Chamber and committees

The total number of bed days recorded for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) with an emergency admission during their continuous inpatient stay (CIS) by NHS Board and financial year (2018/19–2020/21) is provided in the following table.

Table 1: Total bed days for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) with an emergency admission during their continuous inpatient stay (CIS) by NHS board of Treatment and Financial Year, 2018/19 - 2020/21.

Source: Public Health Scotland, SMR01
Extracted: December 2021

The Scottish Government has no current plans to run public awareness campaigns on deep vein thrombosis (DVT), and there has been no public awareness campaign on DVT by the Scottish Government since 2011.

The Scottish Government carries out a regular planning process to identify which topics may require support from marketing activity, including public awareness campaigns.

NHSinform.scot contains information on DVT ( https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/blood-and-lymph/deep-vein-thrombosis/ ).

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Interim Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

Decisions by the SPS as to the most appropriate location to accommodate transgender people are made on an individualised basis, informed by a multi-disciplinary assessment of both risk and need.

Such decisions seek to protect both the wellbeing and rights of the individual as well as the welfare and rights of others around them, including staff, in order to achieve an outcome that balances risks and promotes the safety of all.

As of 3 December 2021, there were 15 transgender individuals held across 10 prisons in Scotland. In order to avoid the potential indirect identification of individuals, it is not appropriate to disaggregate the data as requested.

We have committed, both in the Programme for Government and in our initial response to the Social Renewal Advisory Board’s report, to a full, independent review of the Scottish Welfare Fund. The review will examine many areas of the Fund including accessibility, funding levels, local authority administration and statutory guidance. In order to do this we are commissioning independent research, findings from which will be reported before the end of 2022.

Limited information is published in the Stage of Treatment publication on cancellation by service rates. You will find this information at: Stage of treatment waiting times - Inpatients, day cases and new outpatients 30 November 2021 - NHS waiting times - stage of treatment - Publications - Public Health Scotland

Information covering October 2021 to December 2021 will be published by PHS in February 2022.

We recognise the incredible contribution that Scotland’s unpaid carers make to our communities and know that the pandemic has added significant additional pressures. We are committed to giving a strong voice to unpaid carers, listening to their needs and acting on what they tell us.

We will develop and publish a stand-alone Carers Strategy with a focus on recovery and improving carer support in a meaningful and sustainable way. The strategy will focus on carers and their needs, setting out how policies across the Scottish Government can work together with other public bodies to support carers as we recover from the pandemic and beyond.

We will engage with unpaid carers about the strategy’s scope and purpose in the coming months, and this will inform its development. Our approach to the development of the strategy will be both a collaborative and an iterative one which will draw on the knowledge and lived experience of unpaid carers so that the strategy is shaped by those who best understand the many challenges faced. We will seek to publish the strategy as soon as possible to provide a clear vision for how we will respond to the challenges faced by so many carers.

The Forestry Grant Scheme, delivered through the Scottish Rural Development Programme and Scottish Forestry, will provide £307,759 of support specifically for capercaillie between 2016 and 2025. Prior to this, the Scottish Government paid out £781,452 through the Rural Priority (RP) Scheme’s Capercaillie Package between 2008 and 2019.

NatureScot, (formerly Scottish Natural Heritage), made payments of £544,705 towards the research and conservation of capercaillie in Scotland during the period December 2011 – December 2021.

Other Scottish Government funding in support of habitat management is likely to have benefited capercaillie but where not specifically provided for this species no breakdown is available.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-04311 on 3 December 2021. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found athttps://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The following table outlines the number of calls made to the Dumb Dumpers hotline each year since 2014. As a result of the cyber attack experienced by SEPA, the Dumb Dumpers Hotline was down between 24 December 2020 and 27 June 2021.

During this time, the public were still able to report flytipping incidents through the online form on the Zero Waste Scotland website.

However, due to this cyber attack, we do not have access to Dumb Dumpers data between 1 November and 24 December 2020.

* Figures from 1 June 2020 to 30 October 2020

** Figures from 28 June 2021 to 30 November 2021