Chamber and committees

Community pharmacists currently have access to the Emergency Care Summary (ECS) which provides information on recent acute and repeat prescriptions and allergies and the Key Information Summary (KIS) where available, which provides information about a person’s health issues, a carer’s name and contact details, preferences on how a person would like to be cared for, the treatment they would like and where they would like to be cared for. In addition, several health boards are providing community pharmacists access to their clinical portal which provides additional clinical information.

There are several barriers that currently make full access to clinical records difficult including the interoperability of the different IT systems used across the NHS and providing assurances on data protection and information governance requirements.

The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer has commissioned work to explore how the required level of access to clinical records by community pharmacists can be delivered.

Alcohol sales are subject to VAT, whilst any profits made by businesses selling alcohol are subject to Corporation Tax. Both of these taxes remain fully reserved to the UK Government. Scotland receives a share of UK-wide VAT and corporation tax, regardless of the place of purchase of products or location of businesses, as part of the annual block-grant allocation. The Public Health Scotland evaluation of MUP concluded from a range of studies that “some evidence of cross-border purchasing was identified, but its extent was observed to be minimal.

Statistics on more able pupil as a reason for support are published in the pupil census supplementary statistics. This is available on the Scottish government website here https://www.gov.scot/publications/pupil-census-supplementary-statistics/.

Local authorities oversee the delivery of education and have a statutory duty to identify, provide for, and to review the support that they provide for pupils with additional support needs, including more able pupils.

The Single Building Assessment (SBA) is a comprehensive evaluation designed to assess fire safety risks associated with external wall systems in Scottish buildings. However, specific definitions for the terms (a) development, (b) building, and (c) stairs within the context of the SBA are not explicitly detailed in the definitions of the Housing Cladding Remediation (Scotland) Act 2025.

Development: The term development is not specifically defined within the SBA. Generally, in Scottish planning context, development refers to the carrying out of building, engineering, mining, or other operations in, on, over, or under land, or the making of any material change in the use of any buildings or other land.

Building: While the SBA specification does not provide a specific definition of building, it refers to in-scope buildings as those eligible for assessment under the programme.

The Cladding Remediation Programme aims to address risks in domestic multi-residential buildings that meet the following criteria:

• have at least one flat
• Have cladding
• are 11 meters or more in height
• were either
  • constructed between 1 June 1992 and 1 June 2022
  • developed between 1 June 1992 and 1 June 2022

Stairs: The term stairs is not explicitly defined in the SBA-related documents. In general construction terminology, stairs refer to a set of steps leading from one floor of a building to another.

The Scottish Government became responsible for funding discretionary housing payments in 2017 and only holds data on costs from April 2017 onwards. Data prior to this has been obtained from the UK Government website: Discretionary Housing Payments statistics - GOV.UK.

Since 2013, a total of £17.16 million has been invested in Dumfries and Galloway and £10.81 million in Scottish Borders to support these local authorities to mitigate the UK Government’s bedroom tax policy.

Tables 1 and 2 provide a breakdown of spending (or funding) in the past 13 years, including the current financial year.

Table 1 – bedroom tax mitigation spending (or funding) from 2013 onwards, broken down by financial year in Dumfries and Galloway

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Individual local authorities manage and monitor the provision of independent advocacy to meet local needs, including ongoing provision for care experienced people.

The Scottish Government is currently working with advocacy service providers and key partners, including The Promise Scotland, COSLA and Who Cares? Scotland to further develop our understanding of current advocacy provision and areas where needs are not being met.

The Scottish Government published an independent evaluation of the Children’s Hearings advocacy scheme in September 2024.

In addition, the Scottish Government provides grant funding to Who Cares? Scotland to operate their National Helpline which provides lifelong support to care experienced people.

All children in Primaries 1 to 5 across Scotland are eligible for Free School Meals, including children living in Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders.

The following table sets out the number of eligible pupils by year group and local authority area.

The information requested is not held or collected centrally by Scottish Government. However, Police Scotland may be able to provide some data obtained from their National Missing Persons Application which was introduced in April 2019.

The Scottish Government has no involvement with the procurement of replacement equipment to retain as vessel spares. This is the responsibility of the operator.