Chamber and committees

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) are taking steps to introduce Flying Finish across NHS Boards, to benefit the workforce and the service. Work has already taken place to put in place a national Retire & Return policy within the NHS.

On 30 August 2022 the Interim National Arrangements on Retire & Return was announced, which offers a process that supports retiring employees to return to employment in their health board on a part time basis, should they wish to do so. The process enables retiring employees to continue employment that is suitable to them and the service, taking a person-centred approach which supports and manages the retirement in a tailored and individual way.

Equally Safe at Work is an innovative employer accreditation programme developed by Close the Gap, Scotland’s policy advocacy organisation working on women’s labour market equality. It supports employers to improve their employment practice to advance gender equality at work and prevent violence against women.

Public Health Scotland, NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Dumfries and Galloway and Healthcare Improvement Scotland are taking part in this pilot which commenced in July 2022 and will take approximately one year to complete. A further five Health Boards, NHS Borders, NHS Shetland, NHS Orkney, National Education Scotland and NHS Fife, are part of the shadow group.

The following table shows the amount spent by the Tobacco Team in each year since 2017-18. Due to way in which spend is recorded it is not possible to disaggregate Tobacco Control spend from overall Tobacco spend. Also please note that 2022-23 spend is not included as this financial year has not yet concluded.

The Scottish Government continues to focus on tackling disparities in deprived areas by ensuring equitable access to cancer services through the actions in our National Cancer Plan. We recognise that the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated inequalities within screening. A key Ministerial priority is reducing inequalities in access to and uptake of screening programmes. That is why we committed up to £2.45 million to the Screening Inequalities Fund to build a programme of evidence-based, sustainable and scalable projects that tackle inequalities in a systemic way.

Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Services (RCDS) have been established across three NHS Boards to date which have a key role in delivering earlier diagnosis and improving patient care. The First Minister recently announced an additional two RCDS’ are being developed.

Additionally, the development of national clinical management pathways through the Scottish Cancer Network will help reduce variation across Scotland, across the entirety of the pathway. In parallel, the first optimal cancer diagnostic pathway, led by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) was launched in December 2022, and is being funded by £3 million from the Scottish Government’s Detect Cancer Earlier (DCE) Programme.

There are regular meetings between Scottish Government officials and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) representatives, covering a wide range of subjects. The last such meeting took place on 10 January 2023 when the MHRA Cross-UK Partnership group met. The purpose of the MHRA Cross-UK Partnership group is to ensure that officials from the devolved administrations are kept updated on key MHRA issues that may affect or involve them. At the last meeting, the MHRA Corporate Plan, its Post Implementation Review of the Human Medicines Regulations, and safety issues were discussed.

The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer is a member of the Sodium Valproate Implementation Working Group, which is supporting the safe introduction of new measures to further strengthen the safe prescribing of sodium valproate in clinical practice. The group last met on 6 January 2023.

A meeting took place on 9 December 2022 with the Chief Medical Officers and the Deputy Chief Medical Officers and the MHRA Chief Executive was invited as a guest. Dame June Raine attended briefly on 9 December and provided an informal update on sodium valproate.

The Scottish Government has had no discussions with the UK Government regarding any poor customer service processes and response times at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. No businesses have raised any concerns with the Scottish Government on this matter.

In 2019, we published a Neurological Care and Support – a National Framework for Action 2020-25 , with a vision to ensure everyone with a neurological condition can access the care and support they need to live well, on their own terms.

Commitment 12 of the Framework aims to gather better data regarding neurological conditions. The Scottish Epilepsy Register project, funded through the Framework, is focussed on improving data collection and patient safety and driving up standards of care. We are exploring with NHS National Services Scotland proposals to scale up and consolidate the work of the Register, which may ultimately serve as a replicable model for other neurological conditions.

Scottish Burden of Disease data is also available on a number of neurological conditions including epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease: Scottish Burden of Disease (shinyapps.io)

I further refer the member to answer S6W-13707 and S6W-13708 on 23 January 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

This work was agreed in February 2020 however was subsequently paused due to capacity issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be further considered by the National Advisory Committee for Neurological Conditions alongside our emerging priorities for implementation of the commitments within the Neurological Care and Support: Framework for Action 2020-2025 .

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-13716 on 23 January 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

Scottish Government has previously invested £180,000 in the development of a national care framework for Huntington’s Disease, with a view to the potential adoption of this approach in other neurological conditions. Our National Advisory Committee for Neurological Conditions will consider whether development of frameworks for additional neurological conditions should be prioritised as part of our ongoing implementation of the commitments within the Neurological Care and Support: Framework for Action 2020-2025 .