Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-06307 on 28 February 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

The pandemic paused the Oral Health Improvement Programme, which was developing, through Design Groups, preventive and patient focused care through the New Model of Care.

The clear focus for Scottish Government is to recover and stabilise NHS dental services, enabling the sector to emerge from the pandemic in a condition to improve patient access to care. The recovery of the sector will support the development of the longer term reform programme, building back the sector to support necessary strategic reforms that develop the work that was developed in the Design Groups pre-pandemic.

Scottish Government has signalled some key areas for the reform programme through fee changes that were put in place form 1 February, in particular the preventive Childsmile element, focus on deprivation and harmonisation of examination fees for adult and child patients.

The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) is currently reviewing its 2007 recommendation against lung cancer screening. The work on developing a protocol for NHS Boards to undertake pilot programmes for lung cancer screening will resume once the NSC’s evidence review is complete, as any new recommendation will guide pilot design and implementation.

In year one, the Fund will be split evenly between Capital and Financial Transactions. Detail of what each can be used for is available in HMT’s consolidated budget guidance, the most recent version of which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/consolidated-budgeting-guidance-2021-to-2022

NHS Boards are expected to assess their patients’ travel needs and can, if required, direct them to appropriate support this will include local volunteer groups and charities who they have engaged with. For example NHS Ayrshire and Arran has a service level agreement with Ayrshire Cancer Support which provides transport for patients.

The Scottish Government acted on requests by retail organisations not to launch the consultation in the run-up to Christmas which is the busiest trading period and may not have allowed retailers the full opportunity to share their views. We took the opportunity to liaise with a short-life working group and update the consultation in line with the most recent emerging evidence.

This information is not held centrally.

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to reach its target of investing 1% of the health budget in CAMHS services by the end of this parliamentary session. We are committed to increasing direct investment in mental health by 25% and to working with NHS Boards and other stakeholders to ensure that at least 10% of frontline NHS spend goes towards mental health and 1% goes on child and adolescent services by the end of this Parliamentary session.

The £40 million additional funding this year for improvement across child and adolescent mental health services from the Recovery and Renewal Fund and our plans for increased investment in next and future years will contribute towards delivering the commitment.

Health Boards are required to report exit packages in their annual accounts, in line with the requirements set out in HMT’s Financial Reporting Manual. Boards’ annual accounts are publicly available on their websites.

Detail not included in the accounts or that pre dates this requirement would need to be requested from Health Boards.

National Record of Scotland (NRS) plan to publish the 1921 Scottish Census on the ScotlandsPeople Website ( ScotlandsPeople | Connecting Generations ) and in the ScotlandsPeople Centre as early as possible in the second half of 2022.