Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government supports Police Scotland’s international activity which involves reaching out to all parts of the world, including Colombia. This activity supports the prevention of crime at source and ensures the sharing of best practice in policing in order to help the stabilisation of communities beyond our borders. All Police Scotland activity is underpinned by a human rights-based approach which has a strong focus on community engagement. Central to that is an emphasis on de-escalating conflict and ensuring that the right to protest can be freely and peacefully exercised.

We set up the super sponsor scheme to remove the need for displaced people from Ukraine to have to apply for a visa with a named person as sponsor. When applying for their visa, displaced people can only select one sponsor – so they can select the Scottish Government as their sponsor or a specific individual host. Selecting the Scottish Government allows people to apply for their visa straight away, and not wait to be matched with an individual host. It also ensures that people are accommodated safely when they arrive, before being matched to longer-term accommodation.

N95 face masks are not used in the UK. The Scottish Government has considered the use of Respiratory Protective Equipment (FFP3) for those on the Highest risk list in community settings, including those who are immunosuppressed and there isn’t sufficient evidence to confirm the benefits as well as possible disadvantages. Care is needed to ensure that people don’t use wrongly or misunderstand the protection they provide in different settings.

Student nurses entering Scottish Government funded degree programmes will increase by 9% in 2022-23, to a total recommended intake of 4536 students. This will be the 10 th successive increase in recommended student numbers, with the intake doubling over the last decade. We anticipate most of these students will be eligible for the Paramedic, Nursing and Midwifery Student Bursary.

Every year, the Scottish Government undertakes a robust nursing student intake planning process to determine the target number of pre-registration students to which Scottish universities should recruit to in the following academic year to meet estimated future nursing workforce demands.

The Programme for Government (PfG) 2021 commits to expanding medical school places by at least 100 per annum over this lifetime of this Parliament and doubling the number of widening access places. The medical undergraduate intake for 2022-23 has been set at 1317, of which it is anticipated that 1,239 students will be Scots/UK/ROI or Gibraltar and 78 will be international including EU. This intake represents an increase of 200 places above the 2021/22 intake target of 1,117 thereby delivering the first two tranches of the PfG commitment.

The Scottish Government is committed to growing the number of Scottish domiciled students studying medicine at Scottish universities as a policy priority through widening access and other targeted interventions. Places reserved for widening access students are being increased by 30 (bringing the total to 90) and pre-medical entry places are being increased by 20 (bringing the total to 70 places) in 2022-23.

Intake targets for 2023-24 and 2024-25 have not yet been set but will be considered in light of the PfG commitment.

As postgraduate medical students do not form part of the controlled medical school intake the Scottish Government is unable to respond.

Universities are independent, autonomous institutions responsible for their own selection procedures and offers, with intake numbers and the breakdown of these a decision for each individual medical schools.

Attrition rates vary each year across all degree programmes, it is therefore not possible to predict attrition rates for future cohorts. However, we have observed that course completion rates for pre-registration nursing programmes have been steadily improving year-on-year, and we anticipate that this trend will continue.

The Genetic Laboratory Major Service review considered the workforce requirements for our future genomics capabilities in NHS Scotland. A link to the report is available here:https://www.nss.nhs.scot/specialist-healthcare/specialist-services/genetic-and-molecular-pathology-laboratories/

In line with the recommendations from the Major Service Review, the NSD Transformation Team will consider the workforce planning requirements to implement the recommendations from the report in developing the action plan.

Over the coming months we will be expanding the membership of our Scottish Genomics Leadership Group(SGLG) and relevant work stream to include a wider pool of stakeholders than those currently on the SGLG. This expanded structure will consider the recommendations from the Major Service Review as well as considerations for further genomics expansion.

One of the workstreams will lead on workforce planning and will be done in partnership with relevant Trade Union representatives.

The exchange of factually accurate patient information is pivotal to the delivery of high quality, safe, patient centred healthcare whether it takes place locally, regionally, nationally in Scotland or elsewhere in the UK. Normal practice would be that where a patient is referred by a specialist team in Scotland to a specialist team in another part of the UK, the clinician responsible for their care would write a formal referral letter which would include details of the patients diagnosis, investigations already undertaken, treatments pursued so far and any proposed treatment plan or specific request of the team to which they are referring. It is also often the case that the referring clinician may provide some further detail as part of a Multidisciplinary Team Discussion, Virtual Consultation or telephone call.

On the occasion that the treatment is unplanned, the NHS facility providing the treatment should contact the individual’s GP Practice, in Scotland, directly to exchange key information from their patient record. NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) are available to support Scottish practices and the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to facilitate the sharing of records and or important information about the patient.

Systems integration and providing greater access for the public to their health and care data is a priority for Scottish Government and our ambitions are set out in our Digital Health and Care Strategy which was published in October 2022 and available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-digital-health-care-strategy/

We remain committed to the inclusion of glass in our ambitious Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) in view of the significant environmental benefits. Although the ambition of other nations’ schemes is a matter for their governments, we welcome the Welsh Government’s decision to follow our example and include glass in their scheme. We will work with all the other UK administrations to ensure interoperability of our schemes where this can be done without losing the ambition of our own.