Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government recognises the significant and wide-ranging impacts of the decision by Bakkafrost to temporarily close its Arnish Harvest Station and Marybank Processing Facility in Stornoway.

I met with representatives of Bakkafrost Scotland on 12 July and highlighted the importance of the aquaculture sector to the islands and the negative impact on jobs, the local communities and supply chains and asked whether any further support could be provided to reverse this decision. Officials from the Scottish Government and Highlands and Islands Enterprise have continued in dialogue with the business over recent weeks to consider all viable options to ensure that high value jobs are secured in the region.

The Scottish Government is making arrangements to speak with Bakkafrost’s senior management team, based in the Faroe Islands, as soon as possible to explore ways to mitigate the effects of this decision.

The Scottish Government’s Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE) team has met the company to offer its full range of support to any employees who may be facing redundancy. PACE organised a group meeting for affected staff which was held on 7 August, with further CV/Employability workshops held on 14 and 15 August and a Jobs Fair on 16 August.

The answer to S6W-28648 stated that 3,308 certificates of exemption for XL Bully dogs have been issued to dog owners by the Scottish Government during the period 1 April 2024 to 31 July 2024. This reflected the number of exemptions issued when the PQ answer was developed and there can be a short time lag between an answer being drafted by the Scottish Government and the PQ being answered.

The figure that was provided by the Scottish Government to the Scottish Sun newspaper was that, as of Thursday 1 August, there have been 3,342 applications for exemption certificates for XL Bully dogs approved.

The difference in figure is explained by the time-lag noted above meaning that 34 additional manually produced exemption certificates issued by the Scottish Government after 31 July 2024 were included in the figure given to the Scottish Sun, but not in the PQ answer.

It may be helpful to be aware that the Scottish Government is continuing to work through a small number of cases where XL Bully dog owners have met the legal requirement to apply before 31 July 2024, but still require to provide additional information in order for their exemption application to be processed and granted.

I have asked Janet Egdell, Chief Executive of National Records of Scotland to respond. Her response is as follows:

National Records of Scotland have today published: 2022 results | Scotland's Census (scotlandscensus.gov.uk).

Scotland’s Census results are designated as Accredited Official Statistics and form an integral part of the statistical system in the UK. The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), the independent regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority – Statistics for the Public Good, awards Accredited Official Statistics designation based on the quality, good practice and comprehensiveness of official statistics. 

More detail about the schedule for future reports can be found here. Census outputs schedule | Scotland's Census (scotlandscensus.gov.uk).

The Scottish Government has not made such an assessment. These are operational matters for Scottish Canals as part of their Asset Management Strategy work and responsibility to maintain and develop Scotland's canal network.

Since 2021, Scottish Government has provided three permanent CT scanners to support core diagnostic imaging capacity within Boards, including a mobile CT pod which is deployed flexibly to Boards that require additional capacity. One further mobile CT and seven mobile MRI scanners are also being used across multiple NHS Boards to provide additional capacity and earlier diagnosis efforts.To specifically support scope-based diagnostics we have published an Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan backed by £70 million. The plan focuses on key areas including infrastructure. Funding has been allocated to extend the use of mobile endoscopy units for 24-25 to provide additional capacity.Further to this and despite the extremely challenging capital funding position, we are committed to continued investment in our capital radiotherapy replacement programme. We intend to invest more than £65 million over the next 3 years for this programme.We continue to invest in cancer services across NHS Scotland, with £11.3m recurring funding provided to Health Boards in 2024-25 to support cancer waiting times improvements, focusing efforts on the most challenged tumour types.

The Scottish Government has no plans to change its visual identity from the current saltire.

Over the past 10 years, there has been a 50% increase in consultant oncologists, from 94.8 WTE (whole time equivalent) in March 2014, to 142.6 WTE in March 2024. We have also increased consultant radiologists by 31.9%, from 288.2 WTE ten years ago (March 2014) to 380.1 WTE in March 2024.

In addition to this, we have been increasing the number of available specialty training places for junior doctors in Radiology and Oncology training programmes, and more junior doctors are joining NHS Scotland than ever before, with more than 1,100 specialty trainees recruited throughout 2023.

To specifically support scope based diagnostics, the National Endoscopy Training Programme has been established within the NHS Scotland Academy to commission and deliver endoscopy training to a wide range of learners from different professional backgrounds, with representatives from every mainland health board in Scotland.

This ensures the availability of appropriately trained endoscopists and endoscopy support staff to deliver safe, high quality endoscopic investigations for Scotland’s patients. To date this has supported 80 trainees to complete Basic Skills courses, 137 trainees to attend upskilling courses, 54 trainees to attend immersion training at the Golden Jubilee University National Hospital, and 113 trainees to develop their ability to recognise lesions, primarily to support improved cancer detection.

We have also funded NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to develop a non-medical endoscopy programme. Since 2021, 53 places in total have been made available for non-medical endoscopy training and 20 places have been made available for non-medical cystoscopy training.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

SPS currently share information regarding the number of individuals released under Emergency Early Release (ER) on the SPS website. Further work has commenced on an analysis of the entire ER tranche data, and the SPS hope to be able to publish a full data report, which will be available on the SPS website by the end of August.

SPS continue to be as open and transparent as possible, whilst continuing to meet our statutory obligation to ensure that those in our care have their personal information protected; as such we have taken the decision not to publish a breakdown of establishments of those released under the ER scheme as some of the data could relate to a small group of individuals, which may lead to their inadvertent identification. SPS will however, share information that does include individual local authorities and health boards as part of the released data set.

Since 2016, the Scottish Government has provided Revenue and Capital Grant support to Scottish Canals as follows:

It is the responsibility of Scottish Canals to ensure that the maintenance and improvement of the canal network is resourced from its allocated budget and aligned to the aims of its Asset Management Strategy.

We are continuing to work at pace on the Developer Remediation Contract to ensure alignment with the Housing (Cladding Remediation) Scotland Act 2024 and the Single Building Assessment (SBA) specification, which was published in June 2024. We are committed to sharing a draft with developers with a view to engaging in further discussions and we have been discussing timings with stakeholders.