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There are regular meetings between Scottish Government officials and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) representatives, covering a wide range of subjects. The last such meeting took place on 10 January 2023 when the MHRA Cross-UK Partnership group met. The purpose of the MHRA Cross-UK Partnership group is to ensure that officials from the devolved administrations are kept updated on key MHRA issues that may affect or involve them. At the last meeting, the MHRA Corporate Plan, its Post Implementation Review of the Human Medicines Regulations, and safety issues were discussed.

The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer is a member of the Sodium Valproate Implementation Working Group, which is supporting the safe introduction of new measures to further strengthen the safe prescribing of sodium valproate in clinical practice. The group last met on 6 January 2023.

A meeting took place on 9 December 2022 with the Chief Medical Officers and the Deputy Chief Medical Officers and the MHRA Chief Executive was invited as a guest. Dame June Raine attended briefly on 9 December and provided an informal update on sodium valproate.

‘A Fairer Scotland for All: An Anti-Racist Employment Strategy was published on 9 December 2022 and sets out the actions the Scottish Government will take and how it will work with employers to help make Scotland’s workplaces more diverse, fair and inclusive.

The strategy will support NHS and other employers to:

• improve their collection of workforce data, including reporting their pay gap, and take action on the findings
• take an anti-racist approach to remove barriers in their recruitment, retention and progression practices to improve representation of workers
• drive cultural, attitudinal and organisational change through building an understanding of the impact of institutional racism and the processes and practices in an organisation that lead to the unfair treatment of people on the basis of race.’

Equally Safe at Work is an innovative employer accreditation programme developed by Close the Gap, Scotland’s policy advocacy organisation working on women’s labour market equality. It supports employers to improve their employment practice to advance gender equality at work and prevent violence against women.

Public Health Scotland, NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Dumfries and Galloway and Healthcare Improvement Scotland are taking part in this pilot which commenced in July 2022 and will take approximately one year to complete. A further five Health Boards, NHS Borders, NHS Shetland, NHS Orkney, National Education Scotland and NHS Fife, are part of the shadow group.

This information is not held centrally. This is a matter for Skills Development Scotland and NHS Boards.

We remain committed to the increasing in the Health and Social Care workforce by 1% over the next 5 years, as outlined within the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care.

NHS Scotland official workforce statistics published on 06 December 2022 show that staffing levels have increased by over 2,800 permanent whole time equivalent in the last year (or 1.8% of the NHS Scotland workforce) – representing 10 consecutive years of staffing growth.

The National Cancer Quality Steering group have overseen the development of a newly proposed QPI on 'Recurrence Following Breast Cancer Treatment' in 2022. This proposal contains 3 parts - i) local recurrence (or new cancer) following conservation surgery; ii) local recurrence (or new cancer) following mastectomy; and iii) any recurrence (or new cancer) in same breast, axilla or distant site after surgical treatment.

This QPI, along with the other revisions have recently been subject to a public engagement exercise and all comments received via this process are due to be discussed at a further Breast Cancer QPI Formal Review meeting later in January prior to final agreement.

Further to this, the Scottish Government continues its dialogue with Public Health Scotland, NHS England and the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership alongside breast cancer specialists and the charity Breast Cancer Now regarding data collection for secondary breast cancer.

The Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office (CSO) supports funding schemes for applied health research across the range of health challenges including prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Applications are assessed through independent expert review with funding decisions based on the recommendations of independent expert research committees. Currently funded projects include an investigation of a novel class of antibiotic and on targeting antibiotic use.

In addition, CSO contributes financially to a range of National Institute for Health & Care Research funding schemes so these are open to applications from researchers in Scotland. These schemes can also consider applications for research relating to infectious diseases with funding recommendations made following independent expert review.

CSO also invests through NHS Research Scotland in a range of clinical research infrastructure to support Health Boards to host and participate in clinical studies and trials, including an Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Network to support the delivery of studies in this area.

The Scottish Government has also agreed, in principle, to join a new payment and evaluation model for new antimicrobial products, led by National Institute for Health & Care Excellence and NHS England. Frameworks are set to be finalised and in place by end of March 2023, at which point, all four nations will collectively decide on the new products that will be awarded contracts. If this new model is successful, we hope it will help to address supply chain issues by incentivising industry research and development into new antimicrobials.

All NHS boards have utilised the funding available to build the infrastructure in their recruitment teams and appoint an international recruitment lead.

I refer the member to the Scottish Government’s second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan which committed to offering up to 500 apprenticeship opportunities across NHS Scotland in 2022/23.

NHS Boards deliver a wide range of employability programmes, following the ‘No One Left Behind’ overarching approach which is place-based, needs-led and person-centred. Programmes delivered in 2022-23 have focused on a wide range of groups, including: young people at risk of long-term unemployment, care leavers, veterans and service leavers, and lone parents over the age of 25.

The Scottish Government continues to focus on tackling disparities in deprived areas by ensuring equitable access to cancer services through the actions in our National Cancer Plan. We recognise that the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated inequalities within screening. A key Ministerial priority is reducing inequalities in access to and uptake of screening programmes. That is why we committed up to £2.45 million to the Screening Inequalities Fund to build a programme of evidence-based, sustainable and scalable projects that tackle inequalities in a systemic way.

Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Services (RCDS) have been established across three NHS Boards to date which have a key role in delivering earlier diagnosis and improving patient care. The First Minister recently announced an additional two RCDS’ are being developed.

Additionally, the development of national clinical management pathways through the Scottish Cancer Network will help reduce variation across Scotland, across the entirety of the pathway. In parallel, the first optimal cancer diagnostic pathway, led by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) was launched in December 2022, and is being funded by £3 million from the Scottish Government’s Detect Cancer Earlier (DCE) Programme.