Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government provides grant in aid funding to the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), which along with the Chief Constable has responsibility for allocating these resources across policing priorities. Despite constraints on Scotland’s public services through a decade of UK austerity, the Scottish Government investment in policing this year has increased by £60.5 million to more than £1.3 billion. An additional £15 million has been made available to the SPA in 2021-22 to specifically to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the policing budget.

As of 31 March 2021, there were 17,283 officers, which is significantly above the level inherited in 2007, with a higher number of officers than at any time during the previous administration.

Police Scotland will continue to prioritise reducing the harms to communities by tackling alcohol and drug misuse as outlined in their South Ayrshire Local Police Plan. The Scottish Government believes that the best way to reduce drug-related crime and drug-related death is to get people into appropriate treatment and support services at every point of the criminal justice system. However we must not be complacent, we will continue to bear down on crime in Scotland, through protecting police budgets and substantial investment in preventative programs.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. On 30 May 2021, Police Scotland published an article on 'assaults on police linked to coronavirus', which may provide the information requested. A link to this article is as follows: https://www.scotland.police.uk/what-s-happening/news/2021/may/over-1-000-assaults-on-police-linked-to-coronavirus-1/

It is unacceptable that Scotland’s police officers and staff should be attacked or abused while going about their daily duty and we fully support the actions that Police Scotland and the Chief Constable are taking to protect police officers and staff from assaults and their impact.

Scotland’s justice system has extensive powers to deal with perpetrators, through statutes such as the Emergency Services (Scotland) Act 2005 and section 90 of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012. For more serious attacks, the Crown may prosecute cases under common law offences such as assault, with potential penalties of up to life imprisonment.

Paediatric craniofacial surgery in Scotland is delivered by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde as a national specialist service commissioned by the National Services Division. Within the Board there is an ambition to develop endoscope assisted surgery as part of a wider practice to correct children with skull deformity due to a craniosynostosis. Physicians from the Board had intended to visit a centre in North America to share best practice but the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in this being postponed.

At present the only nationally designated craniofacial service in the UK that is known to offer endoscope assisted surgery is Great Ormond Street Hospital. Whether a patient should be referred to Great Ormond Street Hospital is dependent on individual clinical circumstances. The perioperative follow-up for patients after this procedure is more complicated as reassessment and repeat helmet fittings are required.

General practices are following Public Health Scotland’s advice to reserve face to face appointments in primary care settings for those consultations where the GP decides it is clinically necessary. This is not just to prevent the general transmission of the coronavirus but to protect general practices as medical spaces for patients who have a clinical reason for face to face attendance.

Public Health Scotland's advice is not tied to the levels Scottish local authorities are in. General practices will remain open regardless but will continue to manage face to face appointments consistent with this advice. At present all patients are still able to get an appointment by telephone or video call.

Currently 63% of teachers have had 1 dose of the vaccine. How reflective of the wider workforce the teacher figures will be will depend on the difference in age profile and underlying health conditions between these populations. Those working in the Early Learning Care sector tend to be younger so their vaccination rates would be expected to be lower at the moment. Statistics were published on 2 June 2021 at https://beta.isdscotland.org/find-publications-and-data/population-health/covid-19/covid-19-statistical-report/

The PPE Hubs provide top up and emergency PPE to social care providers across Scotland if their existing supply routes fail. Those eligible to access the Hubs include staff in care homes, care home visitors, care at home providers, unpaid carers, personal assistants, day services, sheltered housing services, supported housing and housing support, children’s homes and hospices across all sectors (public, voluntary and private).

Work is currently being taken forward with Health and Social Care Partnerships and representatives from the adult social care sector to examine whether providers would benefit from expanding the eligibility criteria further and what impact this might have on the broader operation of the Hubs and for PPE support to the sector as a whole.

The UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (“SAGE”) Environmental and Modelling Group (“EMG”) published a paper on 4 November 2020 on the “ Potential application of air cleaning devices and personal decontamination to manage transmission of COVID-19 ”, to which NHS National Services Scotland contributed on behalf of the Scottish Government. Work is due to start with the Office of Product Safety and Standards and the SAGE EMG to consider air cleaners further as there is no recognised standard for their efficacy.

Skills Development Scotland does not report apprenticeship starts by parliamentary constituency or region, but by Local Authority. Published apprenticeship starts from 2019 in the local authorities within the Central Scotland Parliamentary Region are:

The Scottish Government launched the Social Care Staff Support Fund on 25 June 2020 to ensure that social care workers receive their expected income should they be off ill or self-isolating due to coronavirus.

Following detailed review of the financial position, £1.7 billion of additional funding was provided in 2020-21 to support the Health and Social Care Sector in the response to the pandemic.

A total of £561 million was allocated to Integration Authorities for 2020-21, including funding for sustainability payments, in addition to wider social care support, for example for reducing delayed discharges, for loss of income and for other staff costs.

Staffing costs claimed through sustainability payments encompass the Social Care Staff Support Fund, the staff movement policy and other additional staffing arrangements therefore, we do not have data broken down to the level asked for. The guidance for the financial support for social care providers recommends a light touch approach to gathering evidence, recognising the administrative burden of claiming additional costs on both commissioners and providers alike, whilst they respond to the pandemic.

All of these additional costs are recorded through the Local Mobilisation Plans and form an audit record of how funds have been spent.

There is a robust process in place to ensure that public funds are spent appropriately, this consists of a requirement to ensure clear audit trails are in place to record how funding has been spent. Local Authority and Health and Social Care Partnerships will also have their own internal and governance processes in place and Section 95 officers must adhere to their duties in relation to accounting for public funds. This includes ensuring that payments for additional costs are made in line with the guidance.

Feedback from stakeholders confirms that the Social Care Staff Support Fund has been - and continues to be – utilised to prevent financial hardship for eligible social care workers.

NHS Scotland Health Boards use the delivery model which is most suitable for their local circumstances, whilst maintaining a Covid-19 safe environment.

The NHS Dumfries and Galloway system schedules its own appointments using a booking algorithm, which works as follows:

•First checks for GP practices as a vaccination location;

•Then checks for nearest vaccination centre using estimated time to drive to location ( via google maps ) to find the closest centre, there is no upper limit for travel time;

•Repeats step 2 until it finds a vaccination centre with available appointments.

A person would potentially be asked to travel a large distance if there is no capacity at nearby centres. This is managed by NHS Dumfries and Galloway.

Scottish Government officials were instructed to contact NHS Dumfries and Galloway to ascertain if more local vaccination sites can be opened and if more are needed.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway responded that it is monitoring and addressing this. There is re-booking capacity to reduce the risk of appointing patients to venues that would require significant journey times. And NHS D&G continues to review uptake and "did not attend" rates across the region to determine if it is seeing any localities where there is a need to increase our provision to increase uptake rates.