Chamber and committees

We know that deprivation is a significant driver of excess mortality and reduced life expectancy. Reducing poverty and inequality therefore sits at the heart of our investment across all portfolios and remains the best way of improving life expectancy.

Increasing life expectancy across Scotland remains a clear ambition for this Government and we are using all the powers and resources available to us to create a fairer Scotland. We are doing that by ensuring health services are accessible to all, committing £19bn to public services over the next year; committing £4 billion in social security and welfare payments over the next financial year; and extending the Scottish Child Payment to families with eligible under 16s – by increasing it to £25 per week per child.

Furthermore, our Care and Wellbeing Portfolio, as the principle strategic reform vehicle in Health and Social Care, is being designed to promote a ‘health in all policies’ approach in order to strengthen cross-government collaboration on key and critical issues that contribute to the goal of reducing inequalities and increasing life expectancy.

The following table sets out the number of Architecture and Design Scotland staff, broken down by pay banding, permanent staff, fixed term appointments (FTA) and full time equivalent (FTE).

Excluding staff time, the total cost to Architecture and Design Scotland of producing the Designing for a Changing Climate: Carbon Conscious Places report was £1,300. Costs related to staff time involved in producing the report are not held centrally.

The Architecture and Design Scotland report, Designing for a Changing Climate: Carbon Conscious Places , offers examples of good practice to support a whole place approach to responding to the climate imperative, carbon targets and local places.

The key findings of the report were disseminated widely through a public online launch, presentations to Young Planners Scotland conference, the Scotland's Climate Assembly, and promoted through articles in professional journals. The launch of the report was covered on BBC and STV TV, reaching a wide audience.

The report is included as a reference document within the Scottish Government Update to the Climate Change Plan (2020) and has informed the offer from the Key Agencies Group to local authorities for support with developing the new style of Local Development Plans. The publication webpage was viewed over 3,000 times between October 2020 and January 2023.

The impact on approaches, projects and decisions has not yet been formally evaluated.

Person-centred, safe and high-quality care for mothers and babies throughout pregnancy, birth and following birth can have a marked effect on the health and life chances of women and babies, and on the healthy development of children throughout their lives. This can help to mitigate the impact of inequalities and deprivation and their long term health and other consequences for families.

We continue to prioritise improvements to maternity and neonatal care through the implementation of The Best Start programme, in partnership with senior leaders and clinicians. For women who experience multiple disadvantage, as well as those with additional complex needs, we know that continuity of carer from a primary midwife is likely to be particularly important. That is why we have included women and families from lower Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) quintiles, as well as those from minority ethnic communities, as priority groups for the introduction of continuity of carer.

The Scottish Government has commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to lead a national review to understand any contributing factors to the increase in neonatal mortality during 2021-22. This review will assess and determine whether there are any themes, underlying causes or safety factors that have contributed to the increased neonatal mortality rate from both a clinical and system perspective.

Since the Best Use of Timber Awards were established in 2012, Scottish Forestry has allocated £6,000 each year towards the delivery of the awards, with the exception of 2020 when the awards did not take place due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Architecture and Design Scotland does not allocate funding for the project other than staff resource.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The Scottish Budget provided baseline funding of over £492 million to NHS Education for Scotland in 2022-2023, it is for NHS Board to determine how they use this funding. In addition to this, further funding has been made available to NHS Education for Scotland to support specific programmes of work including:
‎ £22.3 million is provided towards the improvement of Mental Health Training and £3.7 million for the NHS Scotland Academy which offers accelerated training programmes to those working, and soon to be working, across many roles within Health and Social Care. Much of the training and education activity delivered by NHS Education for Scotland is supported and enhanced through digital solutions.

We continually monitor the sufficiency of education and training support across NHS Scotland as we work to deliver a sustainable Health and Social Care workforce and implement improvements in patient care. As part of this, The Scottish Government has regular strategic engagement with NHS Education for Scotland regarding its priorities. The Scottish Government also has a number of other mechanisms to oversee and review each Board’s performance. The Annual Reviews held by Ministers remain an important part of the accountability process as do Board Annual Operating plans, building on the local governance arrangements which form part of Board structures.

All health and care systems are tested during development, implementation and rollout, and this is a critical part of the process for all technologies in use. All health boards have test environments or suitable processes in place to do this which is supported by national test infrastructure, environments and resources from NHS NES and NHS NSS. If I can refer the member to response in S6W-14170 on 7 February 2023. It is not possible to give an exact figure on how many new health and care technologies have been tested due to the wide range of activity and the multiple organisations involved in testing since 2007.

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 impact of material switching is outlined in Section 7 of the Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) which was published on 22 December 2021. You can access the document here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/deposit-return-scheme-scotland-final-business-regulatory-impact-assessment/ .