Chamber and committees

The majority of Scotland’s council areas have experienced a stall in life expectancy growth since 2012-2014. Life expectancy has unfortunately decreased across many areas in Scotland. This trend has also been experienced across the UK.

National Records of Scotland publish official annual statistics on life expectancy by council area. Their report for 2018-2020 can be found here: Life Expectancy in Scotland, 2018-2020 | National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk) . Between 2016-2018 and 2018-2020, average life expectancy in Inverclyde reduced from 75.2 to 74.3 for males and 79.6 to 78.6 for females. Average life expectancy in North Ayrshire reduced from 76.3 to 75.3 for males, though female life expectancy increased from 79.9 to 80.1.

It is worth highlighting that deaths from COVID-19 have accounted for the vast majority of the fall in life expectancy across Scotland as a whole, reducing male life expectancy by 16.7 weeks and female life expectancy by 14.3 weeks. Inverclyde and North Ayrshire have sadly experienced some of the highest rates of deaths per local population from COVID-19, with 216.7 per 100,000 population in Inverclyde and 234.6 per 100,000 population in North Ayrshire.

We know that deprivation drives excess mortality, and that areas of high deprivation have increased rates of deaths from COVID-19. Inverclyde and North Ayrshire have a higher proportion of local zones of high deprivation than many other areas in Scotland. We are committed to ending poverty, increasing equitable access to fair employment, education and training, and improving our physical and social environments. We will do this by working more effectively in partnership across government and with our local partners across all sectors.

Our recently published COVID-19 Recovery Strategy sets out how we will tackle many of the deep-rooted inequalities that lead to unfair differences in health and life expectancy. Increasing life expectancy and improving the health for everyone in Scotland remains a clear priority for this Government.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and Skills Development Scotland (SDS) administer the Flexible Workforce Development Fund (FWDF) on behalf of the Scottish Government. They do not allocate funds to different sectors, as the Fund works on a first come first served basis.

Recognising the significant delivery challenges in the last year due to Covid-19 restrictions, it has been agreed with SFC and SDS to extend academic year 2020-21 delivery to the end of March 2022. Information on employer sector is provided by employers themselves to colleges, the Open University in Scotland (OUiS) and SDS during the application process. To date, the estimated FWDF spend per sector in 2020-21, as reported by SFC and SDS, has been the following:

We are working with industry, local government and environmental groups to develop a route map to deliver our waste and recycling targets for 2025. This work will also be critical in determining how the waste and resources sector will contribute towards lower carbon emissions in the period to 2030 and beyond.

I chaired the most recent Low Emission Zones Leadership Group on 8 September 2021. The LEZ Leadership Group comprises of myself, the Minister for Environment, Biodiversity and Land Reform, along with the four LEZ city Local Authorities of Aberdeen City Council, Dundee City Council, City of Edinburgh Council, and Glasgow City Council, and senior officials from SEPA and Transport Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03144 on
‎ 28 September 2021. 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

Scottish Government is a key partner in Save a Life for Scotland (SALFS). The partnership published an updated Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) strategy in March 2021, which seeks to increase the percentage of OHCAs which have a defibrillator applied before the arrival of ambulance service from 8% to 20%.

Achieving this is not only about increasing the number of defibrillators in public places, but also about ensuring that defibrillators already in the community are publicly accessible, are registered with the Scottish Ambulance Service so they can be directed to in instances of OHCA, and that people feel empowered to use them. The OHCA strategy identifies a number of actions to take in order to achieve these goals.

We also recognise that it is important to support evidence based placement of defibrillators in areas where OHCAs are most likely to occur. To this end, the Resuscitation Research Group, Edinburgh University is piloting a data-led approach to the placement of defibrillators in Scotland, called SCOT-PAD. The Scottish Government funded the initial modelling analysis in 2018 and are fully supportive of the group’s work.

The Scottish Government’s position is expressed in the joint statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and the BMA, published on 5 October.

For many years now, in person face-to-face appointments form part of a hybrid model of options that are offered to patients including video consultations, telephone consultations and in person face-to-face appointments. The pandemic changed the balance between these appointment types. We are clear that our expectation is that face to face appointments will increase, however we also recognise that for a number of patients they will wish to continue with telephone or video consultations. Changes to physical distancing guidance will assist practices to safely increase more face to face appointments.

Importantly the type of appointment offered should be agreed through shared decision making, balancing patient choice and autonomy, and practice circumstances/capacity and clinical judgement.

We have met with a range of private rented sector representatives, including those representing tenants and landlords, and we will continue to do so as we progress work on implementing an effective national system of rent controls. Our aim is to ensure quality, affordability and fairness for everyone who rents a home, whilst carefully examining potential unintended consequences. This continued engagement will help develop the policy, which will form part of a public consultation on a new draft Rented Sector Strategy at the end of this year – and providing an opportunity to gather a wide range of views and interests. Upon consideration of the consultation responses, a final Rented Sector Strategy will be published later in 2022 and deliver a key commitment, set out in Housing to 2040 , Scotland’s long term vision for housing.

We are working with industry, local government and environmental groups to develop a route map to deliver our waste and recycling targets for 2025. This work will also be critical in determining how the waste and resources sector will contribute towards lower carbon emissions in the period to 2030 and beyond.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03574 on
‎ 25 October 2021. 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
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