Chamber and committees

The information requested on how many medical physicists are employed by each NHS board is not held centrally.

The New Medicines Review, which is considering all aspects of access to new medicines, was established on 14 January 2013.

We have received regular updates on the progress of the review since its inception.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally.

Health Protection Scotland (HPS) monitors and publishes point prevalence surveillance data on a weekly basis by board reporting the number of hospitals and wards closed due to presumed or confirmed norovirus. This is management information data and not official statistics. This provides an indication of the impact that the norovirus is having on NHS Scotland but it is not incidence data. For example, it would not include an outbreak which started on a Tuesday and was over by a Sunday, while a ward closure occurring on a Monday that was still on-going the following Monday would be counted twice even though it related to a single outbreak.

These norovirus prevalence reports are published by HPS at:

http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/haiic/ic/noroviruspointprev.aspx.

We have asked HPS to produce board, hospitals and ward prevalence information for the years you have requested and I will write to you once this information becomes available. However, HPS cannot provide named hospitals within the boards.

The Scottish Medicines Consortiums(SMC) processes for appraising orphan medicines are the same as that for any other medicine. However, in recognition of the small patient populations involved, the SMC can consider application of its modifiers which allow greater flexibility in its decision-making to allow consideration of additional factors such as accepting more uncertainty in the health economic case or a higher cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY).

The Equality Act 2010, places duties on NHS boards to reduce inequalities in access to health care and improve health outcomes for people. On 1 October 2012, new provisions in the Equality Act 2010 came into force, introducing a ban on unjustifiable age discrimination.

The equality team within NHS Health Scotland, are working to strengthen equality of access for all in NHS Scotland through their health inequalities impact assessment (HIIA). Impact assessment is an important tool for NHS boards to check their policies and services do not inadvertently exclude or discriminate groups within the population and it is an opportunity to promote equality of opportunity and good relations.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-13013 on 5 March 2013. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The table gives the contribution from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) towards discretionary housing payments (DHP) in each local authority area in Scotland.

Local authorities are allowed to supplement the amount they spend on DHPs from their own resources up to a maximum of 1.5 times the figure given in the table. Therefore the overall amount of DHPs spent in any local authority area in a given year is capped at a maximum of 2.5 times the figure given below.

However, we do not hold information centrally on the amount of DHPs awarded by each local authority in Scotland. We therefore do not know how many local authorities spent up to their maximum allowed amount.

In addition, a further breakdown of the amount allocated to each tenure is not held centrally.

Further information on the allocation of DHPs is available from the Department for Work and Pensions website at:

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/local-authority-staff/housing-benefit/user-communications/hbctb-circulars/subsidy-circulars-2013/

Summary of Discretionary Housing Payment amounts by Scottish local authority (DWP contribution)

The Scottish Government’s HL2 Return gives snapshot information on the number of households in temporary accommodation at the end of each quarter.

Table 2 in the following file gives the number of households with children in bed and breakfast at the end of each quarter.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Housing-Regeneration/RefTables/TempAccomJulySept2012

The following table gives the number of homeless applications where at least one member of the household had slept rough on the night immediately before they made their homelessness application.

Source: Scottish Government HL1 dataset as 27 Feb 2013.

The Scottish Government supports a national infrastructure and related support for financial inclusion and financial awareness, including training for debt advisors and a Financial Learning Online Scotland website for financial capability practitioners. On 21 January 2013, the Deputy First Minister announced a £5.4 million funding package for advice services designed to help them manage the growing number of requests for help as a result of UK Government’s welfare reforms.

Work in communities across Scotland on financial inclusion and financial capability is taken forward by local authorities, who are well placed to assess local need for services and put in place appropriate provision.