Seòmar agus comataidhean

There have been no recent discussions between the Scottish Government and Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service regarding apprenticeships in the SPS. The Scottish Prison Service are responsible for the recruitment and development of their workforce including apprenticeships.

I have raised this issue with Julie White, Chief Officer in the Dumfries and Galloway Health and Social Care Partnership, who has advised that following the temporary closure of the in-patient facilities a total of 52 staff were re-deployed.

The deployed community staff are currently supporting:

• 102 packages of care (535.5 hrs) which equates to circa 120 individuals to support care at home sector
• The opening of 18 beds in Mountainhall Treatment Centre as an intermediate care facility as a step down from Acute Care.
• The Marie Curie and district nursing 24/7 services have resulted in reducing the need for cottage hospital beds as the partnership are able to support caring for more people in their homes.

In Scotland the provision of education is the responsibility of local authorities who have a duty under the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 to provide adequate and efficient school education. Under the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc. Act 2000 the local authority is responsible for improving the quality of education within their schools with a view to raising standards.

In the case of Dargavel Primary School, Renfrewshire Council is responsible for ensuring the quality of education within the school and any concerns should be raised with them.

Renfrewshire Council has commissioned an independent review to determine what went wrong and why – the findings of which will be made public.

The Council is working on a long-term solution for the school, and has committed to engaging with parents and carers on proposals.

Data on school support staff are collected as part of the annual school staff census.

National Statistics on selected categories of school support staff (pupil support assistants, home-school link workers, behaviour support staff, educational psychologists, school nurses and library staff) can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-statistics/

Management information (which are not subject to the same quality assurance procedures by Scottish Government statisticians as Official Statistics) for all other support staff roles for which data is collected centrally can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-management-information/

Statistics for all categories of support staff prior to 2017 are available as part of the Teacher Census Supplementary Data: https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementary-statistics/

The processing and quality assurance of the statistics on school support staff from 2017 onwards has been brought into line with procedures for National Statistics on pupils and teachers. This means that statistics from 2017 onwards are not directly comparable with the data on support staff from previous years.

In line with the UK Wide DDRB recommendations, Junior Doctors in Scotland have been awarded a 4.5% pay uplift this year, the same position in Wales. Junior Doctors in England did not receive a 4.5% uplift due to agreeing a previous multi-year deal.

Funding of £18 billion is provided for the health portfolio in 2022-23. This builds on frontline health spending in Scotland that, per head, is 2.2% (£74) higher than in Wales and 10.6% (£323) higher than in England - equivalent to around 10, 000 nurses and 44, 000 nurses, respectively - and takes investment in our frontline NHS Boards to £12.4 billion. This investment supports both existing staff costs and ongoing recruitment, in line with local workforce and service planning.

In addition to this, in October this year funding of £7.98 million was announced to recruit up to 750 nurses, midwives and allied health professionals to offset the up-front recruitment costs of international recruitment by the end of March 2023. Last winter we announced funding to build infrastructure within boards and support international recruitment to recruit at least 200 registered nurses. By the end of August 2022 c.230 nurses have been recruited. Boards may also independently pursue overseas recruitment for specific roles or indeed as part of a campaign and routinely do so.

(a) A breakdown of buildings in the high rise inventory by decade of construction:

Consultation was undertaken on the broad principles of land use change with Scottish Forestry (SF) and RPID, prior to Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) submitting their offer. Officials from FLS would be happy to provide the responses received from SF / RPID.

The First Minister will chair the Investor Panel and has appointed Angus Macpherson, CEO, Noble & Co as co-Chair. Ministers and officials have been working closely with Mr Macpherson to identify suitable Panel members with the knowledge, experience and expertise in global capital investment markets and green finance to drive this work forward. The first meeting of the Panel will take place on‎ 12 December.

The Panel’s primary focus will be on attracting capital investment to the physical infrastructure required for a just transition and to provide advice on how we can create the right conditions to attract private investment to support policy objectives.

A Steering Group comprising staff from NatureScot and Scottish Government is undertaking the goose management policy review.

A six-week stakeholder consultation concluded on 17 October 2022 in which stakeholders were invited to comment on the effectiveness of current national goose policy and its delivery, to identify issues and make suggestions for future national goose policy.

Invitations were extended to individual members of the National Goose Forum and Local Goose Management Groups, and NatureScot’s web pages provided open access to the questionnaire to other interested parties.

257 stakeholders submitted questionnaire responses.

The results from the questionnaire have been summarised and the key themes include concerns around greylag geese, funding and how goose management might be supported in future.

The next steps are: for the Policy Steering Group to engage with Local Goose Management Groups and other stakeholders to share the summary responses with them, to confirm they accurately reflect their views, to ask them which issues are of greatest concern to them, and how they would like their concerns to be addressed through future goose policy. These discussions are ongoing, and will be completed before Christmas.

Production of the report by NatureScot has been delayed slightly due to pressures of the additional work being generated with regard to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). This delay will allow NatureScot to ensure the impacts of HPAI are taken into consideration as part of the review.

Following the completion of the review, NatureScot will produce a report for Scottish Ministers in Spring 2023.

In the meantime, the Steering Group will share a draft report with stakeholders and engage in further stakeholder discussions in February 2023.