Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to S6W-03394 on 19 October 2021. 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
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I refer the member to the answer to S6W-03394 on 19 October 2021. 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 recognises the important role of prompt defibrillation in improving outcomes from Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA).

We are a key partner in Save a Life for Scotland (SALFS). The partnership published an updated OHCA strategy in March 2021. This sets out actions to improve outcomes from OHCA, including actions to improve the accessibility of defibrillators and increase defibrillation rates across Scotland. SALFS work in collaboration with local community groups, including those in rural and island communities, to ensure the implementation of the strategy addresses local needs.

The purchasing and placement of defibrillators is the responsibility of individual businesses, local authorities, organisations or community groups. For any groups or organisations interested in providing access to a defibrillator, the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) have details of providers and organisations that may offer funding towards the purchase of a defibrillator.

We are working closely as part of the SALFS partnership to build the evidence base required to make strategic decisions about the placement of defibrillators, to encourage their registration with Scottish Ambulance Service and to increase public confidence and knowledge around defibrillation. We believe that these actions will help us to increase bystander usage of defibrillators from 8 to 20% over the lifetime of the strategy.

The National Infrastructure Mission includes all capital investment made by the Scottish Government, including that which is aimed at boosting supply chains and promoting private sector investment in our infrastructure and wider economy.

The Capital Spending Review, published on 04 February, sets out the total funding available to support the National Infrastructure Mission: £33,461 million over 5 years. A breakdown of this investment is provided in Table 3 on page 17/18. Table 4 of the Capital Spending Review shows the allocations made to individual portfolios and Annex A shows level 2 and level 3 budget allocations, by portfolio, across the same period.

The Infrastructure Investment Plan (IIP) lists in the Theme Chapters on pages 32 to 43 a breakdown of the main areas of investment by Scottish Government and its agencies and non-departmental public bodies – with a value of around £23.5 billion of capital investment. In addition, a value of £3 billion has been assumed for projects which are expected to be revenue funded. These two figures together are the basis of the £26 billion of investment cited in the Ministerial Foreword of the IIP.

The Infrastructure Investment Plan Pipeline, set out in Annex D, includes only a subset of the projects and programmes from the IIP total. Projects with a capital value of £5 million and Programmes with a £20 million value are included in this subset. As new projects and programmes are developed, they can be added to the pipeline when they are suitably ready, and consequently reported to the Parliament’s Public Audit Committee. This approach is explained on page 29 of the IIP.

Sports sponsorship entails a range of alcohol advertising and promotional activity, which we know is seen by children and young people across Scotland. The findings of this report undertaken by researchers at the University of Stirling highlight just how much children and young people are exposed to alcohol marketing in a sports context.

We know this exposure creates positive attitudes towards drinking alcohol and can encourage them to start drinking alcohol or to drink more alcohol.

Whilst recognising the impact Covid-19 has had on the sporting sector as well as the importance of sponsorship income, we would encourage sports teams and organisations to diversify sponsorship away from alcohol brands. We applaud Scottish Women’s Football for the stance they have taken not to accept sponsorship from the alcohol or gambling industries.

We have committed to publicly consulting on a range of potential alcohol marketing restrictions to protect children and young people in Scotland. We are considering all methods of alcohol advertising and promotion in developing proposals for the public consultation which will be published in 2022.

There are no plans to renegotiate the Public Dental Service contract.

Discussions on vaccine certification are conducted via the night time sector and wider hospitality’s trade representatives at a national level, the most recent of which took place with Ministers on 12 October 2021.

The Scottish Government is committed to the early detection of cancer. We are in currently in the process of establishing Scotland’s first Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres which will see the creation of a person-centred fast-track pathway for patients with non-specific symptoms (i.e. weight loss, nausea, fatigue) suspicious of cancer. These centres have been in operation since June 2021 and are continually taking patients with plans for equitable access across Scotland over the course of this parliament.

An estimate of the number of patients who have missed an early diagnosis of melanoma can be made by using data from the Public Health Scotland (PHS) Covid Wider Impacts Dashboard ( https://scotland.shinyapps.io/phs-covid-wider-impact/ ). The data indicates there were a total of 1,131 individuals with pathologically confirmed specimens for malignant melanoma of the skin between 1 April 2020 and the week ending 21 st February 2021. This was 398 individuals fewer than in the same period one year before.

Therefore, the data suggests there have been around 400 fewer melanoma diagnoses overall during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ambulances are not single-crewed other than in exceptional circumstances, such as short notice unplanned staff absences, and every effort is made to double crew ambulances through rostered and relief staff, overtime or our bank staff.

Unfortunately as a result of COVID-19 there has been occasions where single crewing has had to be used as a result of late notice staff abstractions, however we are continuing to work with the Scottish Ambulance Service to reduce this where possible.

The following table outlines the number of single crew shifts, not ambulances each year since 2017/18.

The NHS Scotland COVID Status app was released on
‎ 30 September. The App allows users to display their vaccination status for international travel and to gain entry to late night venues and large events within Scotland. To date it has been downloaded over 600,000 times.