Chamber and committees

In its November 2023 independent assessment of progress on climate adaptation, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) recommended that the Scottish Government should include “a national assessment of the scale of current and future risks from weather-related cascading infrastructure failures” in the next Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP3).

The Scottish Government is considering all recommendations from the CCC on the structure of the next adaptation plan. Public consultation on a draft of the next adaptation plan is anticipated in early-2024 and we have asked the CCC to provide further views at this stage.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-22774 on 21 November 2023. 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.

I welcome the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA’s) recent extension to the licence for Kaftrio ® and Kalydeco ® to include children aged two to five years old which will help address the unmet needs of younger children with cystic fibrosis in Scotland. I can also confirm that, while the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) multiple technology appraisal (MTA) is ongoing, all existing and new patients in Scotland who are on, or who are started on, a CF medicine, including Kaftrio ® , will continue to have access to that CF medicine after NICE and the SMC issue their final recommendations. This will be irrespective of the outcome of the appraisal and will cover any need to subsequently switch to a different CF medicine.

In Scotland, the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) appraises the clinical and cost-effectiveness of newly licensed medicines. The SMC has a transparent and robust process that is fully described on its website. It is worth noting that any SMC appraisal is undertaken independently of Scottish Ministers and is based on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a medicine at a population level.

The SMC’s process allows companies to present a cost-effectiveness case which sets out the predicted health benefits of their treatment (including one-off treatments) over a person’s lifetime, and the SMC’s assessments follow standard methodology for such calculations. In addition, in the assessment of innovative medicines for rare conditions (including gene-edited precision medicines where a single treatment may have lifelong benefit), the SMC process involves additional flexibilities as outlined on its website. By way of an example, in 2021, the SMC was the first health technology appraisal body in the UK to accept a one-off gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy.

The Scottish Government welcomes Food Standards Scotland’s Our Food 2022 report and the wide ranging recommendations.

We are aware of workforce shortages, such as veterinarians and environmental health officers, and the fundamental role these have to safeguard animal health and welfare and the safety of food in Scotland. The Scottish Government continues to promote the role of veterinarians in public health. This includes through initiatives, such as the Scottish Veterinary Delivery Landscape Project which brings together public and private sector veterinary employers, academia and veterinary industry bodies. We have also set up the Environmental Health Policy Co-ordination Group to consider solutions to the EHO vacancies across Scotland and work with key stakeholders to gain further insight on this issue.

Furthermore, we are committed to protecting Scotland’s consumers and businesses through robust biosecurity controls. Since EU Exit, Scottish Government officials and Ministers have been engaged in discussions with the UK Government around the introduction of import controls, resulting in the recent publication of the Border Target Operating Model.

We will continue to work with Food Standards Scotland and other partners on the issues raised within the report.

We are now seeing significant and sustained improvements in CAMHS waiting times. In the quarter ending September 2023, 75.6% of CAMHS patients started treatment within 18 weeks of referral, up from 67.9% in same quarter the previous year, and 13 out of 14 CAMHS Services had effectively eliminated their long waits (where 3% or fewer of all waits are over one year).

We continually monitor CAMHS waiting times performance and backlogs and are directing tailored support to those Boards with the longest waits, providing access to professional advice, ensuring they have robust improvement plans in place and monitoring their implementation.

We have commissioned all Boards to submit performance trajectories up to March 2024, including a timeline for clearing long waits. These will be updated annually and used to inform further targeted improvement work to ensure all Boards consistently meet the CAMHS waiting times standard.

We have allocated £48.6 million of supplementary funding to Boards this year via the Mental Health Outcomes Framework to improve the quality and delivery of mental health services for all. This is in addition to £36.7 million allocated to Health Boards via the Outcomes Framework in 2022-23; and to the total package of core funding that Health Boards receive.

The SPCB is aware of the serious risk of possible outside interference to the Scottish Parliament. We have a range of measures in place to mitigate the risk as far as possible. As these measures impact on the security of the Scottish Parliament, it would not be appropriate to publish the details of these measures.

The Member may wish to be aware that the SPCB approved a series of CPD briefing sessions in early November for Members and their staff, with representatives from our security partners, to raise awareness of outside interference. The briefing sessions focused on what Members and their staff can do to help with managing the risk from outside interference.

The latest available information on convictions is for the financial year 2021-22 and is provided in the following table.

People prosecuted for TV Licence evasion, by gender, where main charge, 2017-18 to 2021-22*.

Increasing the availability of long acting reversible contraception (LARC) is identified as a priority in both the Women’s Health Plan (2021) and our recently published Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Action Plan. The Scottish Government is committed to working with Health Boards and the Women's Health Champion to improve access to LARC.

There has been no national formal assessment of contraceptive education however the Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that people across Scotland have timely access to contraception, and to information which allows them to make informed decisions about their own sexual and reproductive health. This is recognised as a priority in our recently published Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus (SHBBV) Action Plan, and we have allocated multi-year funding to a range of projects in both community and NHS settings that will help to deliver this goal. The projects include developing new information resources, such as a national sexual health microsite on NHS Inform, as well as supporting staff training and development around contraception. Details of these projects were published alongside the SHBBV Action Plan on 28 November 2023.

The Scottish Government’s Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) Short Life Working Group meets quarterly and includes representation from midwifery, including the Royal College of Midwives.

We are working with the Scottish Postpartum Contraception Network (SPCN), which is a multidisciplinary group of healthcare professionals including midwifery, obstetrics, sexual health, pharmacy, public health and clinical researchers. Since 2022, the Scottish Government has funded SPCN’s work on expanding access to postpartum contraception (including LARC) across Scotland. An additional £101,000 (over 3 years) has recently been allocated to SPCN to deliver a project focused on developing training and information resources, and improving equity of access to postpartum LARC.