Chamber and committees

A table has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib Number 62587) that provides information on delays and cancellations on individual routes serving the Clyde and Hebrides network since January 2016. Sailings can be the cancelled for a number of reasons including - inclement weather, vessel breakdowns, deployment of vessels to other routes across the network.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) have recommended that, where operationally possible, those aged under 40 should receive an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

However, everybody who has already had a first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine should receive a second dose of the same jab, irrespective of age, except for the very small number of people who experienced blood clots with low platelet counts from their first vaccination. There have been no confirmed cases of thromboembolic events to date in second doses.

People will not be offered options on which vaccine they will receive, unless there is a clinical reason why this would be required, such as an allergy. Any vaccine authorised for use in the UK, by the appropriate Medical authorities is safe and effective, and will have a similar effect in terms of protection.

It is also worth noting that this is the case with many other vaccines. People are not routinely offered a choice of the type of vaccines in other vaccine programmes in Scotland. The Scottish Government currently has no plans to introduce an option for receiving either COVID-19 vaccine, beyond a clinical recommendation as the benefits of the vaccine continue to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of the population.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the 2021 grade results broken down by state and independent school.

The SQA plan to publish information on results be centre type - Attainment Statistics for every National Qualification in 2021, tabulated by Centre Type (Education Authority Schools, Independent Schools, Colleges) - on their website ( Statistics 2021 - SQA ) on 21 September 2021.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the 2021 grade results broken down by state and independent school.

The SQA plan to publish information on 2021 results broken down by centre type on their website ( Statistics 2021 - SQA ) on 21 September 2021. This will provide information on the percentage of entries which resulted in a grade A, B, C etc.

The Scottish Government recognises how important healthy meals are for boosting children’s energy, concentration and behaviour which, in turn, leads to improvements in academic attainment.

All children in primaries 1 to 3 have benefitted from access to free school lunches since January 2015, and from this month all children in funded early learning and childcare are receiving a free meal in every session. Ministers are now committed to going further by expanding free school meals to all pupils in primary and special schools during the course of this parliamentary session, as well as introducing free year-round breakfast and lunch provision to support children outside of the school term. We are also committed to piloting approaches to universal meal provision in secondary schools.

To start delivering on this commitment, we have provided local authorities with funding of £49.75 million to enable them to provide support to families who are eligible for free school meals during the school summer holidays, and to expand the provision of free school lunches during school term-time to all children in primaries 4 and 5, throughout the course of this school year. Further expansion of universal free school lunches will be delivered for children in primaries 6 and 7 by August 2022.

In addition to the free meal commitments, the Scottish Milk and Healthy Snack Scheme launched on 1 August 2021 replacing the existing UK Nursery Milk Scheme in Scotland. All pre-schoolers who spend two hours or more a day in eligible childcare settings registered with the scheme will be entitled to a serving of fresh milk. Unlike the UK scheme, a piece of fruit or portion of vegetables will also be offered and children who cannot drink cow’s milk for medical, ethical or religious reasons will be offered a specified non-dairy alternative.

This is a major programme of change during this Parliament that will deliver benefits for hundreds of thousands of children.

How to treat ear wax is a clinical decision: ear syringing is not the current preferred procedure and is no longer routinely provided by clinicians.

NHS Lanarkshire has continued to provide services to patients throughout the pandemic. However, due to the pressures of the pandemic some routine condition management needed to be paused but only in those instances where it is safe to do so.

Patients who have sought private treatment will not be reimbursed.

Current guidance for ear irrigation services is that patients should speak to their pharmacist for minor problems and patients with particularly troublesome symptoms should contact their GP to discuss the most suitable treatment. This guidance is available online at NHS Inform and was last updated on 22 December 2020.

Ensuring high quality palliative and end of life care for people towards the end of life is an important priority for the Scottish Government.

Since 2016, it has been the responsibility of Integration Authorities to commission and plan palliative and end of life care services and supports to meet the needs of their local population. The assessment of palliative and end of life care services is also their responsibility.

For this reason, the Scottish Government does not collect this data centrally.

However, Integration Authorities report on their progress using a range of indicators within their Annual Performance Reports, which provides some data on palliative and end of life care services. Information on the Core Suite of Integration Indicators can be found at https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/8411/2021-07-13-coresuiteindicators-background-and-glossary.pdf. It is, however, important to note that due to the pandemic, full data is not currently available for all indicators at present.

Public Health Scotland also publish official statistics on the percentage of time spent at home or in a community setting in the last six months of life. ( Percentage of end of life spent at home or in a community setting - Financial years ending 31 March 2011 to 2020 - Percentage of end of life spent at home or in a community setting - Publications - Public Health Scotland ).

The following table shows office-cancelled breast screening appointments, broken down by month from January 2020 until July 2021. It is important to note, however, that all of these office-cancelled appointments are reappointed as a matter of course and an invitation to screening sent to the participant. Where appointments are rescheduled in this way before a letter of invitation has been sent, the screening participant may be unaware their appointment has been cancelled and reappointed .

The data provided below was provided as management information and has not been subject to quality checks that would be applied in an official publication. Quality assured breast screening programme statistics are published annually by Public Health Scotland.

The following table shows the number of people who attended a breast screening appointment from January 2019 to July 2021. 2018-2019 data is provided as a baseline; as the programme operates on a 3 year basis, and as in some years the locations are further away from base sites, these figures are provided as an average. It is important to note that the 2020 and 2021 data provided was collected and used for management purposes for monitoring the recovery of the program and has not been subject to quality checks for official publication. Public Health Scotland publish breast screening programme statistics every year; the last publication was in May 2021 and the next publication is due in 2022.