Chamber and committees

Health Boards lead on the local delivery of the vaccination programme. Local Health Boards are following Public Health Scotland (PHS) Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) guidance.

We continue to provide advice and support to those who are at highest risk from COVID-19 to allow them to make informed choices about their risks and daily activities.

An updated highest risk list is regularly provided to GPs and NHS Board shielding coordinators. We know how important it is for people that are added to the highest risk list to have support, which is why we provide them with comprehensive information on the additional advice and support available to them. Currently those on the highest risk list are advised to follow the same guidance as the general population.

Anyone who has concerns regarding how they will receive their vaccine, or wish to rearrange their appointment should visit The coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine (nhsinform.scot) or contact the national vaccination helpline on 0800 030 8013.

The position of Chair of Creative Scotland has attracted remuneration since the organisation was established on 1 July 2010 though no incumbent to date has chosen to accept that offer.

From 1 October 2019 members of Creative Scotland other than the Chair have been entitled to receive a daily fee of £218 per day up to a maximum of £2,616.

The introduction of remuneration for the board members of the other national culture and heritage public bodies has been deferred while the priority has been those bodies’ response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Remuneration will be considered, taking into account those bodies’ charitable status and also Scottish Ministers’ powers to remunerate according to each body’s statute.

"Appropriate" means in accordance with public sector pay policy as it applies to board members of public bodies. The public sector pay policy document is revised on an annual basis.

Vacancies are now advertised on “myjobscotland” which allows for easier continual monitoring by local authorities in line with their responsibilities for teacher employment.

NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) has established a dedicated Quality Resolver Team which leads on resolving errors with COVID-19 vaccination records.

As of 22 September, NSS Resolver group have resolved over 21,000 cases of incorrect vaccination records, with approximately 7717 cases outstanding.

The Scottish Government package of support for Scottish student nurses and midwives is currently at its highest level. The average cost of training a nursing student, over three years of full-time university education, is £55,000. This comprises:

• Teaching grant and tuition fee payments to the university;
• £10,000 non-means tested, non-repayable annual bursary payments to the student;
• travel costs;
• uniform costs;
• health checks;
• disclosure checks;
• and a range of additional funding students can also apply for, such as Dependant’s Allowance, Single Parent’s Allowance, Childcare Allowance for Parents and Disabled Students’ Allowance.

Growing our nursing workforce is crucial and we have steadily increased places on undergraduate nursing courses over 9 consecutive years. Each year we undertake a robust nursing student intakes planning process to determine the target number of nursing students to which Scottish universities should recruit to meet future nursing workforce demands. The process involves significant input from key stakeholders from across the health and education sectors, and uses detailed modelling of current and projected staff and student numbers, including workforce supply and demand for 3-5 years hence, as well as anticipated key service drivers, in coming to a decision.

To address more immediate staffing pressures, the NHS Recovery Plan, which was published on 25 August 2021, commits more than £1 billion of targeted investment for the recovery and renewal of our health service. A key requirement to delivering the Recovery Plan is having the right workforce in place at the right time and it is therefore key that we now develop a new supporting workforce strategy to enable us to do this. We will therefore publish a National Workforce Strategy by the end of this year, which supports remobilisation, recovery and renewal of Health and Social Care Services.

Table 1 highlights data from UCAS showing both the number of applications and number of accepted applicants to pre-registration nursing programmes from 2007 to 2020. Figures for 2021 have not yet been published yet.

Table 1

Applications and acceptances to nursing at Scottish providers by year

Source: UCAS

The Framework represents a range of skills required for major transformation programme support including programme management and governance setup as opposed to social care delivery experience. The Framework was established specifically in recognition of the need for such services on an occasional basis and is available for use by all UK public bodies. It sought to address the understandable lack of such specialist internal resources due to the temporary nature of such a requirement. Calling off from the Framework provides access to a range of skill sets, and levels and areas of specialism drawn from a team of resources as opposed to reliance on single individuals.

The Scottish Government and NHS National Services Scotland have published a draft NHS Scotland Climate Emergency and Sustainability Strategy for consultation. It sets out an aim for NHS Scotland to become a net-zero health service by 2040. Since 1990, local Health Boards have reduced the greenhouse gas emissions from their buildings by 63.9%.