Chamber and committees

The safety and security of people’s data, and the running of NHS services is of the upmost importance. The NHS in Scotland and across the UK successfully defends itself against attacks on its IT infrastructure on a daily basis, demonstrating resilience to the threats faced.

a) The annual Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) measures physical activity in children from the ages 2 to 15, young people from the age of 16 are captured in adult data. Questions are asked on the subjects of walking, frequency of physical activity, physical activity at school, sports participation and sedentary time. Data is also captured on gender, age and socio-economic status, including deprivation.

b) The Scottish Government recognise the many benefits derived from being active, and investment is being used to drive equality, diversity and inclusion in the sporting system. The Scottish Government work with sportscotland, our national agency for sport, in partnerships with Scottish Governing Bodies of sport (SGBs), local authorities, leisure trusts, sports clubs and community organisations, schools, colleges and universities to provide opportunities for all to participate in sport and physical activity, to break down the barriers, financial or otherwise, that keep too many people from leading active lives.

Information on the destination of referrals made for patients in relation to long COVID is not held centrally. This is a matter for territorial NHS Boards.

There are standard procedures in place in hospitals across Scotland for treating patients who present with an overdose, regardless of the substance involved.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery is responsible for driving clinically-led service redesign and transformation in care across NHS Scotland. It consists of a number of national improvement programmes which are focussed on individual Scottish Government strategic priority areas.

The Programme Team workplans for 2024-25 are still in the process of being finalised and will be approved by Scottish Government.

A summary of the CfSD national programmes of work are as follows:

Modernising Patient Pathways (MPP) Programme: The MPP team deliver national improvements in planned care and support front line clinical teams to develop and implement sustainable improvements in service delivery. A key focus of the team is on developing national clinical pathways and supporting boards to increase the use of Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT) and Discharge Patient Initiated Review (PIR).

National Elective Coordination Unit (NECU): The NECU team supports improved access to care by providing a consistent approach to national demand and capacity assessment and allocation as well as providing waiting list validation to ensure lists are up to date.

Unscheduled Care Programme: The Unscheduled Care Programme delivers support and develops improvement tools to help Boards to manage urgent and unscheduled care capacity and capability, including Optimising Flow Navigation Centre (FNC) services, hospital-at-home models and developing pathways to support care home access to urgent care.

Cancer Improvement and Earlier Diagnosis Programme: The Cancer Improvement and Earlier Diagnosis team drives NHS Scotland’s cancer strategic priorities and plays a key role in delivering Scotland’s 10-year cancer strategy, including working with Boards to ensure the Framework for Effective Cancer Management (FECM) is embedded.

National Endoscopy Programme: The National Endoscopy Programme supports Boards to deliver the Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan. This includes supporting the deployment of the new Endoscopy Reporting System and working with NHS Scotland Academy to promote and maximise training opportunities around non-medical endoscopy and cystoscopy.

Innovation Programme: The Innovation team manages the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) Pathway, which is designed to identify and support national adoption of high-impact innovations at pace.

National Green Theatres Programme: The Green Theatres Programme supports NHS Boards to meet the net zero commitments for NHS Scotland through reducing the carbon footprint of theatres and delivering more environmentally sustainable surgery.

Planned Care Programme: The Planned Care Programme is responsible for monitoring planned care performance across all NHS Scotland Boards. It also leads national improvement work around Trauma and Orthopaedics, Ophthalmology and Radiology.

The Scottish Government acknowledges this report which serves as a clear message that trans young people in Scotland are experiencing difficult and tangible challenges in their day to day lives.

Trans people continue to suffer poorer outcomes relative to the wider population, and this needs to change.

The Scottish Government are providing funding of over £1.1 million to LGBTQI+ organisations in 2024-25 to enable them to take forward a range of activities to advance equality and tackle discrimination.

We are taking forward our commitment to introduce legislation to end conversion practices in Scotland and responses to the public consultation, which closed on the 2 April, will be analysed and considered to inform the Bill the Scottish Government will introduce into Parliament. We have also funded a dedicated conversion practices helpline and are continuing to develop non-legislative measures to support victims and survivors of conversion practices.

We have published a Non-Binary Equality Action Plan to improve equality and wellbeing for non-binary people, established and funded organisations dedicated to stopping LGBTI-related bullying and discrimination, and published a new Hate Crime Strategy for Scotland, which sets out a vision for a Scotland that lives free from hatred and prejudice and where our communities are empowered, inclusive and safe.

It is essential that we continue to listen to people with lived experience and continue to strive for equality and inclusion to improve the lives of LGBTQI+ people in Scotland.

The NHS Scotland National Access Policy provides that whilst the vast majority of patients are seen within their local area, services may also be delivered through another Health Board or suitable alternative provider.

We have commissioned NHS National Services Scotland to establish a National Strategic Network for long COVID. This brings together representatives from Health Boards across NHS Scotland to provide a forum for the exchange of learning and best practice in delivering support and services for people with long COVID.

Our Emerging Energy Technologies Fund supports the development of CCUS and negative-emissions technologies and has been offered to support the Scottish Cluster Carbon Capture Project accelerate its effort to help Scotland’s just transition to net zero. We remain committed to supporting this development.

Due to UK Government still not confirming the award of the Acorn Project and also which emitter sites will form the Scottish Cluster, it has not yet been possible to deploy this funding support. Only when we, the Acorn Project and the Scottish Cluster are provided with a final decision will it be possible to assess how we can utilise this funding to best support the deployment of CCUS.

Tackling health inequalities and improving population health remain clear, ongoing aims of the Scottish Government. Through the Place and Wellbeing Programme we are supporting local action to tackle health inequalities by: supporting health boards to operate as effective anchor institutions; supporting community and voluntary organisations; and ensuring they and public sector partners have the support and resources to take positive action locally.

Working alongside Public Health Scotland, the Scottish Government Anchors workstream within the Place and Wellbeing Programme is supporting NHS boards to act as effective anchor institutions and build greater prosperity in our local communities. All NHS Boards have now submitted Anchors Strategic Plans setting out how they are planning to maximise their footprint as employer, procurer and owner of land and assets, to channel greater wealth into local communities, which in turn will help contribute to reducing health inequalities.

Community and voluntary organisations play a key role is supporting the health and wellbeing of local communities. We are working with them to provide fairer funding processes and increase access to resources that can support them to work locally alongside the public sector to help reduce inequalities.

The Fuel Insecurity Fund was first established in the winter of 2020, as part of the wider Winter Support Fund, to help households struggling with their energy costs who were at risk of severely rationing, or self-disconnecting entirely because they could not afford their energy costs.

The Scottish Government has distributed a total of £63.595 million to third sector partners to deliver the Fuel Insecurity Fund up until March 2024. The following table gives an overview of the budget and distribution since inception: