Chamber and committees

For 2021-22 and 2022-23, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-08999 on 20 June 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

Future year’s planned expenditure will be determined and set out in each year’s Scottish Budget.

The information requested relating to non-Mother and Baby Unit adult mental health inpatient admissions during the pregnancy or the postnatal period is not held centrally. However, the Scottish Government Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board is looking at this question as part of the work following the Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) Inpatient Provision Consultation which closed on 31 May 2022.

There is currently specialist perinatal mental health provision in every mainland Health Board. We are working intensively with Boards to build their provision to the levels outlined in Delivering Effective Services . As of May 2022, there were 12 Health Boards with specialist community perinatal mental health teams, eight of which were fully established. These are: Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Forth Valley, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Tayside.

We are working closely with other Boards to ensure that services will be fully established by March 2023. This includes island Boards where regional working as well as Board level provision is a key priority area.

Board’s baseline revenue allocations are set out annually in the Scottish Budget, as published on the Scottish Government’s website. In addition, resource and capital spending limits are reported in Board’s annual accounts, which are published on their websites.

Over the period from 2013-14 to 2022-23, NHS Fife’s baseline resource budget has increased by almost 39% (£209.9 million) .

In addition to baseline capital funding, significant additional investment has been provided to NHS Fife to fund infrastructure projects, including £20.5 million for the National Treatment Centre Orthopaedics Unit.

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.

The total number of hours of social care provided each year by integration joint boards is not held centrally.

Public Health Scotland publish the Experimental Statistics publication: “Insights into Social Care: Statistics for Scotland” which includes some information on the number of hours of social care provided by different Health and Social Care Partnerships. This includes the number of hours of home care provided by Fife HSCP in each quarter since Q4 2017-18. This release is publicly available via the following link:

https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/insights-in-social-care-statistics-for-scotland/insights-in-social-care-statistics-for-scotland-support-provided-or-funded-by-health-and-social-care-partnerships-in-scotland-201920-202021/home-care/

The Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant as part of the annual local government finance settlement. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including any funding for local authority-funded care home places, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The exact number of unpaid carers living in Scotland is not known. Therefore, the number of unpaid carers in Scotland is estimated from national survey data. The preferred survey used to estimate the number of unpaid carers is the Scottish Health Survey , as it samples both adults and children and allows for detailed breakdowns.

The latest estimates from the 2020 Scottish Health Survey telephone survey , which ran with a reduced number of questions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, suggest that there were around 839,000 (between 738,000 and 939,000) adult unpaid carers (aged 18+) living in Scotland in 2020.

This report cannot be compared to previous years due to differences in methodology from the main Scottish Health Survey series.

Data from the 2021 Scottish Health Survey will be published in Autumn 2022.

The specification of, and recruitment to staff roles supported by investment through the long COVID Support Fund is a matter for individual NHS Boards.

The Strategic Network for long COVID managed by NHS National Services Scotland is providing support to NHS Boards as they plan and implement service developments.

We are supporting NHS Boards to test the introduction of models of care that will generate learning and benefit the management of other long-term and complex conditions, including Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).

The pandemic has been the biggest shock our NHS has ever faced. It has necessitated the imposition of Infection Prevention Control measures in order to contain its spread, particularly prior to the vaccination programme being fully rolled out.

These IPC measures, which have recently been deescalated, changed the way GPs see their patients. The Scottish Government wants to see greater availability of face-to-face appointments and is working with the BMA and RCGP to ensure this happens as quickly as possible. However, Covid has not gone away yet, therefore some precautions remain in place. We are clear that where clinically necessary face-to-face consultations will always be available to those who need them.

We must continue to move toward a position where choice is being offered routinely, and the Scottish Government welcomes the GMC’s proposed changes to the Good Medical Practice guidance placing a greater emphasis on shared decision-making between GPs and their patients.

Many GP practices did offer patients video or phone consultations as well as in-person face-to-face consultations before the pandemic changed the balance and we expect a number of patients will wish to continue afterwards with video or phone consultations rather than travel to their GP practice. Ultimately, what is most important is that appointments are agreed through shared decision making, balancing patient choice and clinical judgement.

We continue to explore new ways and approaches to support people to, for example, upload an image of their skin condition for review. This can support people to seek advice in a way that best supports their needs and requirements whilst also ensuring they still have access to a face-to-face appointment.

All GP practices are expected to follow the Infection Prevention and Control Manual for in-person visits as well as their local Health Board's guidance.