Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government welcomes the publication of the RCN Scotland report, The Nursing Workforce in Scotland, and notes the report's recommendations.

On 21 February 2023 we announced that a Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce had been established to build on efforts to make Scotland the best place for nurses and midwives to work by developing plans for recruitment and retention. The Nursing Workforce in Scotland Report, and its recommendations, will be considered by the taskforce as a part of its work.

The Scottish Government does not support the building of new nuclear fission power stations in Scotland under current technologies.

Under the current Contract for Difference (CfD) awarded by the UK Government to Hinkley Point C, the electricity that will be generated will be priced at £92.50 per megawatt hour (in 2012 prices). Wind is one of the cheapest forms of electricity - electricity generated from offshore wind is priced at £37.65 per megawatt hour in CfD allocation round 4 (in 2012 prices). Additionally, Hinkley Point C’s CfD will last for a 35-year term, which is not afforded to other technologies that only receive guarantees for 15 years.

The UK Government has committed over £700 million to cover 50% of the development costs of Sizewell C – evidence that nuclear can have significant up-front costs to the public purse before construction even begins.

Nuclear power stations require nuclear material for their operation and generate radioactive waste, both of which can involve hazardous radiation and require complex and expensive handling for security as well as public health and environmental protection.

The Women’s Health Plan: A plan for 2021 – 2024 aims to reduce health inequalities and improve health outcomes for women and girls. This iteration of the Plan focusses on a specific set of priorities where there is particular evidence of inequalities (heart health) and where women have told us improvements are needed (menopause and menstrual health including endometriosis).

The priorities for any future Women’s Health Plan are not yet determined. Future aims and priorities will be developed in collaboration with women and girls, including our lived experience stakeholder group, clinical experts and relevant stakeholders alongside the most up-to-date evidence base.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with the Scottish Perinatal Network and will write to NHS Boards again in June to assess how implementation of PlGF testing is progressing.

Our Equally Safe strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls (VAWG) emphasises the importance of challenging the underpinning attitudes which enable such violence to take place.

The Equally Safe at School (ESAS) project, developed by Rape Crisis Scotland and Zero Tolerance, applies a whole school approach to inequality and gender-based violence in schools. Every secondary school in Scotland is eligible for ESAS. Rape Crisis Scotland have reported that currently 77 schools are registered with an ESAS account. Rape Crisis Scotland is continuing to work with local authority education leads, VAWG partnerships and other third sector partners across Scotland to encourage and support schools to engage with ESAS.

We also fund and support other education-based programmes and initiatives aimed at tackling violence against women and girls and the attitudes which perpetuate it such as; the Mentors in Violence peer education programme, the Gender Equality Taskforce in Education and Learning, the Gender-Based Violence in Schools Working Group and Rape Crisis Scotland’s national sexual violence programme for secondary schools.

Road safety remains an absolute priority for the Scottish Government. We remain determined that we continue to make investments which supports our Road Safety Framework to 2030, which sets out our vision for Scotland to have the best road safety performance in the world by 2030. This includes an ambitious long term goal where no one is seriously injured or killed on our roads by 2050.

The Scottish Government budget for 2023-24 includes over £31 million for road safety. This has been allocated to areas such as our Trunk Road Casualty Reduction Programme, our Safety Camera Programme, work to expand 20 mph areas in communities across Scotland and a Road Safety Improvement Fund which will support councils to reduce casualties and risks on their roads.

The NHS Research Scotland (NRS) Cancer Network is funded by the Scottish Government to increase, support and sustain clinical trial activity in cancer care within NHS Scotland. The fundamental aim of NRS Cancer is to support the recruitment of cancer patients into clinical research and to thereby contribute to improving the quality of cancer care for patients across Scotland, including those diagnosed with ovarian cancer. https://nhsresearchscotland.org.uk/research-areas/cancer

The Scottish Government also works with Cancer Research UK to support the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres (ECMC's) in Glasgow and Scotland. These are part of a UK-wide ECMC Network of 18 adult centres and 11 paediatric locations https://www.ecmcnetwork.org.uk/ Glasgow’s Adult ECMC and Paediatric ECMC, together with Edinburgh’s Adult ECMC receive around £1 million annually to help doctors and scientists develop the cancer treatments of the future for both adults and children, including in ovarian cancer. The funding is split 50:50 Scottish Government / Cancer Research UK

On 13 February 2023 we published an Independent Report on Improving Equity of Access to Cancer Clinical Trials. We will be working closely with the cancer research community here to prioritise the report’s recommendations.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/improving-equity-access-cancer-clinical-trials-scotland/

The Private Rented Sector Landlord Loan Scheme was launched in April 2020 to support landlords with the cost of installation for energy efficiency improvements, renewable systems and energy storage systems.

The funding allocated for the scheme is set out in the following table:

Ensuring that we have a suitably qualified workforce in place will be imperative for delivering a smooth rollout of energy efficiency and zero emission heating measures which will support us to achieve our net zero ambitions.

We currently offer support to the sector through a number of schemes which includes the Low Carbon Skills Grant which is available to heating and plumbing apprentices’ to undertake heat pump training as part of their qualification.

To further ensure the quality of works carried out we also provide funding to assist Scottish SMEs installing heat pumps in achieving MCS certification for the first time through the MCS Certification Fund.

We will continue to keep our offers of support under review to ensure that they are aligned at a local level with business needs and future local demands.

Delivery partners for each scheme, including local authorities where relevant, are currently responsible for the coordination of suppliers to ensure they have sufficient capacity in place to deliver schemes. It is likely that this arrangement will continue but we are committed to working with delivery partners to support the development of local and national supply chains and skills.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-17929 on 30 May 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/questions-and-answers .

The Scottish Government now routinely mandates the payment of at least the Scottish real Living Wage (£10.90) to employees directly involved in the delivery of its contracts. The 6% of contractors referenced in the Annual Report 20-21 was made up of 16 suppliers. Recent analysis of these suppliers and the associated contracts has revealed that of these 16, 14 now pay the real Living Wage either through a change of contractor during a re-let or via contract management processes. For the 2 remaining suppliers, one contract is currently being retendered due for award in July 2023 and the other is due for re-tender in 2024.

The Scottish Government is taking steps to maximise the payment of the real Living Wage, by including Fair Work First Criteria, including providing fair pay for workers in the delivery of the contracts where relevant and proportionate.