Chamber and committees

Circularity Scotland (CSL), as a private non-profit organisation and scheme administrator for DRS, represents and provides services to its members including Scotland’s largest drinks producers, importers, wholesalers and retailers. This is entirely appropriate for a scheme that has industry responsibility at its heart. The Scottish Government will register as a return point operator (RPO) with CSL and will be handled no differently than any other registered RPO.

Transport Scotland applied its normal risk management practices from the beginning of its work on the A9 Dualling programme to the identification and assessment of factors that could affect delivery of the programme. Individual factors were raised with Ministers as relevant to issues on which Ministers were periodically briefed.

This is a matter for independent hospices, Health Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships. The information requested is not held centrally.

Transport Scotland has recently been made aware of Dumfries and Galloway Council’s internal discussions relating to the possibility of using the A75 160 Annan Road Bridge for foot traffic.

Dumfries and Galloway Council has yet to decide whether to make an approach to Transport Scotland as they are conscious of difficulties relating to the provision of pedestrian access to and from the structure and the protection of foot traffic crossing the structure.

Through the National Strategy for Economic Transformation, the Scottish Government has committed to “establish a values-led, high-integrity market for responsible private investment in natural capital, supported by a national project pipeline for nature-based solutions”. This work is underpinned by our Interim Principles for Responsible Investment in Natural Capital, which can be found at the following link - https://www.gov.scot/publications/interim-principles-for-responsible-investment-in-natural-capital/ . These ensure investments deliver genuine benefits to the environment, support local communities and conform with the principles of a just transition.

NatureScot’s agreement with Hampden & Co, Lombard Odier and Palladium, announced on 1 March 2023, will help to deliver these commitments by creating new jobs, working with local communities and businesses, and bringing about landscape-scale restoration of natural capital. Neither NatureScot nor the Scottish Government are currently working on any other similar agreements. The Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS), launched in February this year, will also support the establishment of a values-led, high-integrity market by helping organisations that seek to develop projects that use responsible private investment and market-based mechanisms to restore Scotland’s natural environment.

The Scottish Government recognises the value of encouraging pupils to pursue a career in healthcare. We have commissioned the Centre for Workforce Supply to develop an NHS Scotland marketing strategy to promote the NHS as an attractive employer.

We remain committed to supporting youth recruitment utilising our Developing the Young Workforce Strategy and the Young Person’s Guarantee.

We also support any initiative which encourages school pupils to consider a career in medicine. For example, Aberdeen University’s ‘Health Studies in Education’ programme which places medical students in local schools for a period of 6 weeks has been successful in establishing long term relationships between schools and the University, as well as providing a platform to introduce further activities including mentoring.

A set of data tables for the most recent and historical hospital bed numbers is available in the annual PHS publication, which was released on 27 September 2022. The publications can be found at: https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-annual/acute-hospital-activity-and-nhs-beds-information-annual-annual-year-ending-31-march-2022/

Data is available from financial year 2012-13 to financial year 2021-22. Data is not available as far back as 1999. Data is not yet available for financial year 2022-23.

Hospital beds data is presented in Table 4 – beds data file, and the measure of interest is Average Available Staffed Beds, the indicator is Location of Interest, and you will need to Sub-Filter for All Specialties. The data for Portree Hospital will be listed under NHS Highland. The following table is an excerpt from the dataset which includes the Average Available Staffed Beds for All Locations of Treatment, NHS Highland, and Portree Hospital.

The number of district nurses working in NHS Scotland in each of the last five years can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence .

The Scottish Government does not direct NHS Boards to ensure that their district nurses and their teams undertake routine, planned visits to over 65s, however it is possible that such visits take place in some parts of the country. The roles of district nurses and their teams was described in the Transforming Roles District Nursing paper, which can be found here Supporting documents - Transforming nursing, midwifery and health professionals roles: district nursing roles - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

We will give full consideration to the recommendations of this report, which sets out both the challenges, and successes, of the continued recovery of our NHS from a global pandemic.

We are making good progress against our GP commitment and since 2017 GP headcount has increased by 291 and a record 5209 GPs are now working in Scotland.

Progress is measured by the annual GP Headcount Public Health Scotland publication. The latest publication can be found at:

General Practice - GP Workforce and practice list sizes 2012 - 2022 - General Practice - GP workforce and practice list sizes - Publications - Public Health Scotland

The assessment by Audit Scotland does not take into account GP Registrars in their final year of training, when assessing progress against this commitment. These registrars spend 12 months full time equivalent in a GP practice.

On 24 February 2023 NHS Lanarkshire informed Scottish Government that they required funding of £193k to support their National Treatment Centre and this funding will be provided as it is an agreed national priority.