Chamber and committees

Scotland’s Redress Scheme is delivered jointly by the Scottish Government and Redress Scotland – a new non-departmental public body which assesses and makes decisions on redress applications. Redress Scotland is an independent body, which is not part of Scottish Government and is monitored by the Redress Scotland Sponsorship Team, within the Children’s Rights, Protection and Justice Division.

Scotland's Redress Scheme is delivered within the Scottish Government's Redress, Relations and Response Division. Across the division 44 staff are currently employed in a variety of roles including Operations, Survivor Relations, Contributions, Policy, Service Design and Delivery, Business Management and Communications to provide an efficient, robust and trusted scheme for applicants, partners and stakeholders.

As part of the administration of the Scheme, a bespoke Case Management System (CMS) has been developed. The CMS is hosted in a secure environment and holds sensitive, personal information relating to applications. Not all colleagues in Scotland’s Redress Scheme have access to CMS, which is restricted to ensure only staff with a specific need to access the applicant data are able to do so.

Certain staff in Redress Scotland also have access to the CMS, meaning that information does not generally need to be shared via multiple systems.

The Privacy Notice for Survivor Applicants and the Privacy Notice for Next of Kin Applicants provide details on how the information collected by Scottish Government, as administrators of Scotland’s Redress Scheme, is managed and how it is used.

It is a matter for Redress Scotland to determine their resourcing within their budget, however some details on their staff are available on their website . In addition, Redress Scotland also have a privacy notice in place.

Priority is given to applicants who are aged 68 or over and to those who have a terminal illness.

Many applicants to Scotland’s Redress Scheme, for a variety of reasons, require additional support in relation to practical support to complete an application, sourcing of evidence and supporting information, and also in relation to the emotional impact going through the process can have. Support is available to applicants at all stages of the process.

When additional support is required, case workers refer applicants to the Redress Support Service provided by the In-Care Survivors Alliance. The In-Care Survivors Alliance draws on its existing network of over 70 delivery partners to provide support.

The Redress Support Service can help applicants access the emotional, practical or access to records support they require. They currently have contracts with two delivery partners; Birthlink and Wellbeing Scotland, who provide additional support for applicants in accessing records.

We understand that applying for redress may bring up difficult emotions. Applicants, and potential applicants, can call the Redress Emotional Support Helpline which can be contacted on 0800 211 8403. This service provides listening ear support to those who need it while applying, or thinking about applying for redress. Applicants do not need to go through a case worker to access the helpline which is in addition to other emotional support available.

Through the Survivors of Childhood Abuse Support Fund, the Scottish Government fund 29 organisations across Scotland. These organisations support people who have suffered child abuse. They are very experienced at offering confidential support tailored to the needs of the individual. Information on the organisations and their services can be found here Survivors of Childhood Abuse Support Fund: 2020-2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

The Scottish Government is investing record levels of funding for active travel, in particular around schools and places of education. The £150m active travel budget for 2022-23 includes £12.3m of funding for behavioural change initiatives which local authorities can access through our active delivery partners dedicated programmes for schools and communities. The budget also includes a record £35m for the Cycling and Walking Safer Routes fund, which goes directly to local authorities on a pro-rata basis, enabling them to make the changes to the public realm that they see as having most impact for supporting safer daily journeys by walking and cycling.

The most recent published figures from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is available at: Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme and Ukraine Family Scheme: Visa data by age and sex of applicant - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) .This provides the sex breakdown by age grouping of displaced people from Ukraine who have arrived under the Super Sponsor Scheme.

NHS Boards received notification on the 11 August of their share of the £50 million investment which has been allocated in its entirety to support NHS Health Boards to improve A&E waits through a new National Collaborative for Urgent and Unscheduled Care.

Each board’s share of the £50 million fund is listed below:

Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Services (RCDS) – formerly known as Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres (ECDC) – are fast-track diagnostic pathways taking patients from referral to diagnosis, not treatment.

Scotland’s first three RCDS are early adopters to help inform wider roll-out of an optimal model for patients with non-specific symptoms suspicious of cancer.

All three Services are using a nationally agreed minimum data-set, capturing consistent data from age, gender, symptoms at presentation etc. A sub-section of this data will be published by the three Boards in 2022.

Meanwhile, work is underway with Public Health Scotland to scope and progress national data collection as more sites are expected to be established.

The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting and growing our nursing and midwifery workforce. That is why student nurses and midwives entering Scottish Government funded degree programmes will increase by 8.7% in 2022-23, to a total recommended target intake of 4837 nursing and midwifery students.

Universities are continuing their recruitment for programmes commencing in the 2022-23 academic year. Final data on the number of placed applicants on nursing and midwifery programmes commencing in the 2022-23 academic year will not be available until January 2023.

The UK Technical Advisory Group (UKTAG) published their Environmental Quality Standards recommendation for emamectin benzoate on 30 June 2022. The Scottish Government will now respond and consult on the implementation of the recent UKTAG environmental standard recommendation. In the meantime the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) updated its interim regulatory position on emamectin benzoate, to apply the new standard when determining new applications to discharge emamectin benzoate.

SEPA is also progressing work to update its framework for regulating bath treatment medicines. This has included introducing a new computer model of the dispersion of the medicines in the environment and taking account of the latest evidence on the persistence of the medicines in the environment. It is also working to support innovation in the capture and removal of bath treatment medicine residues to reduce discharges to the environment. SEPA is looking at the suite of bath medicines to understand if the latest scientific evidence suggests that the existing environmental standards need to be updated.

In response to the priorities set out by the parliamentary inquiries in 2018 and the Salmon Interactions Working Group report, an adaptive spatially-based risk assessment framework to manage sea lice interactions between wild and farmed fish was developed.

SEPA published its response to a consultation on the proposed framework on 25 August and will begin implementation later in 2023. The framework will assess the siting of salmon farms and the risk posed to wild fish.

The recent Programme for Government starts the process of developing a new National Marine Plan (NMP) and commits to supporting local authorities to guide development to the right places. We will consider options to undertake further spatial planning for aquaculture.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07063 on 4 May 2022. 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 .