Chamber and committees

Attacks or assaults on anybody, regardless of whether they are employed at an airport or not, are an offence and should be reported to the Police. There have been no recent discussions. The Scottish Government does not hold information on how many attacks on publicly and privately employed airport staff in the last 10 years have been classified as having taken place in a public place.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has confirmed it has made payments to Systel totalling £1,715,475.84 in relation to this contract.

The Scottish Health Survey , which is commissioned by the Scottish Government, asked respondents whether they were worried about running out of food. The most recent data was published on 8 November 2022 and found that in Aberdeen City 10% of people were worried they would run out of food compared to a figure for Scotland as a whole of 9%. For Aberdeenshire Council a slightly lower figure of 8% of people reported they were worried they would run out of food.

The Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office (CSO) invests through NHS Research Scotland in a range of research infrastructure to support Health Boards host and participate in clinical research, including to support the development of new medicines. CSO also supports a range of funding opportunities for applied health research, including for research on the development of new therapeutic approaches.

The Scottish Government allocates a budget to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service as part of the annual Budget Act process. Decisions on how that budget is spent in order to deliver a balanced budget is a matter for the SFRS Board and Chief Officer as the Accountable Officer.

It is appropriate that SFRS continues to review its operations to ensure it is effective and delivering value for money and that includes taking decisions on the number and location of fire appliances. The Scottish Government does not hold information on the potential cost or savings from individual operational decisions made by SFRS.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-19355 on 4 July 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 Scottish Government is committed to supporting and developing rural and island primary care and continues to meet regularly with NHS Western Isles to review all aspects of the Board’s service delivery.

The Scottish Government are investing in a range of initiatives to assist Boards in recruitment, so that being a GP or dentist remains an attractive career choice in Scotland.

Boards are able to access funding support including the Golden Hello scheme to attract new rural GPs, Rediscover the Joy that aims to recruit experienced GPs to provide resilience for remote and rural practices, SCOTGEM, a scheme that provides a graduate-entry medical degree with a rural focus, and a recruitment and retention allowance, allowing health boards, such as Western Isles, to pay a new qualified trainee dentist up to £37,500 over a three year period.

The responsibility for the balancing of grid costs lies with the National Grid ESO, not the Scottish Government. Information on their work on this can be found here: Balancing Services Use of System (BSUoS) charges | ESO (nationalgrideso.com) .

Each of the cancer screening programmes are monitored by their respective Programme Boards, who report to National Screening Oversight (NSO). NSO is responsible for system wide oversight of the quality and effectiveness of the programmes and subsequently reports to the Scottish Screening Committee (SSC). Regular updates are provided at the SSC meetings regarding recovery and overall performance of the screening programmes.

All of the programmes are now operating in line with pre-COVID performance, and we continue to work with the organisations that oversee screening in Scotland to ensure full capacity is recovered and maintained.

To support scope based diagnostics we have published an Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan which is backed by a £70m investment. The plan focuses on key areas such as: Balancing Demand and Capacity; Workforce Training and Development; Infrastructure; and Innovation and Redesign.

In recognition of the pressures on Colposcopy services specifically, we have provided over £660,000 of additional funding to NHS Ayrshire & Arran, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, NHS Highland, NHS Lothian and NHS Tayside to support activity and free up capacity nationally.

This funding was used to enhance capacity through recruitment and additional clinics, including at weekends, to allow increased activity and to reduce demand.