Chamber and committees

As outlined in my letter to the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee dated 27 September 2023, Scottish universities and colleges can bid for one short term grant for a minimum of £1,000 and maximum of £25,000 to undertake international projects by 31 March 2024. They can also apply for an additional £10,000 for projects which contain cross sector educational partnerships e.g., with schools, youth work providers, adult learning, and sports organisations and will prioritise placements for disadvantaged groups.

As outlined in the Programme for Government, in 2024-25, we will build on this initial test and learn project to further develop the Scottish Education Exchange Programme.

Can I firstly take the opportunity to thank Show Racism the Red Card for their work - I was proud to join fellow MSPs and the First Minister at the photocall that Mr Bibby organised a few weeks ago. I understand that they have engaged with officials across Ministerial portfolios over the years and while they do not currently receive funding from the Scottish Government, they are welcome to apply to future competitive funding opportunities. For example, Ministers are currently considering how we can best fund and support vital work within the Equality & Human Rights portfolio.

Construction and certification of the MV Glen Sannox in accordance with the contract as a passenger vessel with the relevant classification and safety certificates is the responsibility of the ship builder, Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) Ltd (FMPG). Both Scottish Government and Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited receive regular updates from FMPG on progress towards final certification.

The current Action Plan ends in December 2023. Future plans will be informed by the review mentioned in my answer to question S6W-22193 on 26 October 2023. 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 Draft Scottish Biodiversity Strategy includes commitments to continue effective species recovery, reintroduction and reinforcement programmes and to introduce an agricultural future support framework which delivers for nature restoration and biodiversity.

The Scottish Government and NatureScot have agreed to undertake a review of the Sea Eagle Management Scheme and White-tailed Eagle Action Plan. Terms of reference for this work have been drafted and will be shared with the Sea Eagle National Stakeholder Panel shortly.

The review will assess progress on delivering the aims of the Sea Eagle Management Scheme to support farmers and crofters to manage their livestock alongside a growing sea eagle population.

Improving Scotland’s health data capabilities remains a key objective in improving outcomes for patients. We are continuing to progress work to implement changes to how we improve data collection on medicine use and outcomes. Changes to existing systems or any new systems take time to develop and implement and we continue to work with Scottish Government colleagues, industry, NHS Scotland and academia to evolve our approach to medicines data.

In relation to the first action, capturing medicines use for patients in all clinical settings, there are several relevant work programmes underway. Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (HEPMA) has been rolled out in eleven Health Boards and work is underway to rollout HEPMA in the remaining Health Boards. The medicines data from all Health Boards who have HEPMA deployed have been used throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to inform clinical practice and drive improvements. The Digital Prescribing and Dispensing Pathways programme is on track to replace the current paper prescription in Scotland with an entirely digital approach to capturing prescribed and dispensed medicines by the end of this parliamentary term.? There is also progress with the development of a national Homecare (medicines prescribed via hospital specialists and delivered direct to patients at home) medicines dataset whereby third-party suppliers are providing regular data (monthly) to Public Health Scotland (PHS). These data have also been used to support COVID activities and work is progressing to enhance the quality and completeness of data flows.

Action two, including medicine indication in all prescribing systems , is more complex, requires in most of the cases retrospective addition of indication data and is reliant on IT system changes. We are seeking to progress this as part of our wider work programme.

Action three , to create a national laboratory data resource , this is also reliant on work being progressed further in response to the other actions from the report, and we will consider further in due course.

In relation to action four, to improve recording of patient outcomes of medicines , we have funded the Cancer Medicines Outcomes Programme (CMOP) which has developed a robust and reliable process to understand the effectiveness and safety of cancer medicines in routine care in Scotland. We are also funding PHS to establish a National Medicines in Pregnancy surveillance asset. This asset will support monitoring and reporting to progress improvements in the safe use of sodium valproate and other teratogenic medicines in Scotland by identifying and linking medicines exposure with outcomes data sets.

In response to action five, to create a Scottish Medicines Intelligence Unit , the Scottish Government funded CMOP programme has enabled capability building and intelligence in the use of our national SACT (cancer medicines) dataset and this is generating evidence to support the evaluation of the use of and clinical outcomes from all new medicines approved through the Scottish Medicines Consortium Health Technology Assessment process.

The Scottish Government is clear in its expectation of producers to drive mortality to the lowest possible levels. Our Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture articulates our expectation of improvements to fish health and welfare, and we will continue to work with regulators, producers, innovation centres and fish vets to better understand the reasons for mortality and to encourage adaptation to challenges. Increases in sea water production mortality should be considered in the context of the trend seen since 2002, which indicates stable average mortality levels with peaks and troughs in different years.

The Scottish Government has provided £145.5 million in this year’s budget on the condition that local authorities:

• Maintain teacher numbers at 2022 census levels, as published in the Summary School Statistics in December 2022.
• Maintain pupil support staff numbers at 2022 census levels, as published on 21 March 2023 based on the data collected from local authorities in September 2022.

£100 million of this funding is distributed to local authorities as part of the 2023-24 General Revenue Grant. The remaining £45.5 million will also be distributed to local authorities following confirmation that these conditions have been met.

In assessing whether these conditions have been met, we will consider any mitigating circumstances individual councils may wish to put forward.

The Scottish Government is working with partners to develop national guidance on school uniform. It is anticipated that non-statutory guidance will be published by spring 2024.

The guidance will be reintroduced as statutory guidance before the end of the Parliamentary term following the introduction of the relevant legislative provisions.