Chamber and committees

Free NHS dental treatment for expectant mothers or those who have borne a child within the previous 12 month period is part of The National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978. The 12 month period is fixed by primary legislation and would require a primary legislation amendment (i.e. a Bill) to change this. Therefore it is not possible to change the exemption entitlement for free treatment at present. However, the Scottish Government has committed to the removal of all charges for NHS dental treatment within the lifetime of this parliament.

The UK Government (UKG) are the principle contract owners and managers of the Managed Quarantine Service (MQS) and its suppliers. The UKG are therefore best placed to provide information in relation to the costing model of allocation of managed isolation facilities to travellers.

The information requested relating to (a) Aspergillus, (b) Pneumocystis jirovecii, (c) Staphylococcus epidermidis and (d) COVID-19 cases by hospital site is not centrally held by the Scottish Government. This information is held locally for local learning and quality improvement and can be sourced by contacting [email protected].

We do not hold this information centrally. However, we do have a close collaborative relationship with the owner of the electricity network in the City of Edinburgh, Scottish Power Distribution (SPD).

SPD has developed and published Distribution Future Energy Scenarios (DFES), which consider various decarbonisation routes to achieve Scotland’s Net Zero targets. These incorporate a 100% transition of cars / small commercial vehicles to full Electric Vehicles (EVs), including between 240,000-310,000 in Edinburgh by 2050.

SPD’s DFES anticipates growth in demand from customers on its Edinburgh distribution network to double by 2050, with 40% of this related to growth in EVs, as well as heat demand. Meeting this extra demand will need a combination of traditional network reinforcements but also flexibility from other energy resources (e.g. generators and battery storage).

SPD’s high level estimate is that this will require between £150-400 million investment in its Edinburgh network by 2050. The actual scale of investment will ultimately be driven by the technologies adopted by customers and the ways in which they are used.

SPD is currently preparing a draft business plan for investment across all of its distribution networks. The Scottish Government will continue to work with SPD, as well as with Scotland’s other network owners and Ofgem, to ensure that our energy and climate change commitments and targets are fully reflected in these plans and the investment that they will require.

Further to question S6W-00824, the constrained passenger and vehicle carrying capacity with 1 metre mitigations in place for the vessels listed, are detailed in the following table.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Scottish Government has engaged with a range of race equality organisations and specifically convened the Expert Reference Group on Covid-19 and Ethnicity. Issues in relation to spoken language interpreters have not been raised as a significant issue within these discussions. However, it is for individual public bodies to arrange the provision of spoken language interpreters and as such this information is not held centrally.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) is not required to score its research publications on whether they criticise the Scottish Government. The process for publishing research reports is managed impartially and objectively, in line with scientific principles and recognised best practice.

A Communications Framework, jointly agreed by SG, PHS and COSLA, is in place that provides a high-level framework of good practice in relation to a broad range of communications activity, including communications relating to the publication of research publications. The framework does not impact on the independence of research publications. The framework stresses the operational autonomy of PHS and the key importance of mutual respect for our different roles and responsibilities.

PHS reports are routinely published on their website and can be found at the following web address: https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/ .

As set out in my response to S6W-00871 on 5 July 2021 we’ve taken a number of steps to provide advice and support to people with chronic pain during the pandemic, including highlighting relevant information on the matter of injections to assist them in discussions with their clinician and Health Board.

In June 2020, joint guidance was issued by the Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPM) and the British Pain Society (BPS) in relation to pain interventions which stated: ‘decision[s] to resume injections should be based on a balance of risks and benefits for individual patients’ . This statement reflected the factors the FMP/BPS said should be considered when resuming pain interventions, including the local prevalence of COVID-19, reducing the risk to patients (specifically in relation to steroid injections) and prioritising lower risk aspects of pain services first. It also emphasised the importance of patient consent in relation to additional risks of attending hospital and receiving an injection during the pandemic.

Following this, the advice issued by the FPM in July 2020 again set out that there was insufficient evidence to assess the potential associated risks should a patient come into contact with COVID-19. It goes on to on to clearly state: ‘Our previous recommendations - “FPM & BPS Joint Guidance on Pain Interventions during the COVID-19 Recovery Phase” published on the 8th of June 2020 in conjunction with the British Pain Society […] still stand ’. The update also stated, when making treatment decisions, the: ‘risk benefit ratio [should] also [be] measured in the context of the local prevalence of the COVID-19 virus at that point in time.’ Our replies to correspondence about this matter therefore continued to include a link to the June 2020 guidance and in response to feedback from a member of the public in April 2021, we now direct people to the overarching FPM webpage containing both advice documents.

Neither Scottish Government officials or Ministers make or influence treatment or prescribing decisions as these are entirely for clinicians in charge of a patient’s care to make. When taking these decisions we expect clinicians to discuss risks and options fully with their patients taking into account relevant guidance, the impact of pain on people’s quality of life and any safety considerations.

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

(a) The Joint Housing Resilience Chairs Group was convened by the previous Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning at his request and were held over the period at the height of the pandemic. The need for specific meetings with the resilience group reduced as the recovery progressed. The group last met on 17 March and has not reconvened.

(b) No meetings of the Local Government Resilience Group have taken place since 6 May 2021 as this meeting was chaired and organised by COSLA. It has now been moved to meeting by exception.

(c) The Private Rented Sector Resilience Group met on the 17 May, 7 June and 23 June. The next scheduled meeting of the group is 26 July.

(d) The Social Housing Resilience Group met on the 25 May and 22 June. The next scheduled meeting of the group is 27 July.

(e) Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans Sub-group met on the 18 May and the next meeting of the group is on the 17 August.

The Scottish Government continues to support the national development of the ChargePlace Scotland electric vehicle charging network. We have invested over £45 million since 2011 in the ChargePlace Scotland network, which now has over 1800 publicly available chargepoints.

Over £5.5M will be provided to local authorities this year to continue to invest in the growth of the ChargePlace Scotland network. Funds will be administered across a number of schemes including our Local Authority Install Programme, which will focus on improving the capacity and resilience of the network by bolstering electric vehicle charging provision at key sites across Scotland, retrofitting rapid chargers with contactless payment facilities and funding warranty and maintenance packages. Other programmes such as Switched on Towns and Cities and Low Carbon Travel and Transport Fund will continue to deliver additional chargepoints and we are providing additional funding to Scottish local authorities as top-up funding for the UK Government’s on-street charging funding programme.

We continue to support households and business who wish to install chargepoints by providing grant funding to support this. To date almost 10,000 household and workplace charge points have been installed.

We are currently working with Scottish Future Trust to consider new approaches to financing publicly available EV charging infrastructure and will shortly bring forward consultation on installing EV infrastructure in all new build properties and all existing properties undergoing major renovation.