This government has seen an 87.7% increase in consultant oncologists and we’ve increased consultant radiologists by 57.4% (September 2006 – June 2021). We recognise the immense pressure our NHS workforce has been under in response to the pandemic and we are working to provide a sustainable workforce. The National Cancer Plan is backed by £114.5 million and has the potential to provide significant financial support to address cancer workforce shortages.

As part of the work of the National Cancer Recovery Group (NCRG), we are currently carrying out an exercise to identify workforce requirements to help inform wider planning discussions. This will look at roles specifically related to cancer.

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.

To date 791 paramedics have been recruited. Another 126 will come on stream in 4 months with more than 100 joining in early 2022.

Covid-19 has resulted in some delays to recruitment which will push the achievement of this commitment out to 2022 but revised plans indicate a high level of confidence in achieving this.

With increasing A&E attendances, demand and capacity concerns and the impact of Covid-19, it is important that we ensure the NHS is equipped with the resources it needs to meet the challenges of the future. By investing in a professional, highly skilled ambulance workforce, this will help deliver a better service for patients all across Scotland.

Scottish Government officials are in regular contact with NHS Highland to support the service management team with the delivery of orthopaedic elective procedures within the Health Board.

In response to the pressures on NHS services caused by the pandemic, which we are still firmly in the midst of, the First Minster launched the NHS Recovery Plan, on the 25 August. The Plan sets out the Scottish Governments key headline ambitions and actions to be developed and delivered now and over the next 5 years, including an increase in both inpatient and outpatient capacity across the Country. The plan is backed by more than £1 billion of investment over the next five years.

As part of this, we are investing over £400 million in a network of National Treatment Centres, one of which will be located in NHS Highland. When fully operational, the National Treatment Centres will provide increased capacity for surgeries and procedures across 14 specialties, including hip and knee surgery.

GP practices have remained open, accessible and at the forefront of our community services to deal with non-COVID-19 medical care throughout the pandemic. As outlined in the NHS Recovery Plan, a key aim is to work with our GPs to continue to restore face-to-face practice consultations as quickly and safely as possible, while ensuring everyone can continue to make use of eHealth services if that is their preference.

Public Health Scotland have published guidance on social distancing and infection control measure in health settings, changing the 2 metre social distancing rule to 1 metre, enabling more patients in waiting rooms, while continuing to ensure that vulnerable patients and staff are kept safe. In addition, specific guidance to general practices has been published making it clear that there is no longer a need to triage every patient, although they should continue to screen patients for Covid before seeing them face-to-face. We will continue to take advice from public health experts and clinicians when reviewing these measures.

With these recently announced changes I would expect the number of face-to-face appointments to increase.

While high quality data from across the health system is collected, we are working with stakeholders to improve the quality of data we can collect from GP practices to ensure it is robust.

We have continued to meet routinely with GPs and their representatives, and hear regularly from patients, to help build intelligence around appointments and pressures in GP practices throughout the pandemic, and are currently working together with NSS and PHS on a more advanced digital solution for capturing this information moving forward.

The number of patients who have waited over 12 weeks for Trauma and Orthopaedic surgery in NHS Highland are published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) on a quarterly basis. These details are available on PHS’s website and can be found in table 1.2 through the following link: https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/media/8811/newop_aug21.xlsx

Informed consent is integral to the vaccination programme, and we have developed detailed information for young people and their parents or carers to allow them to make informed decisions on vaccination. Vaccinators are fully trained and have materials to support discussions on informed consent at appointments.

Further information on consent for children and young people can be found on NHS Inform: Vaccinating 12 to 15 year olds | NHS inform .

A new leaflet from Public Health Scotland will be circulated and is available to view online at: COVID-19 vaccine information for young people in English (healthscotland.com) .

Whilst we strongly encourage those eligible to receive coronavirus vaccination to do so, the decision is one of personal choice and the Scottish Government has no plans to introduce mandatory vaccination.

GP practices are independent contractors and therefore decisions relating to telephony are at their discretion. On top of practices’ core funding allocation, the Scottish Government is making an additional £600,000 funding available this year for the Health Boards to allocate to GP practices for the purpose of upgrading or replacing telephony systems.

Information on the number of homeless people who have received a GP appointment is not held centrally by the Scottish Government as GP practices are responsible for their own patient appointment and consultation arrangements.

Between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021, COPFS concluded 59 FAIs, an increase from 57 the previous year. This increase took place notwithstanding an increase of more than 40% deaths reported to COPFS compared to previous years as well as the restrictions on court business for much of that period due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In relation to those 59 FAIs, 43 related to deaths which had occurred between 2018 and 2020.

In recognition of the fact that some death investigations have taken too long, COPFS has made significant changes to its practices and additional resources have been applied to this important area of work. There has been a particular focus on clearing a backlog of cases and consequently some older FAIs concluded during this period which will have affected the figures quoted.

There are legitimate and unavoidable reasons for prolonged periods of investigation: the overriding necessity of conducting death investigations thoroughly; the need to wait for the outcome of other related investigations; the need to obtain expert advice; and the need to consider and, in some cases, conclude criminal proceedings before holding an FAI.