Chamber and committees

The £600 million funding set out in the Health and Social Care Winter Resilience Overview 2022-23 includes investment of £170 million for multi-disciplinary teams and £124 million to enhance care at home, supporting people to be treated in the community where clinically appropriate.

We have appointed a National Clinical Lead to drive and support the development and delivery of a new Strategy on Palliative and End of Life Care, supported by a small advisory group and a newly established strategy steering group, both of which include representatives of community and specialist palliative care nurses.

Nurses, amongst many multi-disciplinary staff, are crucial to the delivery of palliative and end of life care within the community.

The Scottish Government does not hold any further information on hen harrier nests broken down by nature reserves on which the nests are located, or on reasons for nest failure other than what was provided by way of an answer to question S5W-26208.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-12273 on 5 December 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 .

CMAL is fully supportive of Scottish Shipbuilding industry and supply chain, both through support to delivery of the vessels at Fergusons and its role in the Scottish Maritime Cluster. Procurements for vessels include consideration of local content but are open to tender on a wider basis than Scottish suppliers.

There are no current plans to review public sector buildings specifically for the purpose of retro-fitting solar panels. However, the retrofitting of solar panels onto existing public sector buildings is supported through the Scottish Government’s Green Public Sector Estate Decarbonisation Scheme (GPSEDS).The Scottish Government is making £200 million available through this scheme from 2021-2026 to support the decarbonisation and increased energy efficiency of existing public sector buildings. For solar projects, there are two main support elements:

The Scottish Public Sector Energy Efficiency Loan Scheme, which offers zero interest loans to the public sector to enable them to undertake retrofit energy efficiency improvement projects.

The Scottish Central Government Energy Efficiency Grant scheme, which provides capital funding support to enable the delivery of decarbonisation projects across the public sector, including Solar PV. This operates under an open funding call, targeting Scottish central government organisations.

The Scottish Government has invested over £65m in the ChargePlace Scotland Network that now has over 2,400 publicly available electric vehicle charge points, alongside supporting homes and businesses to install almost 20,000 charge points. A range of factors will influence the number of charge points required – and delivery plans will be determined by both public and private investment.

Our focus is on making sure that the public charging network builds on the benefits of ChargePlace Scotland, which includes maintaining comprehensive coverage across all parts of Scotland. To that end, our £60m EV Infrastructure Fund has the potential to at least double the size of the public charging network over the next four years. This is over and above the commercial investment in charge points now taking place across Scotland.

A national oversight group responsible for a review of AHP Education and Workforce has recently concluded its work. The collaborative group involving a wide range of AHP stakeholders including professional bodies, HEIs and NHS Boards is due to report their recommendations to the Scottish Government. I will not pre-empt the recommendations of that group but look forward to receiving the suite of recommendations the group has put forward regarding the future of training and development of AHP staff.

The Scottish Government plans to continue to support and reform community eyecare services, recognising the capacity in the sector to further help sustainably reduce pressure on hospitals and GPs. These plans include a new national Community Glaucoma Service which will begin to be rolled out in some areas of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde from January 2023.

In accordance with the requirements of the Railways Act 1993 and the Scottish Ministers’ Franchising Policy Statement, consideration is being given to the successor arrangement for the continued provision of Caledonian Sleeper services.

NHS Scotland provides expectant mothers with all clinically recommended scans during the course of their pregnancy.

Anyone choosing to have scans elsewhere, for any purpose, should choose a provider regulated by Healthcare Improvement Scotland and satisfy themselves that the sonographer is a suitably qualified and registered healthcare practitioner.