impacts are under regular review by the breast screening programme board.

Unused recipient funds, including those in consequence of the death of recipients, are returned to ILF Scotland who in consultation with SG officials, decide whether to use it for spending priorities associated with ILF or to offset ILF Scotland’s monthly drawdown on its annual funding allocation. In the past funds have been used to cover the cost of Scottish Living Wage uplifts for personal assistants employed by ILF recipients, reductions in contributions from recipients towards the cost of their support and a Digital Transformation for ILF Scotland IT systems.

The Scottish Government recognises improving population health as a key priority and invests in a range of initiatives to support people with health conditions to sustain or return to work, including Healthy Working Lives (HWL). HWL is a programme delivered by Public Health Scotland (PHS) and statistics on the online platform is a matter for PHS. The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

Introduction of the new trains into passenger service is a matter for Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) given SPT is responsible for both the Glasgow Subway modernisation programme and the operation of the Glasgow subway and is not the responsibility of the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government understands that SPT did make an application, as part of the regulatory process, for an exemption from the Department for Transport (DfT) under the Rail Vehicle Accessibility (Applications for Exemption Orders) Regulations 2010 for the headroom in the new trains which incorrectly stated the first new trains would enter passenger service January 2023 to March 2023. SPT has advised that this incorrect statement was clarified and rectified with the DfT at the time.

Testing of the new trains and development of the safety case is ongoing and the trains will not be handed over to SPT until the fault free run testing is complete, with introduction of the fleet expected to be autumn 2023 as set out in SPT’s Partnership Report on Subway Modernisation - progress update for its 23 June 2023 meeting .

The Scottish Government has, since 2016 to the present day, provided funding to the Progress Education Trust of £276,494.75. The funding has been provided for Progress Educational Trust to produce educational reproductive events in Scotland.

Scottish Government officials meet regularly with the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) to discuss a range of improvement programmes that support service innovation and redesign, including new pathways of care that are more efficient and provide sustainable solutions for the future.

The CfSD was first approached about urogynaecology waiting times on 19 May 2023 and a plan to identify treatment options for long waiting patients across Scotland, including NHS Tayside, was agreed on 5 June 2023.

As the information requested is personal data of a third party, disclosing the list of attendees at these meetings would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

Professor Graham Ellis, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, met separately with Dr Pamela Johnston, Operational Medical Director of NHS Tayside, on 11 May 2023.

A new edition of the Scottish Ministerial Code was published on 20 July 2023 and is available here: https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781835210567 .

NHS Boards regularly assess continence patients’ needs, with the assessments undertaken by dedicated Bladder and Bowel Teams or community nursing staff. This ensures that patients’ needs are met, either through treatment or through provision of appropriate containment products. Referrals can also be made by patients’ GPs where necessary, and also by a range of other healthcare professionals including pharmacists, consultants, and care home staff.

Where a patient has been assessed as requiring continence products, these are provided by their local NHS Board’s continence service on prescription. As such, any person that is suffering from incontinence, such as men living with prostate cancer, should seek a referral to their local continence service in order that their incontinence can be assessed, treated where appropriate, or managed through the prescription of continence products.

The Scottish Government has not been made aware of any issues with regard to the disposal of used incontinence products, and has no plans to require that public toilets have incontinence bins installed.

The recently published Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy places strong focus on prevention, early intervention and recognises the importance of a diversity of service provision.

Later this year we will publish the accompanying Delivery Plan and the Workforce Action Plan. Thereafter, we will publish actions to support students.