Chamber and committees

There is no reliable data held or published which we can refer to answer this question: Whilst Public Health Scotland publish the total number of patients waiting for specialist mental health services, detail of the individual types of assessment or diagnosis is not held.

The publications for both CAMHS and Psychological Therapies waiting times for the quarter ending December 2022 can be found at Publications - Public Health Scotland .

The Scottish Government’s National Neurodevelopmental Specification for Children and Young People sets out seven standards for service providers to ensure that children and young people who have neurodevelopmental profiles with support needs receive the support that they require. The Specification is purposefully inclusive and includes support for those who may be identified with autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

There are 111.9 Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) Gastroenterology consultants in post in Scotland, with 10.1 WTE vacancies. This data is accurate as of December 2022.

There are 47 training posts across all years of the Gastroenterology training programme, all of which are filled. There are no vacant training posts. This data is accurate as of December 2022.

The following table includes data on the number of Gastroenterology trainees who have completed training and attained a CCT (Certificate of Completion of Training) in each year since 2019. Trainees must obtain a CCT in order to practice as a consultant.

We continue to invest in our Detect Cancer Earlier (DCE) Programme, of which public education and empowerment is a key work-stream. We launched a new campaign – Be the Early Bird – in March 2023 to empower those with possible symptoms to act early. This included sharing stories of those that have been diagnosed and successfully treated with ovarian cancer via press and digital channels, to prompt others to take early action.

We will continue to work with the Scottish Cancer Coalition – which Target Ovarian is a member of - as well as the primary care community across NHS Scotland, to raise awareness of possible symptoms. Work is also underway to redesign DCE’s website (getcheckedearly.org) – this will reflect ovarian cancer content, including additional survivor stories and signposting to Target Ovarian for more information.

While the powers to take meaningful action in regard to energy pricing sit with the UK Government, we are doing everything we can to support households with high energy bills.

We recently tripled our Fuel Insecurity Fund to £30m for 2023-24, to support anyone at risk of self-disconnection, or self-rationing their energy use. That fund continues to provide a lifeline to households at risk of self-rationing or self-disconnecting their energy. We also made an additional £1.2 million available to help our advice services meet increasing demand last year.

Our new Winter Heating Payment replaces DWP’s Cold Weather Payment and provides a stable, reliable annual £55 which will help around 400,000 low-income individuals with their heating expenses each winter.

We have allocated £350m to heat, energy efficiency and fuel poverty measures in 2023/24, including £119m targeted at fuel poor households, while our £1.4m Islands Cost Crisis Emergency Fund is supporting those in our island communities who traditionally see higher costs for food and fuel.

We have called repeatedly on the UK Government to provide additional, targeted support for consumers in vulnerable circumstances. I am due to meet with the UK Government Minister for Energy Consumers later this month and will raise again the need for further action to support those who have been most affected by the ending of the Energy Bills Support Scheme ending as well as the need for a social tariff for energy consumers.

The Fund's focus in 2023-24 will be on deploying £25 million in capital grants, as part of the £50 million multi-year programme that was announced last year.

Additionally, £25 million has been allocated to the Scottish National Investment Bank for 2023-24 to invest on a commercial basis, in line with the Bank's Investment Strategy.

Utilising the commercial investment expertise and experience of the Bank offers a key opportunity to unlock third party finance at the scale required to meet our ambitions for a just transition in North East and Moray.

The information you have requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all children and young people receive at least two hours of physical education per school week in primary schools, and at least two 50-minute periods of physical education per week in secondary schools - between secondaries 1 and 4.

Under the provisions of Curriculum for Excellence, schools and education authorities have the flexibility to decide upon the content of their lessons at the local level by taking into account the needs and circumstances of all children and young people in attendance. This includes taking decisions locally about the content of their PE lessons, where they can offer swimming lessons to their pupils if they wish to do so.

However, I recognise the importance of ensuring that all children can have equal opportunities to access swimming lessons, regardless of their families' social or economic circumstances. Therefore, we have been working with Scottish Swimming, Education Scotland, sportScotland and Scottish Water to pilot bespoke interventions and approaches within local areas to provide opportunities for more children to become confident, safer and competent swimmers.

I have written to the Scottish Funding Council, copied to Colleges Scotland and Universities Scotland confirming an additional allocation of £2.205 million (for the period April to July 2023), on top of our allocation of £2.025 million announced last year (for the period August 2022 to March 2023). This makes a total 2022-23 AY allocation of £4.23 million.

This means that the total AY 2022-23 award would for Colleges is £2.424 million and Universities is £1.806 million. This is in line with last year’s award of £4.229 million and sector allocations. The Scottish Funding Council will prepare guidance on the additional allocation together with details of institutional awards.

In secondary schools, we continue to support local authorities to ensure that every school has access to counselling services, which are now in place across Scotland. School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools have in place to support pupil’s wellbeing.

In colleges and universities, we have made significant investment to introduce more than 80 extra counsellors across institutions and will release funding to maintain support through to the end of the academic year.

Work is continuing on the review of the policies and operating arrangements which underpin the Home Owners Support Fund (HOSF). We now expect this work to conclude later this year due to the additional timescales required for the modelling work to be completed. We will continue to take account of stakeholders’ views as recommendations for any changes to the existing arrangements are developed.