Chamber and committees

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.

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.

This is a matter for NHS Scotland Health boards. The information requested is not held centrally.

The information requested is not collected or held centrally by the Scottish Government and would require to be obtained from Health Boards.

The Service commissioned an independent Demand and Capacity Review in 2017. Funding has since been approved on a phased basis, with the third phase of the review scheduled to be concluded and changes implemented by November 2022.

The Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) Strategy 2021 to 2026 , recognises the importance of defibrillation within the chain of survival. The strategy outlines a number of actions to ensure that Public Access Defibrillators (PADs) are mapped, maintained and accessible to the public.

If a PAD is stored in a secure, passcode-protected cabinet and is registered on the National Defibrillator Network (The Circuit), the security code to access the PAD cabinet will be held by the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS). This security code will be verbally provided to any member of the public that requires access to the cabinet. The code is not texted or transmitted to the caller’s mobile device.

In the event that the mobile network is down, as a consequence of poor weather conditions, and a member of the public requires access to a locked PAD cabinet, they should endeavour to contact the Scottish Ambulance Service via an available landline or public telephone.

We would recommend that defibrillator guardians follow the advice of the Resuscitation Council of the UK (RCUK) and consider placing their defibrillators in an unlocked cabinet in order to make them as accessible as possible. Further information is available at: https://www.resus.org.uk/about-us/news-and-events/consensus-statement-aed-cabinets.

The NHS complaints procedure does not provide for financial compensation. 

Public Health Scotland produce an annual statistical release with links to each NHS Board Annual Complaints and Feedback reports. All data prior to 2010 has been archived to the National Records of Scotland web archive.

The information available on service user complaints, including complaints upheld can be accessed from the following links;

Links to NHS Complaints Data

2020/21 - Annual report on NHS complaints - 2020 to 2021 - Annual report on complaints - Publications - Public Health Scotland

2019/20 - Annual report on complaints - 2019/20 - Annual report on complaints - Publications - Public Health Scotland

2018/19 - Quality Indicators | NHS Complaints Statistics | Health Topics | ISD Scotland

2017/18 - Quality Indicators | NHS Complaints Statistics | Health Topics | ISD Scotland

2016/17 - 2017-10-03-Complaints-Report.pdf (isdscotland.org)

2015/16 - 2016-10-04-Complaints-Report.pdf (isdscotland.org)  

2014/15 - 2015-09-29-Complaints-Report.pdf (isdscotland.org)

2013/14 - 2014-11-25-complaints-Summary.pdf (isdscotland.org)

2012/13 - 2013-09-24-Complaints-Report.pdf (isdscotland.org)

2011/12 - 2012-09-25-Complaints-Summary.pdf (isdscotland.org)

2010/11 - 2011-10-25-Complaints-Report.pdf (isdscotland.org)

The information requested is not collected or held centrally by the Scottish Government and would require to be obtained from Health Boards.

I am pleased to see Royal Society of Chemistry highlighting this important issue through its recent report.

The Scottish Government is committed to building a fully circular economy as part of our work to tackle the climate emergency. The shift to a circular economy represents an enormous economic and industrial opportunity for Scotland.

To make the most of this opportunity, we are working with industry, including construction and demolition sectors, local government and environmental groups to develop a route map to deliver our waste, recycling and climate change targets to 2025 and beyond. Through the Route Map and the forthcoming Circular Economy Bill we will consider how best to take forward waste reduction and circular economy across a range of waste streams.

In October 2020, we published our Inward Investment Plan, which identifies the transformation of the chemicals industries as one of Scotland’s nine opportunity areas for inward investment.

Partnering with Scottish Enterprise, the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) supports the advancement of bio-based solutions across all sectors. This includes supporting members of IBioIC to develop sustainable solutions for the paint industry.

Scotland’s chemical sciences R&D is consistently ranked top 3 in the world. R&D expenditure on chemicals & chemical products and pharmaceuticals totalled £192 million in 2019, 13.7% of the Scottish total.