Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government takes the issue of Scotland’s declining populations of wild Atlantic salmon very seriously and is working to ensure the protection and recovery of this iconic species. In January 2022 the Scottish Government published the Wild Salmon Strategy which provides an overarching framework for the actions required to tackle the range of pressures affecting wild salmon. The Strategy can be accessed at Scottish Wild Salmon Strategy - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

A commitment made in the Strategy is to undertake a study to identify the socio-economic benefits arising from healthy wild Atlantic salmon populations and how these can be maximised through partnerships between the public, private and charitable sectors. Furthermore, this study will allow comparisons to be made between the current economic value of the recreational fisheries sector to past values.

The most recent socio-economic study was conducted in 2017 and showed that recreational fisheries in Scotland contributed £79.9m Gross Value Added and 4300 FTE jobs. It is important to note that, although this study was published in 2017, it was based on data from 2014/15 when coastal netting was still in place. It is anticipated that the subsequent prohibition on coastal netting is likely to have had an effect on the economic value.

A national Perinatal Mental Health Dataset for specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health services (as well as Mother and Baby Units and Maternity/Neonatal Psychological Interventions services) has recently been launched by the Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network. It is currently being rolled out across Health Boards. The dataset builds upon a previous Clinical Audit System which reported on a limited number of clinical indicators for Mother and Baby Units. The Perinatal Mental Health Dataset will include a range of indicators of clinical activity, recorded by local specialist teams. It will be used to support local service development and quality improvement. The dataset will act as a tool to support Health Boards with local improvement in service planning and delivery, enabling them to understand and respond to local need.

The Transition & Recovery Plan, published in October 2020 and backed by an additional £120m of funding, is transforming services, with a renewed focus on prevention and early intervention. A key commitment in the Transition and Recovery plan is to support the collaborative development, implementation and assessment of quality standards for mental health services. To help ensure that services deliver and measure Psychological Therapies in a more standardised way across Scotland, a new national standard for Psychological Services and Therapies is currently under development with a publication date of Summer 2022.

As part of our investment in Mental Health and Wellbeing in Primary Care Services we will ensure that local planning groups, and in particular local primary care mental health services, are fully aware of the resources and services available for perinatal mental health and are supplied with clear guidance on how to support women and families in accessing these services. This will include support to access wider mental health support hubs, groups and helplines.

Developing specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health teams across every Health Board has been a priority since the start of the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board. Since 2019 we have invested over £5.5 million to establish specialist community perinatal mental health teams in every area of Scotland. This is in addition to investment in other specialist services such as infant mental health services and maternal and neonatal psychological interventions (MNPI).

To support Health Board areas to use this funding to develop local services, the Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network Scotland have developed a number of supporting resources. These include service development guides, care pathways and role descriptors.

We have also recruited a Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Service Development Advisor to work closely with Boards to support them in their implementation of specialist services.

Finalising the establishment of specialist perinatal mental health provision across all Health Boards in Scotland is a priority for the final year of the Programme Board. Every NHS Board area has an Executive Lead driving forward the programme of work and both strategic and implementation groups are also in place.

The Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) Inpatient Provision Consultation closed on 31 May 2022. While more detailed work on the outcomes of this consultation is underway, we are expecting NHS Grampian and NHS Forth Valley to enter into contractual agreements with a Mother and Baby Unit in line with the other territorial Health Boards.

The Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board and Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network Scotland will provide support to Boards in setting up these arrangements. We are in the process of meeting with MBU host Boards and NHS Forth Valley and NHS Grampian to discuss how to best ensure access for women and their infants.

Until these arrangements are in place, women residing within any Health Board area in Scotland are still able to access the specialist regional provision in a Mother and Baby Unit if clinically appropriate. Admission is based on clinical need rather than geography.

The Bus Priority Rapid Deployment Fund (BPRDF) ran from July 2020 until June 2021 and was designed to support local authorities – working closely with bus operators - to respond to congestion with interventions such as temporary bus lanes or gates. 41 bus priority projects were implemented across Scotland.

Though the Fund was for short-term measures, it provided an opportunity for local authorities to test interventions as they developed plans for longer-term investment in bus priority, to lock in benefits for bus passengers, the bus industry and the environment. Learning and evidence from BPRDF informed local authority applications to the Bus Partnership Fund, which opened in July 2021 for bids to develop and deliver permanent bus priority infrastructure on local roads.

Section 40 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 amends section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 to include a new offence of arriving in the United Kingdom without a valid entry clearance. The new offence comes in force on
‎ 28 June 2022.

There are no plans to introduce Lord Advocate’s guidelines in relation to the new offence.

Where the circumstances of alleged offending are reported to the Procurator Fiscal, prosecutors will decide on appropriate prosecutorial action, if any, on the basis of both the principles in the published Scottish Prosecution Code and, where relevant, the published Lord Advocate’s instructions for non-prosecution of victims of human trafficking.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) is unable to provide information on how many patients have died while on an NHS Scotland waiting list in each year as far back as 1999. However, the national waiting times datamart captures quality-assured data on the reasons for a patient being removed from a waiting list, including when a patient has died, from 1st April 2013 onwards.

Table 1 contains the following trend information for the period 1 st April 2013 to 31 March 2022, presented by financial year:

? The number of patients waiting to be seen at a new outpatient appointment or waiting to be admitted for treatment as an inpatient or day case, expressed as an average based on the number waiting at the end of quarters in each financial year.

? The number of removals from waiting lists for the reason ‘died’.

? A simple mortality rate is also included to account for variation in waiting list sizes. This is presented as the number of deaths per year per 1000 patients waiting at quarter-end, averaged over the quarters provided for each year.

Table 1: Average waiting list size and total number of patients removed from lists for the reason ‘died’ whilst waiting for a new outpatient appointment or treatment as an inpatient or day case, NHSScotland, April 2013 to March 2022

Over the course of the last five years, the force has created separate Divisions for specialist officers such as CID. As a national police force, these specialist officers are not bound by traditional geographical borders. Therefore, to provide an accurate breakdown of resource placement in Scotland my officials have requested this information from the British Transport Police and I will write to the member in due course.

One of the key pillars of the National Strategy for Economic Transformation is to strengthen Scotland’s position in new markets and industries to generate well-paid jobs and support a just transition to net zero. The Strategy sets out a range of actions to deliver on this vision. We are now developing sectoral and regional Just Transition Plans, which will identify relevant green industrial opportunities. Our first Just Transition Plan will be the Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan, which is intended for publication in draft form in autumn 2022.

Work is also underway to strengthen our supply chains in the renewables energy sector. We're aware, for example, that Scotland’s developing hydrogen economy will require a strong domestic supply chain.

That's why the Scottish Government has announced a Hydrogen Supply Chain Event at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre on 22 September to help build on and explore the opportunities that exist within this emerging sector.

For Offshore Wind, applicants to the ScotWind leasing round were required to submit a Supply Chain Development Statement (SCDS) that sets out the level and location of supply chain impact throughout the lifetime of projects. These commitments amount to billions of pounds of investment to the Scottish supply chain. Initial projections show an average spend of £1.5bn in Scotland per project.

Dr Church, the independent chair of the review, has advised that he intends to launch another round of stakeholder engagement for stakeholders by the end of July, running through to August or early September, during which he will be both seeking responses to specific questions and open to any further representations stakeholder may wish to make. This is in addition to the engagement already undertaken through the Call for Evidence for the review.