Seòmar agus comataidhean

Glasgow Prestwick Airport operates on a commercial basis and at arm’s length from the Scottish Government and Ministers do not intervene in operational matters.

There is a wide range of education and training programmes for those delivering palliative care suitable to their role. These training programmes encourage those delivering palliative care to be aware of cultural factors and how these can impact on individuals and their families.

Our draft palliative care strategy aims to build on this work and includes a number of recommended actions for the provision of palliative care education and training to support all healthcare professionals delivering palliative care services.

Scottish Government implements a number of measures to support rural NHS Boards’ digital infrastructure. These include:

• The Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN)
• A Strategic Digital Fund -For a number of years the Scottish Government has provided additional non-recurring funding to support local strategic digital developments, with a particular emphasis on ensuring continued funding for Highlands and Islands Boards to protect rural services
• Access to the Scottish Government/COSLA Digital Maturity Assessment platform - a standardised management tool for digital transformation. This platform enables NHS Boards to document progress, analyse results, identify priorities, and align with local and national digital and data strategies.
• Recent analysis of data from the Scottish Government/COSLA Digital Maturity Assessment shows both progress in electronic records management and areas for development at organisational and system wide level.
• The Scottish Government and COSLA have also developed a range of resources to increase the digital capabilities of the leadership and workforce thereby improving the ability to identify digital transformation opportunities and implementation.
• A Records Management Code of Practice was published in August 2024.

Community organisations in rural areas and elsewhere are uniquely placed to identify and address the issues that keep individuals in their local communities healthy.

A place-based approach is the foundation of Community-Led Local Development (CLLD). Communities are empowered and supported to design and implement the solutions to the challenges and opportunities they identify in their local area, which can include community led health and social care provision.

Through the Communities workstream within the wider Place and Wellbeing programme we are also working with the community and voluntary sector to enhance the capacity of community organisations (in rural areas and elsewhere) to complement the actions of the public sector in keeping people well. As part of the Communities Workstream we are exploring how we can increase the influence of local community organisations in the decisions that impact on the health and wellbeing of their communities.

We have also introduced participation requests as part of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, which provide a mechanism for communities to seek dialogue with public service providers including NHS Health Boards on their own terms and become meaningfully involved in local service delivery.

This information is provided in Glasgow Prestwick Airport’s annual accounts.

Glasgow Prestwick Airport has published annual accounts for each year since the shareholding was acquired by Scottish Ministers. It is a statutory requirement that these are laid in Parliament.

We are continuing to work across the Scottish Government and with delivery partners, including Public Health Scotland and See Me, to ensure that employers across all sectors are equipped with the knowledge, skills and resources they need to promote and support the conditions that enable good mental health at work.

Together, we are delivering a joint package of support for employers across Scotland to support mentally healthy workplaces, which includes:

• The ‘Supporting a Mentally Healthy Workplace’ employer platform, which was launched in August 2022 and signposts employers to a wide range of free mental health and wellbeing resources and information.
• The ‘Supporting a Mentally Healthy Workplace: National Learning Network for Employers’, which was established in March 2023 to complement the employer platform and to bring together employers of all sizes and across all sectors to share learning and experiences of supporting mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.
• Public Health Scotland’s Mentally Flourishing Workplaces Framework. Developed in collaboration with a range of employers, this aims to help employers identify what they can do to improve mental health support for their employees, and work together to be a mentally flourishing organisation.
• The See Me in Work Programme, led by See Me, Scotland’s anti-mental health stigma campaign. which provides online support for employers to enable them to create stigma-free and mentally healthy working environments.

Additionally, since 2019 Scottish Government’s Mental Health Directorate has provided funding to the Lifelines Scotland wellbeing programme, to support blue light responders – Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the Scottish Ambulance Service – who have had difficult experiences in the course of their work which have affected their mental health and wellbeing.

It is the legal responsibility of the assigned Health Board or GP practice to act as the data controller for an individual's medical record. The data controller will monitor the data and rectify any discrepancies, in line with existing Data Protection legislation and processes.

Each NHS Scotland Health board has a privacy notice to inform the public of why and how they use information they are in control of and this can be accessed via their individual website.

Guidance is publicly available on NHS inform at: https://www.nhsinform.scot/care-support-and-rights/health-rights/confidentiality-and-data-protection/health-records/#viewing-your-health-records.

I wrote to the Economy and Fair Work Committee on 25 June 2024 to confirm that a market testing exercise for Glasgow Prestwick Airport was underway. Scottish Ministers’ longstanding position is that the airport should be returned to the private sector at the appropriate time and opportunity. This must be to an organisation with the commitment and capability to operate businesses directly relevant to GPA.

Any decision to sell GPA must represent value for money for taxpayers and be informed by what is right for the long-term success of the business and its contribution to the local and Scottish economy.

The process is ongoing and I will update Parliament when a significant development has been made.

The Scottish Government works closely with categorised responders, who are responsible under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 for assessing the risk of an emergency occurring, maintaining plans to ensure they can continue to perform their functions in case of an emergency, and considering whether an assessment makes it necessary or expedient to add or modify plans. Scottish Government are not however responsible for, or the owners of, any of these plans.

To support categorised responders with their duties, the Scottish Government contributes to the UK’s National Security Risk Assessment and produces the Scottish Risk Assessment to supplement this with Scotland specific analysis. These national level risk assessments consider the most serious emergencies that the UK and Scotland may face in the near future, and contain specific risk assessments for both severe storms and wildfires.

I wrote to the Economy and Fair Work Committee on 25 June 2024 to confirm that a market testing exercise for Glasgow Prestwick Airport was underway. Scottish Ministers’ longstanding position is that the airport should be returned to the private sector at the appropriate time and opportunity. This must be to an organisation with the commitment and capability to operate businesses directly relevant to GPA.

Any decision to sell GPA must represent value for money for taxpayers and be informed by what is right for the long-term success of the business and its contribution to the local and Scottish economy.