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The Scottish Government remains engaged with the review process, however, the responsibility for the implementation of the recommendations falls to NHS Highland, working closely with the local community, NHS 24, the Scottish Ambulance Service and other agencies as recommended in Professor Ritchie’s original review.

Statistics relating to the waits patients experience for a new outpatient attendance and inpatient or day case appointment at NHS Board and specialty level are published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) up to 31 st December 2022 and can be found using the following links:

New Outpatients - https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/18024/newop_feb23.xlsx

Inpatients/Daycases - https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/17838/ipdc_feb23.xlsx

The statistics published in the tables above include the median and 90th percentile waits in days for:

• New outpatients waiting (‘1.1 Table’)
• New outpatients seen (‘1.2 Table’)
• Inpatients/day cases waiting (‘2.2 Table’)
• Inpatients/day cases seen (‘2.1 Table’)

We continue to work intensively to clear long waits, which have been exacerbated by the impact of the global pandemic and are determined to provide NHS Boards with support necessary to drive improvements. This includes targets announced in July 2022 to address the backlog of planned care, maximising theatre productivity, optimising Golden Jubilee National Hospital capacity, and the delivery of the £1 billion NHS Recovery Plan to support sustainable improvements and new models of care, such as the National Treatment Centre Programme.

We are also working with the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CFSD) and boards to embed regional and national working to ensure that long waiting patients can access treatment more quickly.

Scottish Government published analysis in October 2022 estimating around 73% of people eligible for Young Carer Grant received the payment in 2021-22. These figures are available at:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/take-up-rates-scottish-benefits-october-2022/

In addition, information relating to Young Carer Grant applications is routinely published by Social Security Scotland as part of Official Statistics releases. The statistics currently include a breakdown of received applications, as well as authorised applications, by local authority and financial year. These statistics are available at https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/about/statistics/social-security-scotland-statistics-publications .

As part of work to continuously improve Official Statistics outputs, the forthcoming Young Carer Grant statistics release will include a local authority breakdown expanded to report denied and withdrawn applications. These Official Statistics will be published on 21 March 2023.

The Scottish Parliament approved the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations in 2020. The Regulations are wholly within devolved competence. There is an agreed and published process between UK Government and devolved governments for excluding certain areas from the UK Internal Market Act.

We have been following that process for excluding the deposit return scheme regulations from the Internal Market Act and this has been the subject of discussion with the UK Government for many months. I will keep Parliament updated on the exclusion process.

On single-use vapes, we expect Zero Waste Scotland to submit its report on the review of the environmental impacts and management of single-use vapes in May, and we will consider its findings. Should our preferred course of action require an exclusion we will follow the agreed process.

The commercial value of advertising space was calculated by assigning a standard advertising rate attributable to similar footfall areas per RVM. The calculations are commercially sensitive and are not published. “Allocated to society”, in this case, means the Return Point Operator who would receive the value for their advertising space. This figure has not been revised.

The Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan , published in November 2021, is backed by £70m investment. The plan focuses on a number of key areas including Development and Infrastructure Innovation and Redesign to provide alternatives to traditional endoscopy. This includes Capsule Colonoscopy Endoscopy ( CCE ), Computer Tomography ( CT ), Cytosponge and Transnasal Endoscopy ( TNE ).

In Urology, alternative delivery pathways include Diagnostic Urology Hubs and 'One Stop' clinics, such as the Urology Hub at Forth Valley Royal Hospital, which was opened in July 2022.

The Scottish Government does not hold the detailed information centrally, the member should contact NHS Boards directly.

Preliminary findings from the EAVE II study, led by Public Health Scotland in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, were published in a preprint article on 7 March 2023. This article presents preliminary analysis of the number of adults aged 18 and over presenting with long COVID in general practice. It uses routinely collected clinical data from almost the entire adult population in Scotland.

Please note that these findings are preliminary and have not yet been peer-reviewed.

This study estimates that, depending on the outcome measure used, between 0.02% to 1.8% of the participant cohort had long COVID at some point over the course of the study (March 2020 to October 2022). The total number of cases identified each year have not been published with the preprint article. However, findings suggest that there was a general increase in new long COVID cases between September 2020 to April 2022, interrupted by a temporary decline between February and May 2021. Findings suggest a general decline in new long COVID cases from April to October 2022. The outcome measures used include, but are not limited to, diagnosis recorded via clinical codes. The article notes that these figures represent a probable under-recording of cases.

For comparison, the estimated prevalence of self-reported (as opposed to clinically diagnosed) long COVID in Scotland from the ONS Covid-19 Infection Survey was 3.53% (95% confidence interval: 3.23% to 3.83%) for the four week period ending 1 October 2022, which is the four-weekly estimate most closely aligned with the end of the study period.

Preliminary findings from this analysis suggest that, across NHS health boards, cases of long COVID were largely proportionate to population shares. However, findings suggest that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde saw a disproportionately large share of cases, and NHS Lothian saw a disproportionately small share of cases.

Please refer to the preprint article for further details: Identifying Long Covid Using Electronic Health Records: A National Observational Cohort Study in Scotland .

In May 2019, the then Cabinet Secretary visited the Isle of Skye, with Sir Lewis Ritchie to undertake a review of progress. Then in May 2022, the current Cabinet Secretary visited the Isle of Skye, for the official opening of the Broadford Hospital. No formal discussions took place at that time, regarding the independent external review of Skye, Lochalsh and South West Ross.

The Scottish Government monitors a range of data sources on job vacancies in Scotland, as part of wider analysis of labour market trends. These include official and experimental statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and data from external partners.

In November to January 2023, Scotland’s employment rate was 76.5 per cent and it was the second highest since the series began in 1992. The unemployment rate was 3.1 per cent, down 0.6 percentage points since December 2019 to February 2020 (pre-pandemic) and the inactivity rate was 21.0 per cent, down 0.6 percentage points since pre-pandemic.

ONS produce experimental job advert indices at Scotland level, using online job postings from Adzuna. This source indicates that online job postings in Scotland in the week to 3rd March 2023 47.1% higher than February 2020. This data source is available at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/datasets/onlinejobadvertestimates

ONS also produce experimental estimates of labour demand volumes in Scotland by profession and local authority, based on analysis of Textkernel data on online job adverts. The most recent data suggested that there were 78,925 online job vacancies in Scotland in December 2022. Of these, 13 per cent were classified as Healthcare job postings, while 9.4 per cent were classified as Information & Communication Technology postings. This data source is available at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/labourdemandvolumesbyprofessionandlocalauthorityukjanuary2017todecember2022

The Scottish Government also monitors labour demand through the RBS Report on Jobs, which provides an overview of changes in recruitment demand by sector in Scotland as reported by recruitment consultancies. In February 2022, permanent staff demand growth was strongest in the monitored sectors of Nursing/Medical/Care and IT & Computing. For temporary staff demand growth remained strongest in IT & Computing. This data source is available at:

Royal Bank of Scotland Report on Jobs – February 2023 | NatWest Group

We are considering how to address access to medicines for the treatment of some cancers in the draft new cancer strategy and action plan. Safe, realistic and effective treatment is one of our key ambitions.