Chamber and committees

Across the Scottish Government, a range of staff have been or will be involved in independence work. We do not routinely record details of individual tasks carried out by civil servants, including the number of hours spent on research and compilation, as there is no business need to do this.

The Scottish Government has published the publication costs of the thirteen papers in the Building a New Scotland series, found at the following link: Building a New Scotland papers: costs - gov.scot

Preparatory work on additional material within the series has also been undertaken, adding £9,371.45. This brings the total spent on the publication of the BANS papers to £216,418.98.

Neurology trainees are provided with training in immunology and virology. The curriculum for neurology training, published by the Joint Royal Colleges of Physicians Training Board, includes Capabilities in Practice (CiPs) on managing inflammatory and infectious disorders.

These CiPs make clear expectations upon neurology trainees regarding:

• understanding of the underlying anatomy and pathophysiology of inflammatory and infectious diseases of the nervous system, including the treatments and their side effects
• ability to select, request and interpret relevant investigations including serology, genetic testing, imaging of the brain and spine, neurophysiology, tissue culture and histology in order to diagnose and manage such disorders
• ability to work with other relevant clinicians both in treating and monitoring patients and in referring them to other disciplines as appropriate.

There is robust educational Governance through NHS Education Scotland (NES) for neurology training in Scotland. NES does not consider it necessary to require neurologists to be experts in either immunology or virology, but to be able to clinically assess, investigate and manage people with neuroimmunological conditions and neuroinfectious disease using an evidence-based approach.

The Scottish Government understand the importance of sport and physical activity for women and girls in Scotland and the positive impact that has on their physical, mental, and social health, across all stages in life.

We believe there should be no barriers to participating in sport and physical activity, and we should all feel included, and able to take part and access the benefits of sport.

sportscotland’s Fit for Girls (FFG) and Young People’s Sport Panel (YPSP) tutors lead conversations and workshops on menstrual education as well work to increase awareness of the barriers to physical activity.

sportscotland’s Institute of Sport delivers tailored support services for athletes. Their internal working group, the Female Athlete Performance Group, have developed a range of resources specifically for female athletes. These are designed to support anyone working with girls and women in sport and include e-learning on the menstrual cycle in sport. These resources are available for free to all, with the ambition that all within the sporting system are comfortable having conversations about female athlete health and understand the impact on training and performance.

Energy policy (including pre-payment meters) is mostly reserved to the UK Government, which means the Scottish Government has limited powers to intervene.

It is important that consumers are able to choose the most appropriate and manageable way of paying for their energy, and prepayment meters can, under certain circumstances, play an important part in providing flexibility and choice to households and businesses.

The Scottish Government has therefore not called for a permanent ban on the installation of prepayment meters – while strongly supporting the ban on forcibly installing meters for certain vulnerable customers.

We continue to call for more targeted support for vulnerable consumers, including those on prepayment meters, who are in greater risk of increased debt or self-disconnection.

The Scottish House Condition Survey provides a snapshot of the Scottish housing stock in each survey year including the construction age and built form of Scottish domestic buildings. Within this it provides estimates of the number of dwellings with a prepayment meter for gas or electricity.

The most recent estimates of households with a prepayment meter are from 2023, and are presented in the following table:

Table 1: Number of PPM meters by type (000’s)

Energy policy (including pre-payment meters) is mostly reserved to the UK Government, which unfortunately means that the Scottish Government has limited powers to intervene.

We continue to call for more targeted support for vulnerable consumers, including those on prepayment meters, who are in greater risk of increased debt or self-disconnection. This includes the urgent introduction of a social energy tariff mechanism as a much needed safety net for priority consumers.

The Scottish Government established a social tariff working group last November, bringing together stakeholders to co-design a deliverable social tariff policy, and we have committed to providing the outputs to the UK Government as soon as possible

Social media management involves the management of Scottish Government social media accounts across platforms, and the directly related services comprise organic content production and outreach to secure content from creators and influencers.

The Scottish Government supports the Healthy Working Lives (HWL) initiative, hosted by Public Health Scotland, which offers a range of materials to support employers on all aspects of work-related health promotion and ill health prevention, return to work and workplace safety.

The Scottish Government, in partnership with Public Health Scotland and See Me, also delivers the Supporting a Mentally Healthy Workplace: National Learning Network for Employers. The network brings together employers of all sizes and across all sectors to share learning and experiences of supporting mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. Over 800 individuals are now engaged with the network.

The Scottish Government also fund Paths for All, a Scottish charity which promotes everyday walking. Paths for All run two national challenges a year in the spring and autumn. The Step Count Challenge (SCC) is a walking challenge for Scottish workplaces, which aims to encourage business to support employees to walk more to improve mental and physical health. In 2023-24, 325 workplaces took part in the spring, autumn and bespoke challenges.

The latest published data as at 31 March 2023 relating to (a) the total unitary charge payments associated with PFI and PPP contracts including NPD (Non-Profit Distributing) which were paid across the public sector in Scotland from 1997-98 to 2022-23 comprising both (i) expired and (ii) active contracts are contained within the following table.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government the member may wish to contact NHS Grampian directly for information.