Chamber and committees

A list of all projects recommended for support through the Regeneration Capital Grant Fund can be found on the Scottish Governments Website at https://www.gov.scot/publications/regeneration-capital-grant-fund-rcgf-recommended-projects-2014-2022/ .

The Town Centre Capital Fund was allocated to local authorities in 2019-20.

In the letter of direction I issued to delivery partners on 23 June 2022 on implementing the MAT Standards, I asked for timed, specific plans for implementing the standards to be submitted and published. I also requested a lead officer be nominated to take responsibility for driving the necessary changes and reporting on progress for each area across the country.

I can confirm that a lead officer has been nominated by delivery partners for each of their Health and Social Care Partnership areas.

We are now scrutinising the submitted Implementation Plans to ensure they will deliver the standards and, we will be asking each area to publish their plans, which will detail the position of lead officers for each area.

Somerville: Scottish Ministers are committed to developing a Scottish school milk scheme to replace current subsidy arrangements. We are working with stakeholders and local authority partners to develop a fully funded universal school milk scheme for primary and special schools, and a pilot in secondary schools within the current parliamentary term and stakeholder engagement will form part of that work.

COPFS aims to conduct its investigation and advise the next of kin of the outcome within 12 weeks of the initial report of the death in at least 80% of cases.

Reporting years 2020-21 and 2021-22 saw increases in deaths reported to COPFS of 44% and 40% respectively, reflecting a combination of factors including, but not restricted to, excess deaths attributable directly to COVID-19, local GPs having less contact with patients in the community and being unable to certify deaths, and changes in the process of dealing with and reporting deaths in the community.

The number of cases requiring further investigation, because no cause of death was immediately apparent, has therefore increased, with 7085 post-mortem examinations instructed in 2021-22, an increase of 742 on the previous year. The following table shows the numbers and percentage of deaths requiring further investigation for the last two reporting years and the first two quarters of the current year.

Progress against the published performance target is monitored regularly and has improved significantly this reporting year.

The Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office operates open competitive funding schemes for applied health research projects and fellowships across the wide range of NHS and health challenges in Scotland.

These schemes continue to operate and are open to consideration of applications addressing priorities for research conditions that effect menstrual health. Applications to these schemes are assessed through independent expert peer-review with funding recommendations made by independent expert committees.

A number of research projects on menstrual health including fibroids and endometriosis, have been funded through these schemes in the past.

In partnership with Wellbeing of Women, this year we are jointly funding a £250,000 research call which aims to develop improvements into treatment and management options for endometriosis. The funding will be awarded in December 2022, fulfilling our medium term commitment in the Women’s Health Plan to commission research into endometriosis.

The Women’s Health Plan also includes a long term action to establish a Women’s Health Research Fund with the aim of closing gaps in scientific and medical knowledge in women’s health for both sex specific and non sex-specific conditions.

Place directors are not appointed - these roles are voluntary positions taken on by civil servants at deputy director and director level, alongside their day-to-day responsibilities. A list of current place directors and their local authority and Community Planning Partnership areas can be found on the Scottish Government website, under Community Planning [ Community planning - Improving public services - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ].

PHS collate data on Direct Cancer Referrals. This includes self, GP or NHS24 referral to A&E or other, where the signs and symptoms are consistent with the cancer diagnosed as per the Scottish Referral Guidelines. Data on these patients are only available from PHS from 2010 onwards as outlined in the following table.

Table 1: Number of direct cancer referrals 1,2,3 on the 31 day pathway since data-set began

The requested information on how many nurses have (a) joined and (b) left the NHS in Fife each year since 2007 is not centrally available.

Information on how many Nursing & Midwifery staff have (a) joined and (b) left the NHS since 2012 can be found in the following link: NHSScotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence .

The National Cancer Medicines Advisory Group (NCMAG) provides advice on the off-label uses of certain cancer medicines, which are out with the remit of the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC). Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCMAG provided rapid national decisions regarding the use of cancer medicines (sometimes out with the licensed indication for the medicine) to help meet the overall aim of reducing patient risk of COVID-19 infection and to mitigate the potential burden on cancer services.

Cancer services remain under considerable pressure, and cancer patients continue to be vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. As a result, it was agreed that existing COVID-19 NCMAG advice would remain in place until the end of March 2023, after which it will be withdrawn. More generally, extant Scottish Government guidance states that unless there is a specific clinical reason, clinicians should not continue to use an unlicensed medicine or a medicine off-label where there is an available licensed medicine, which has been accepted for routine use by the SMC.

The £20 million referred to is a provisional estimate from the Resource Spending Review for the financial year 2023-24. The costs of the Supreme Court referral are being met from the 2022-23 Government Business and Constitutional Relations budget line.