Chamber and committees

We must ensure our children and young people learn about the issues affecting their daily lives, including consent and healthy relationships. The concerns raised by the Young Women's Movement and NSPCC around the consistency in delivery of RSHP education highlight the need for us to ensure we get the revision of the RSHP guidance right.

However, that should not restrict the professional judgement of our teachers who are able to use a range of resources to deliver age-and-stage appropriate education on consent and healthy relationships in a way that enables children and young people to make informed decisions about their lives. That can include using the excellent resources developed by the Young Women's Movement through their Young Women Know campaign.

As confirmed in the latest Programme for Government, we will implement the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC), with work already underway on a number of curricular areas, including health and wellbeing. The CIC introduces a systematic approach to ensure that Scotland's curriculum remains relevant, forward looking, clarifies knowledge and ultimately support high quality teaching and learning. We will ensure this important work aligns with the work to update the RSHP teaching guidance to help ensure consistency in delivery of learning and teaching.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6W-32859 on 20 January 2025. 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

(a) As set out on 22 January 2024 in response to question S6W-24720, the Scottish Government has established an Expert Group to lead on scoping work to consider and provide recommendations on how Scotland will work towards reaching the targets set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to eliminate Cervical Cancer.

As well as the Expert Group itself, three subgroups have been established to support the Expert Group in considering and analysing data on specific topics (vaccination, screening and cancer treatment).

The sub groups held inaugural meetings in September, and discussions are ongoing to inform recommendations on how Scotland will progress towards Cervical Cancer elimination and when this could potentially be achieved. These recommendations will be considered by the Scottish Government.

(b) The Scottish Government recognises the importance of HPV vaccination and screening.

(i) The latest published HPV vaccination uptake data from PHS shows that pupils living in the most deprived quintiles had lower coverage of the HPV vaccine compared with pupils from the least deprived areas. We are working with Public Health Scotland (PHS) and territorial Health Boards to consider what further actions can be taken to increase vaccination uptake, support those eligible for vaccination, and to address any inequalities in accessing immunisation services. Reducing vaccine inequalities is one of the three primary objectives in PHS’s recently published Scotland's 5-Year Vaccination and Immunisation Framework and Delivery Plan.

Completion of consent forms is required to participate in school vaccination programmes. We therefore welcome the return of the PHS marketing campaign, “chat.sign.protect”, which builds on the messages of last year’s campaign to raise awareness of vaccines offered in secondary school and encourage an increase in the numbers of parents and young people giving consent to be vaccinated.

Timed to coincide with the distribution of informed consent materials to young people, the campaign aims to increase understanding of why these vaccines are important, and the seriousness of the diseases they protect against, and encourages parents and carers to take action and sign consent forms to ensure our young people receive the protection offered by immunisation.

Addressing the inequalities in HPV uptake and maximising the opportunities for young people to receive the vaccine is a primary focus of the Cervical Cancer elimination work.

(ii) The Equity in Screening Strategy, combined with an action plan, was published on 27th July 2023. The vision of the strategy is for access for all eligible individuals, across the full screening pathway. The Strategy launched alongside the Equity in Screening Network which supports the strategy by capturing local and third sector research activity and allows individuals that work across screening to share evidence, best practice and learning around screening inequalities.

Several national projects are being supported by the Inequalities Fund of £1 million. This includes changes to national IT systems to improve engagement with participants. Research and learning from past projects has shown some ways to increase access to screening and uptake, including appointment reminders and targeted follow-up with non-responders.

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

The Scottish Government is currently working on a National Treatment Specification for Alcohol and Drug Treatment in Scotland.

This document will be informed by numerous sources including the forthcoming UK Clinical Guidelines for Alcohol Treatment and the recently published Public Health Scotland review into Alcohol Brief Interventions as well as key independent reports such as Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP) report, Exploring the delivery of alcohol-related health advice in dental practice settings: A scoping review.

Officials will work closely with colleagues within Primary Care including the team of the Chief Dental Officer to ensure that the National Treatment Specification fully reflects the importance of dentistry as an integral part of Scotland’s alcohol treatment provision.

The Scottish Government has discussed the proposed new condition to schedule 1 licences with NatureScot on a number of occasions. The new condition will require prior notification to landowners, where reasonably practical, of all visits to nests, or other sites, potentially involving disturbance of schedule 1 birds.

NatureScot, as the licensing body, have discussed the additional licensing condition with a range of stakeholders including the Scottish Raptor Study Group, RSPB, British Ornithology Trust and the Scottish Gamekeeper’s Association.

In addition to this, I have met with some of the above stakeholders to discuss their concerns about the issue.

The Energy Consents Unit administers applications made to Scottish Ministers for determination in relation to energy infrastructure. In reaching their decision, the Scottish Ministers will determine applications in accordance with legislative requirements and relevant policy. The application process allows rural communities to provide views on the development, which are taken into consideration when final decisions are made.

To accompany the launch of changes to the dental payment system from November 2023, Scottish Government ran a marketing campaign via commercial radio, social media and surgery posters to highlight the changes to patients and direct them to NHS Inform for more information on a range of oral health matters.

NHS Inform is Scotland’s national health information service and supports people in making informed decisions on all aspects of their health. Information on oral health and dental care includes typical scenarios which patients can expect in attending the dentist, including the importance of regular attendance. In addition to this national resource, each individual dental practice is required to display its policy for late cancellations and non-attendance at scheduled appointments.

Capitation payments are paid monthly per patient to NHS dentists to help ensure that patients remain registered. Where a patient does not attend for examination or treatment for a period of greater than 3 years the monthly payment for that patient falls to 20% of the full rate.

This arrangement incentives dentists to re-engage with patients who have not attended for some time to better manage their oral health. There is no intention to review this arrangement.

Research into the implementation of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 is underway and is scheduled to be published in early 2025. The findings of this research will include both qualitative and quantitative data which has been gathered from stakeholders from across the single-use items value chain.

There is already existing discretion within NHS arrangements for dentists to charge patients for late cancellations and missed appointments, in accordance with their business need.

As circumstances may vary considerably between practices with respect to demography, registered patient numbers and other key determinants for the viability or necessity of additional charging, it would not be appropriate to implement a national policy on such matters.