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Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S5W-21445

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of reported delays to its publication in December 2018 and January 2019, on what date the integrated health and social care workforce plan will be published.

Work is underway to develop a comprehensive plan to help address some of the recruitment and retention challenges faced by our health and care sector. We have already published workforce plans covering the NHS, Primary Care and Social Care.

We intend to publish our integrated health and social care workforce plan this year, as the Health Secretary made clear when she updated parliament in November. We are also currently taking our safe staffing legislation through the Scottish Parliament – the first multidisciplinary workforce and workload planning legislation in the UK.

Workforce supply pressures are compounded by the impact of Brexit, and we will undertake additional international recruitment activity in this financial year to promote the resilience of NHS Scotland as a result of EU Withdrawal.

Question reference: S5W-21581

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 08 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what progress is being made with the work of the Scottish Access Collaborative.

The Scottish Access Collaborative has developed a comprehensive programme of work over the last year to support a sustainable balance between demand and capacity in the health and care service in Scotland. It has endorsed a number of challenges which are being taken through an agreed development, testing and mandate process, and is actively working to identify new high impact challenges for future inclusion in the programme. Current workstreams include:

Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT)
Enhanced Recovery Pre-operative anaemia programme
Waiting List Validation
Team Job Planning
Accelerating the Development of Enhanced Practitioners (ADEPt)
Virtual Attendance scoping and piloting
Clinical Pathways Infrastructure Scoping

It has also supported a series of Specialty Group workshops through the year, which are co-producing a series of recommendation reports. These are completed for Cardiology, Urology, Gynaecology, Gastroenterology, Respiratory and underway for ENT, Chronic Pain, Neurology, Dermatology, Breast Services, General Surgery and Vascular Services. Orthopaedics and Ophthalmology continue to contribute through their existing national Specialty Groups.

Question reference: S5W-21579

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 08 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to each recommendation in the report by Parkinson's UK, People. Parkinson's. Scotland. What do we know about services and support for people with Parkinson’s in Scotland?.

We welcome this report from Parkinson’s UK and will consider it closely as we continue to work with the neurological community to develop Scotland’s first National Action Plan on Neurological Conditions. The public consultation on our draft plan closed on 8 February 2019. We will carefully consider all feedback received and publish our final plan later this year. We work closely with Parkinson’s UK who keep us updated about services and support for people with Parkinson’s in Scotland.

Question reference: S5W-21512

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that people newly diagnosed with dementia will receive the minimum of one year’s post-diagnostic support that they are entitled to.

As part of the 2017-2020 National Dementia Strategy, we continue to take national action to support local partnerships to improve the quality of post-diagnostic support in line with the national LDP Standard, to train the workforce, innovative and improve the consistency of the service and access to it.

We recently commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to lead work on a new locality-based project to test the delivery of home-based post-diagnostic services to a high volume to clients with a high level of additional care needs. This will involve innovations in terms of service design, professional roles and technology. A test site will be selected in coming months.

In addition, we have extended by 12 months the projects in East Edinburgh, Nithsdale and Shetland to test the re-location of post-diagnostic services in primary care. We also continue to deliver post-diagnostic training as part of the national Promoting Excellence dementia skills and knowledge framework.

Integration Joint Boards are responsible for planning, commissioning and delivering dementia post-diagnostic services.

Question reference: S5W-21573

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 08 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many porters in each NHS board deal with clinical waste, and how many of these porters dealt with such waste prior to December 2018, also broken down by how many are on a six-month contract.

The requested information is not held centrally as ISD do not collect clinical waste data on support staff, including hospital porters.

ISD do not hold details of the contracts which individual NHS Boards have with hospital porters.

Further notes:

Further information on the statistics, including information on how the data are collected and notes to aid interpretation, is given in the 'FAQs' section of the Workforce Statistics website at http://www.isdscotland.org/workforce/ .

Question reference: S5W-21580

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 08 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the board of NHS Grampian considering setting up an international office to offset the effects of its reported staffing problems.

The Scottish Government is supportive of the innovative approach being developed by NHS Grampian to set up an international health office to provide support and guidance for staff who choose to get involved in global citizenship. These plans are aligned to the aims of the NHS Scotland Global Citizenship Programme, which is a key part of the delivery of the Scottish Government’s International Development Strategy.

Question reference: S5W-21578

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 08 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many hospital porters vacancies have been advertised by each NHS board on a (a) six-month and (b) other type of contract in each of the last three years, also broken down by how many posts (i) were filled and (ii) not filled each year.

Question reference: S5W-21569

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 08 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 22 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Scottish Health Survey review, which found that women aged 45 to 54 experience the highest levels of poor mental health, and what action it is taking to improve mental health support for women in this age group.

We are working across the wide range of public services to harness the broadest range of opportunities to improve the population's mental health. Our PfG announced an additional £250 million of investment in mental health over the next five years, to introduce a package of measures to improve services for children, young people and adults, and embed support for good mental health across our public services.

We expect NHS Boards to work with their Integration Authority, local government, third sector and other partners to deliver fit for purpose mental health services and support that meets the needs of their local population, including women in this age group.

Question reference: S5W-21494

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 22 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to recent ISD statistics, which show that 61% per cent of the 17,496 people newly diagnosed with dementia in 2016-17 did not receive the post-diagnostic support they were entitled to.

As part of the 2017-2020 National Dementia Strategy, we continue to take national action to support local partnerships to improve the quality of post-diagnostic support, to train the workforce, innovative and improve the consistency of the service and access to it.

Many people are diagnosed in very old age with other chronic or terminal conditions and for some their dementia support – including in residential or acute settings– will be an addition to existing care packages and not reflected in the post-diagnostic figures. Others will not wish to take up the service straight away while they process their diagnosis. We are doing more work to understand the array of reasons individuals might not complete the service.

Integration Joint Boards are responsible for planning, commissioning and delivering dementia post-diagnostic services. The Scottish Budget delivers additional resource funding of almost £730 million (5.5%) for health and care services. Our budget includes £160 million of additional health and care investment in local authorities – which will support social care and mental health measures, including those delivered by Integrated Joint Boards.

Question reference: S5W-21393

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 04 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 21 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many times in each of the last five years each NHS board has (a) been subject to and (b) lost legal action because an error was made when informing parents of the sex of an unborn baby, also broken down by the (i) cost of legal action and (ii) amount of compensation awarded.

We are not aware of any cases where Boards have been subject to legal action regarding informing parents of the sex of their baby at ultrasound. Gender scans are not carried out by the NHS as there is generally no clinical reason to find out the sex of the baby. However, on some occasions it may be possible to give an indication of what the sex is and it is for Boards to decide whether to have a local policy on sharing this information. Any Boards that give this information will indicate to parents that the scan in not a conclusive test and may not be accurate.