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Ministers and Government officials regularly communicate with representatives of all health boards, including NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde; to discuss matters of importance to local people. As part of this, any discussions about potential service change take place within the context of the well-established and long-standing process, set out in the national guidance 'Informing, Engaging and Consulting People in Developing Health and Community Care Services' (2010) available at: www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/mels/CEL2010_04.pdf

This information is not held centrally by Scottish Government.

The number of consultant clinical radiologists in NHS Scotland has increased by 43.1 per cent under this Government, to 320.0 Whole Time Equivalent (WTE). The number of therapeutic radiographers has also increased, by 22.1 per cent to 274.2 WTE.

It is not possible to accurately identify all staff defined as ‘radiotherapy specialists’ – either wholly or as part of their role – from centrally held data due to the multi-disciplinary roles involved in the delivery of radiotherapy services.

However, we are continuing to work closely with NHS Boards to support their efforts in recruitment within cancer services to meet the needs of patients, and to deliver a safe and sustainable service.

Additional specialist posts for radiotherapy healthcare professionals will be created over time to meet projected demand. Planning for these including training capacity will be a matter for NHS Boards based on the advice of the recently established radiotherapy subgroup. This group is responsible for identifying and agreeing a national direction of travel for access to modern radiotherapy treatments and agreeing a collaborative approach to delivering these treatments across all five Scottish Cancer Centres.

Individual NHS Boards are not given a savings target, although collectively NHS Boards are expected to deliver efficiency savings equivalent to 3% per annum to be reinvested in NHS care.

Spend on electronic requisitioning has increased significantly over the last ten years with throughput on PECOS (the core NHS purchase ordering system) now at £1.9billion per annum and all pharmacy ordering being processed through electronic ordering systems (approx. £350m per annum). This equates to over 90% of all NHS procurement being electronically tracked through these two control systems. Residual legacy systems for the remaining spend are constantly under review to develop a migration to the electronic routes.

For example, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde are currently working with NHS National Procurement to develop a potential ‘single instance’ ordering system which would improve the throughput of re-ordering.

The NHS procurement process complies with the Scottish Government Procurement Journey. This is public sector wide guidance which provides all contracting authorities with information on how to procure, including appropriate steps to ensure separation of duty.

We require Boards to have SFIs, updated annually and these must include a section on declarations of interest.

a) NHS Scotland has a mature shared service capability within National Services Scotland, via the National Procurement Organisation. This has increased the value of national/shared procurement arrangements significantly over the last 10 years with the annual value of national/shared procurement arrangements increasing from approximately £350m p.a. in 2005 to approximately £1.3bn p.a. in 2016. Additionally the National Distribution Centre provides a single logistics service for NHS Scotland with a stock holding of approx 9000 products and a throughput of approximately £150m per year.

b) Savings of £35m - £40m are secured every year from the use of national arrangements. These savings are for re-investment in frontline services.

Under this Government, the number of Qualified Nurses and Midwives has increased by over 2,100 WTE, or 5.2%, to 43,166.2 WTE.

The number of staff working in NHS Scotland has increased by over 11,000 Whole Time Equivalent (WTE), or 8.7 per cent, to 138,125.4 WTE.

Further information on: a) the latest published NHS Nursing and Midwifery staff in post figures by board can be found in the data tables of the workforce statistics website at: https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2016-09-06/Nursing_and_Midwifery_SIP_J2016.xls

Further information on: b) the latest published overall NHS staff figures by board can be found in the data tables of the Workforce Statistics website at: https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2016-09-06/Overall_staff_J2016.xls

Health boards manage their own expenditure and there may be times when a board opts to use local activity as opposed to the national solution that is in place. The Scottish Government does not hold specific details of this as this is managed directly by the Health boards.