Chamber and committees

During the pandemic, the private sector was utilised to provide additional capacity to treat urgent and cancer patients, and this proved to be of great assistance. We remain open to the option of utilising the private sector again to support orthopaedics and other specialties with excessively long waiting lists. However, at present - and for the foreseeable future - the private sector has very limited capacity due to a backlog in their own private patients. There is therefore very limited capacity available for the treatment of NHS patients in these facilities.

The Scottish Government is currently working with Public Health Scotland to develop an online platform for members of the public to access information on the average waiting times for a range of treatments within their health board area. We expect the platform to be available this summer.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-06836 on 8 March 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 .

To date our commitment to provide long-term investment of over £500 million on bus priority infrastructure has taken the form of the Bus Partnership Fund (BPF) and the Bus Priority Rapid Deployment Fund (BPRDF). Both funds aim to support local authorities – in partnership with bus operators – to tackle the negative impacts of congestion on bus services.

In March 2020, the BPF was paused as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The BPRDF provided funding to local authorities to deliver temporary bus priority measures during the pandemic. The BPF relaunched in November 2020 for proposals for permanent priority measures on local roads. Through BPF, an initial £25.8m of funding has been awarded to eleven partnerships covering 28 local authorities for initial appraisal work to develop ambitious new bus priority infrastructure.

We welcome Leukaemia Care’s report and its recommendations to improve patient outcomes. We are pleased to say that we are closely aligned to the recommendations found in this report. Our Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer, published in January 2019, ensure patients on active monitoring are accounted for in planning cancer care and support primary care clinicians in recognising cancer symptoms, including chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

We continue to work with health professionals and the Scottish Primary Care Cancer Group to raise awareness of symptoms and promote referral best practice.

Alongside this work, funding of up to £2.5 million has been issued over 2021-22 and 2022-23 to support 12 pilot programmes across Scotland to deliver a single point of contact (SPoC) for cancer patients. This contact will support patients to discuss questions or anxieties related to their clinical care from the point of diagnosis, receive timely and accurate advice on their appointments, test and results, have the chance to discuss what non-clinical support may be available for them and their family following a cancer diagnosis, understand their treatment plan and expected timelines for treatment delivery, self-manage (aspects of) their condition, and access available services as appropriate following discharge.

Additionally, we have worked with the Scottish Cancer Coalition (SCC) to produce a patient leaflet to highlight the work of the charities which are members of the coalition and the support they can provide to patients.

It is not possible to undertake an assessment of the impact on emissions from road vehicles as a direct result of the reduced ScotRail timetable. There is not specific data available on any change in road vehicle kilometres that could be attributed to reduced rail services.

Transport trends data since 16 May 2022 show a fall in rail travel of 14% and an increase in concessionary bus patronage and car use, both by 1% in the same period.

Building on the success of the bus priority on the M90 / M9 Queensferry Corridor Actively Managed Hard Shoulder (AMHS) for buses, Transport Scotland recently opened an additional section on the M8 eastbound approach to Hermiston Gait.

Through the Bus Partnership Fund, Transport Scotland has awarded £25.80m of funding for local bus partnerships to design and deliver bus priority measures on both local and trunk roads. This initial funding is for appraisal work to support local transport authorities towards developing business cases for further bus priority investment in their regions. Next steps will be dependent on the outcomes of this work.

Transport Scotland is also currently finalising the strategic business case for the Glasgow managed motorway network, which includes consideration of bus priority on the M8 alongside the M80, M77 and M74. This will be published along with information on the next steps, once the second Strategic Transport Projects Review has been finalised.

All these measures are aimed at reducing the negative impacts of congestion on bus services and addressing the decline in bus patronage.

We are working hard to abolish excessively long waits that have undoubtedly been exacerbated by the impacts of the global pandemic and we offer our sincere sympathies to all patients waiting for treatment.

Pausing of non-urgent activity during the pandemic has inevitably led to a build-up of numbers waiting for treatment, and the emergence of Omicron and the BA.2 sub-variant in late 2021 has undoubtedly added to existing significant pressure. We are working closely with NHS Boards to get those waiting for treatment the care they need as quickly as possible.

In order to support a sustainable reduction in the backlog of planned care procedures in Scotland, the Scottish Government published an NHS Recovery Plan in August 2021. Backed by over £1 billion of funding, this sets out our plans for health and social are over the next 5 years.

The NHS Recovery plan can be accessed here: NHS recovery plan - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

We have invested £10 million in 21-22 to support cancer waiting times improvements. Latest data (Q4 2021) shows that the median wait for melanoma patients on the 62 day pathway (from urgent suspicion of cancer referral to treatment) is 27 days and 0 days for those on a 31 day pathway (from decision to treat, to first treatment).

We are also investing in our £44 million Detect Cancer Early Programme. The Detect Cancer Early website (getcheckedearly.org) features an interactive ‘symptom checker’ tool to raise awareness of the common signs and symptoms of cancer, including skin cancers to improve the likelihood of better outcomes for melanoma patients. To further improve diagnosis, Scotland’s first three Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres (ECDC) have been established. The Centres provide primary care with access to a new, person-centred fast-track diagnostic pathway for patients with non-specific symptoms (including weight loss, nausea, and fatigue) that are suspicious of cancer.

As part of our NHS Recovery Plan we are investing over £400m to create a network of 10 National Treatment Centres across Scotland, increasing capacity for over 40,000 additional planned elective procedures and diagnostic care across 12 specialities, including cancer treatments.

More specifically, the Centre for Sustainable Delivery manages a Dermatology work-stream, to improve patient pathways, experience and outcomes within the specialty. As part of this work they have committed to ongoing work in relation to Dermatology Nursing Education and working with the British Association of Dermatologists to ensure sustainability and to increase the range of pathways where primary care have access to high quality referral information from a single source.

Work is underway to develop a new cancer strategy for NHS Scotland. Ensuring cancer patients, including those affected by melanoma, have access to equitable, timely treatment will remain a priority.

The Scottish Government does not collect the detailed breakdowns of debts owed to Public Bodies. The information that is collected by Scottish Government will not necessarily distinguish between debts owed by individuals and debts owed by companies and other organisations.

Every Public Body produces and publishes an Annual Report and Accounts, and within this publication will report on amounts owed to them. The information within these accounts on debts owed to the Public Body may be at a relatively high level and may not distinguish between the different types of debt owed to them.

These annual accounts will normally be available online on the website of the individual entity. In the earlier period covered by the request – i.e. starting from 1999 – it may be necessary to approach the Public Bodies directly.