Chamber and committees

This Government is committed to broadening the range of people represented in Scotland’s public places, reflecting in particular the contribution of women and ethnic minorities. A specific fund is being considered in the context of the Scottish Government’s longer term spending plans and we will discuss how such a fund might be best deployed with Creative Scotland, whose remit includes public art.

The Scottish Government’s approach to tackling health inequalities focusses on three key aspects of health inequality: mitigating against the socio-economic drivers of inequalities; ensuring fair opportunities for health improvement for all individuals; and ensuring health services are accessible to all.

Our COVID-19 Recovery Strategy sets out our vision for how we will address the systemic inequalities that lead to health inequalities. This includes making progress towards a wellbeing economy and accelerating inclusive person-centred public services. We are committing £4 billion in social security and welfare payments over the next financial year, including £197 million to double the Scottish Child Payment and extend it to under 16s.

Equity and inclusivity will be at the heart of our place-based approach to health, where we are looking at what more we can do to create the right conditions for health and wellbeing within local communities. In addition to community-led initiatives we’re committed to providing £9 million a year for smoking cessation services and £5.7 million for weight management services.

Additionally, the Scottish Government is taking robust action to address racialised health inequalities. We have published the Race Equality Immediate Priorities (IPP), which includes a range of commitments focused on pursuing health equity for minority ethnic people.

Charities are a major funder of medical research and development in Scotland, with investment estimated to be worth £122m in 2018 (Fraser of Allander report 2022). Scotland is a global centre of excellence for clinical research and there are a number of organisations in Scotland supporting those charities and their researchers.

The Association of Medical Research Charities works to maximise the potential for research and innovation in the NHS to ensure the investment from medical research charities has the greatest impact for patients. Medical Research Scotland supports individuals through the award of doctoral studentships and through other training initiatives to companies. Scottish Health Innovation Ltd also support clinical research and work closely with NHS Research Scotland, in partnership of Scottish NHS Boards and the Chief Scientist Office (CSO), to innovate and commercialise products and services. The Scottish Funding Council offer a number of funding programmes, which are administered by Interface, to offset the cost for collaborations to support innovation and research.

To further support research and development the Programme for Government has committed £100m to R&D over the next 5 years.

The Chief Scientist Office as part of the Scottish Government provides fellowship schemes to support the career development of health researchers within Scotland. Details are available from the CSO website. Fellowships – Chief Scientist Office (scot.nhs.uk)

Clinical Academic Fellowship Scheme

This scheme is for clinical professionals early in their career to obtain a PhD. The eligibility for this includes medics in training, GP’s, Nurses, Midwives, Allied Health Professionals and health care scientists.

Early Postdoctoral Scheme

An early postdoctoral scheme which will provide 3 years of funding to health researchers with less than 2 years postdoctoral research experience. This is open to both clinical and non-clinical researchers who are proposing projects within CSO’s overall remit of early translational (experimental medicine), clinical and applied health research and social care.

NES/CSO Lectureship Scheme

A joint scheme run with NHS Education Scotland (NES) for speciality medics in training who have completed a PhD. This scheme provides 50% research time while they complete their training.

NRS Career Researcher Fellowships

This scheme has been running for over 10 years and supports GP’s and NHS-funded clinical staff in developing a research career within their post. The award provides funding for protected time (2 sessions a week) to contribute to, conduct and lead clinical research.

We have repeatedly called for the UK Government to waive all visa requirements but, in the absence of this, what we now need is for the Home Office to give people visas quickly and efficiently.

I have held several meetings with Lord Harrington, Minister for Refugees, on the UK response and how our governments work collaboratively. I recently met with Kevin Foster, Minister for Safe and Legal Migration, and raised my many concerns about the significant administrative issues, complex application processes, and unacceptable delays for individuals who have been forced to flee their homeland.

To alleviate confusion with the process, the UK Government should immediately implement automatic status updating for applications (on all routes) that have been outstanding for more than 5 days and an escalation process for applications that have been outstanding for more than one week.

Chronic Pain services in Scotland are currently unable to gather electronic data on return appointments in a consistent manner and one that could support routine national data collection by Public Health Scotland (PHS).

We have published a draft Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery for public consultation in December 2021 which invited ideas and views on a proposed commitment to continue work with Public Health Scotland to increase national reporting and analysis of data to improve services for people with chronic pain.

Responses to the consultation are currently being analysed and we will publish our response to the findings, including how these views have been used to shape the final Framework and actions to improve pain management data collection and reporting, later this year.

The Scottish Government can order a crop haulm to be destroyed at any time during the season. The Scottish Government conducts an annual surveillance programme of testing to ensure potato crops in Scotland remain free from many economically important pests and diseases and, in partnership with the potato industry, ensure that robust measures are in place to maintain Scotland’s high-health status and world-wide reputation for producing high quality seed potatoes.

As part of our work to take forward recommendations from the Grouse Moor Management Review Group, the Scottish Government also commissioned Scotland’s Rural College and the James Hutton Institute to undertake research into the biodiversity and economic impacts of grouse moors. The research found that grouse shooting enterprises were of local importance as an employer, and to the wider community and you can read more about the findings here .

The Scottish Government ambition is that everyone who wishes to is able to access fair and sustainable employment, which is why we have committed to at least halving the employment gap between disabled people and the rest of the working age population by 2038.

Employability has a pivotal role to play in supporting these commitments, ensuring those further from the labour market, including people who have a learning disability, have access to the right support at the right time to move towards, into and to sustain work. In partnership with Local Government, we have made clear our joint aim of delivering person-centred services that are inclusive and accessible.

The Fraser of Allander Institute report highlights the importance of monitoring and evaluation, which we agree with. We currently have a longstanding programme of evaluation on Fair Start Scotland, and have recently commenced a formal, independent and robust evaluation of No One Left Behind and the Young Person’s Guarantee, which we anticipate will cover a multi-year period.

In addition to this, we routinely collect data across our services about people with disabilities and their outcomes, including follow-up after 12 months to measure sustainment. As we move forward with our No One Left Behind approach, we are also taking into account learning from what has worked well in other areas, and where we can make improvements.

The report’s findings mention the visibility of people with learning disabilities in the data reporting under Fair Start Scotland. We have mainstreamed this through our recently published Employability Shared Measurement Framework, which covers activity under the No One Left Behind approach. This will allow us to better measure the reach of our services for people with learning disabilities, and the opportunities and outcomes we are supporting them to access.

Furthermore, in line with our commitment to person-centred services, the experience of users is a critical measure of success, which is why it has such a prominent role in our Shared Measurement Framework. As part of this programme of evaluation work outlined above we will consider opportunities to evaluate the experiences and outcomes of those with learning disabilities, where possible.

In addition to the socio-economic findings, we recognise from ‘Invisible No More’ that more must be done to understand the gaps in the existing data sources. To address this we are undertaking an exercise to assess the data collected across Scotland relevant to people with learning disabilities and autistic people. This will inform the development of a data action plan that Scottish Government and its partners will take forward to improve the data across a number of topics, including employment.

The Scottish Government remains committed to recovering health services fully from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Public Health Scotland is the national agency responsible for the monitoring and surveillance of data relating to blood borne viruses; however over the past two years it has prioritised its COVID-19 pandemic response over routine work.

Since the end of February 2022, the blood borne virus and STI team at PHS has begun to remobilise. This initial phase is prioritising on updating the HIV and HCV data for the past two years.

This will be followed by recommencing all previous surveillance initiatives, data collection and analysis. the Scottish Government will do all it can to support that effort.