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We have carried out an extensive consultation exercise to help inform our approach to social security in Scotland and we will be publishing a report on the consultation responses early this year. This will help to inform the work of the Disability and Carers' Benefits Expert Advisory Group which will be established this year to provide recommendations and guidance on issues including assessment for benefits in Scotland. We will also continue engagement through our stakeholder groups and the establishment of ‘Experience Panels’ involving at least 2,000 people, with recent experience of applying for or receiving benefits, to help us design, build and improve the new system, and support our work on a longer-term basis.

Travel concessions on the Edinburgh trams are a matter for the City of Edinburgh Council.

Bus travel concessions for older and disabled people are provided by the Scottish Government through the National Concessionary Bus Travel Scheme for Older and Disabled People (NCTS). Travel concessions on other modes of transport are at the discretion of local authorities. The conditions and extent of such schemes are for local authorities to determine.

The Scottish Government held discussions with City of Edinburgh Council in early 2013, when it confirmed that the NCTS would not be extended to include Edinburgh trams on the basis that this would have impacted on the money available to support bus services, including concessionary bus travel across Scotland. The City of Edinburgh Council subsequently decided to provide concessions on Edinburgh trams for eligible Edinburgh residents holding a National Entitlement Card.

Travel concessions on the Glasgow Subway are a matter for Strathclyde Concessionary Travel Scheme Joint Committee (SCTSJC).

Bus travel concessions for older and disabled people are provided by the Scottish Government through the National Concessionary Bus Travel Scheme for Older and Disabled People (NCTS). Travel concessions on other modes of transport are at the discretion of local authorities. The conditions and extent of such schemes are for local authorities to determine.

In the Strathclyde, area Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) operate a concessionary travel scheme covering the Strathclyde area on behalf of the SCTSJC, which brings together the relevant local authorities and SPT. The scheme provides discounted travel on the Glasgow Subway for eligible elderly and disabled residents in the Strathclyde area who hold a National Entitlement Card.

Extending the NCTS to include the Glasgow Subway would entail additional financial pressures on the scheme and would impact on the money available to support bus services including bus concessions across Scotland.

The 'Children in Scotland requiring Palliative Care' (ChiSP) report, which was published in Spring 2016, set out ten evidence based recommendations and identified where further improvements are needed to support and inform planning for children and young person's palliative care services.

Any charity wishing to access public funding to provide palliative care for children would need to demonstrate that the work undertaken meets an unmet need and that it has the capacity to deliver appropriate services in a manner which is cost effective and in line with usual regulations, such as the nature & scope of current activities, local needs and registration status.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5T-00202 on 15 November 2016. All answers to Topical Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=10626&i=97682&c=1947362&s=S5T-%252000202

As announced in the Draft Budget for 2017-18 in Parliament on 15 December 2016, the baseline allocation for NHS Grampian will increase to a total of £899.4 million. In addition to this increase, the board can also expect to receive an additional £3 million of recurring (NRAC) National Resource Allocation Committee parity funding.

In the current year as part of the additional £10 million the Scottish Government announced on 21 November to tackle waiting times, NHS Grampian is receiving £918k specifically to address outpatient waiting times.

In addition, the Scottish Government cancer access team is working with NHS Grampian to ensure that surgical treatment for cancer patients is prioritised and to support cancer waiting times performance, this includes £460k allocated in 2016-17 to support increased access to diagnostic and surgical capacity for cancer patients.

Furthermore, the Scottish Government has also invested an extra £2.5 million annually in specialist nurse training to improve specialist nursing and care. This funding included up to £700,000 to fulfil the First Minister’s commitment to double the number of Motor Neurone Disease Clinical Nurse Specialists and to ensure that they would all be paid from public funds. That commitment has now been met. NHS Boards made the decision where to prioritise these funds based on local need and NHS Grampian elected to recruit staff in the areas of Rheumatology, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s Disease and Paediatric Allergy.

We continue to work closely with NHS Grampian to support their efforts to meet the needs of all patients in order to deliver a safe and sustainable service in a variety of settings and these measures will help drive down the use of the private sector for carrying out procedures in the future.

This is an operational matter for the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). I have asked the Chief Executive of SQA to write to you.

The level of loan support a student can access is dependent on their household, rather than parental, income. The persons' whose household income SAAS can take into account is laid out in legislation and is comprised of the student and (if appropriate) their parents/step-parents or spouse/partner.

Household income brackets were introduced as part of the simplification review of the student support package in 2013-2014 to enable the Scottish Government to focus support on the lowest income households via the minimum income guarantee of £7,000 (now £7,625).

Before implementing the new system, the Government consulted widely and took views on design from a number of key partners and stakeholders including the NUS Scotland.

As autonomous institutions, universities are responsible for their own course content and examinations. However, under the UK Quality Code they are expected to operate equitable, valid and reliable processes of assessment, which enable every student to demonstrate the extent to which they have achieved the intended learning outcomes for the credit or qualification being sought.

In Scotland we have a clear route for new drugs to be appraised through the long standing Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC).

Where SMC accept medicines for routine use in Scotland, Health boards are expected to make the medicine or its equivalent available to patients. SMC published ‘accepted for restricted use’ advice on 8 August 2016 for ibrutinib(Imbruvica®) for treatment of adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), who have received at least one prior therapy, or in first line therapy in the presence of 17p deletion or TP53 mutation who are unsuitable for chemo-immunotherapy. This advice is line with the recent NICE decision for access to ibrutinib(Imbruvica®) in England and Wales.