Chamber and committees

No. It is anticipated that any additional funds would be paid to the Scottish Government for distribution to coastal local authorities under the current arrangement.

Ministers have not attended any meetings to specifically discuss pre-eclampsia in 2023.

The Women’s Health Champion Professor Anna Glasier has met with a variety of organisations and experts across various sectors to drive forward improvements in women’s health. This has involved discussions relating to the actions within the Women’s Health Plan on heart health including where relevant pre-eclampsia in the context of the reproductive life course.

More information about the work of the Women’s Health Champion can be found in the Women’s Health Champion quarterly blogs .

The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee has asked for the Scottish Government’s views on public petition PE 2046. Working closely with National Records of Scotland, we are currently preparing a response to the Committee.

This information is not held centrally.

Betting, gaming and lotteries are largely reserved matters and their regulation is primarily the responsibility of the UK Government. The Gambling Act 2005 (“the 2005 Act”) sets out how gambling in Great Britain should be regulated.

The Gambling Commission has responsibility for regulating commercial gambling in Great Britain and requires gambling operators to hold a licence to operate. The Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice require operators to comply with the Advertising Codes, administered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

In advance of the publication of the UK Government White Paper on Gambling (published on 27 April 2023), Scottish Government officials met with the UK Government officials to discuss potential areas of gambling reform (including advertising and marketing).

The Scottish Government will continue to meet with the UK Government to discuss progress in taking forward the proposals within the White Paper. The Minister for Victims and Community Safety and I recently met with the Gambling Commission on 21st September to discuss the White Paper.

As stated in my response to S6W-18105 on 5 June 2023, the Scottish Government expects all NHS Boards in Scotland to consider the recommendations in the Scottish Health Technologies Group report, published on 23 March 2023, and take steps to ensure that women who require access to placental growth factor (PlGF) based tests as part of their maternity care can do so.

The Scottish Government wrote to all NHS Boards on 20 July to request an update on progress towards implementation of PlGF testing. Officials have now received returns from all 14 territorial NHS Boards and are currently analysing the responses.

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

Betting, gaming and lotteries are largely reserved matters and their regulation is primarily the responsibility of the UK Government. The Gambling Act 2005 (“the 2005 Act”) sets out how gambling in Great Britain should be regulated.

The Gambling Commission has responsibility for regulating commercial gambling in Great Britain and requires gambling operators to hold a licence to operate. The Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice require operators to comply with the Advertising Codes, administered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Officials are working with social care employers and partners to consider what support the Scottish Government can provide to expand graduate apprenticeship options and career pathways in social care.

The Emerging Energy Technologies Fund (EETF) is a £180m package of funding up to 2025/26 that will provide capital support to accelerate low-carbon infrastructure projects and unlock private sector co-investment that will be essential to deliver net zero.

Through the EETF, we have committed up to £100 million to renewable hydrogen funding this Parliamentary term. I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21610 on 29 September 2023.

The remaining up to £80m has been made available for Carbon Capture Utilisation and Support (CCUS). Due to the unfortunate delays from the UK Government in confirming Acorn and the associated emitter projects, it has not yet been possible to deploy support from the EETF for CCUS. We are committed to supporting and accelerating the deployment of the Acorn project and the Scottish Cluster but until the UK Government award Acorn and the emitter projects, it is not possible to move forward with investment decisions.

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

Since the start of the pandemic we have worked collaboratively with Public Health Scotland and National Services Scotland to continuously update and improve our NHS Inform information , the online booking portal and access to the National Vaccination Helpline.

For the helpline we continuously monitor call wait times and when they rise above expected service level agreement wait times, we increase the numbers of call handlers to bring these down (to note this cannot be done immediately, as we need to bring in more staff which can take over 24 hours). The helpline also work closely with the scheduling team so that when a large number of invites go out to groups that typically use the helpline as opposed to the online portal, such as those of older age, we pre-emptively step up the number of call handlers to meet expected demand. We have automated messages explaining the current queue length and time, so that people can choose to call back at a quieter time. For those who cannot speak for long amounts of time, we have a mechanism whereby a nominated individual can speak on another person’s behalf.

We have continued to make the online portal as user friendly as possible. The latest development in 2023 was to make it easier for users to see the next available appointment is at their clinic of choice. We also include a person’s username in their appointment letter and this contains a QR code that will take them straight to the Winter vaccines | NHS inform landing page. NHS Inform contains helpful step-by-step videos on how to use the portal to book or change an appointment and we constantly monitor feedback from the public in regards to the portal to inform future changes and developments.