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Cancer remains a priority for the Scottish Government with NHS Scotland continuing to prioritise urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) referrals and delivering high-quality care, in the safest possible way, to those who need it most. We’re continuing to invest in cancer pathways to improve waiting times, including through up-skilling nurses and have begun testing the use of Single Points of Contact in cancer pathways to support patients from the point of referral.

In addition, we have stood up a National Oncology Taskforce of NHS Board Chief Executives and Medical Directors to seek national solutions to ensure long term resilience of oncology services in Scotland.

(a) The number of people accepted onto pre-registration midwifery training courses since the 2016-17 academic year is shown in the following table:

Data showing the percentage of pre-registration students who were in the "inactive" training state on a three-year pre-registration midwifery programme over the last five years for which complete figures are available is found in the table below. “Inactive” refers to students who are neither in training nor have completed their programme – many students will return to their studies and go on to complete their programme.

The Scottish Government is committed to tackling health inequalities and providing access to the highest quality of care for all. We work across the clinical research system to ensure sponsors of clinical studies understand their ethical and legal responsibilities, including increasing equitable access to clinical trials. We recognise the benefits of innovative approaches to the future of clinical trials, including the opportunities presented by increased use of data and digital technologies, and learning from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Place directors are not appointed - these roles are voluntary positions taken on by civil servants at deputy director and director level, alongside their day-to-day responsibilities. A list of current place directors and their local authority and Community Planning Partnership areas can be found on the Scottish Government website, under Community Planning [ Community planning - Improving public services - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ].

Since 2007 the Scottish Government has retained, and subsequently deployed, any and all net underspends which have been available following the conclusion of the Final Outturn process at the end of each financial year. The mechanism for doing so is via the Scotland Reserve and previously the Budget Exchange Mechanism.

The amount of underspends arising from each year since 1999 was detailed in the answer to question S6W-09370 on 13 July 2022.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Information on what the age profile of the NHS midwifery workforce was in (a) Scotland and (b) each NHS board, in (i) 2016 and (ii) the most recent year can be found in the following link: NHSScotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence

The Employment - demographic tab gives the percentage of the workforce over the age of 55 and the median age, this information can be broken down by board and job role from 2012.

Somerville: Scottish Ministers are committed to developing a Scottish school milk scheme to replace current subsidy arrangements. We are working with stakeholders and local authority partners to develop a fully funded universal school milk scheme for primary and special schools, and a pilot in secondary schools within the current parliamentary term and stakeholder engagement will form part of that work.

This data is not held centrally by The Scottish Government, National Records of Scotland or Public Health Scotland. 

In September 2022 the Scottish Government and COSLA published Scotland’s 10 year suicide prevention strategy and action plan, ‘Creating Hope Together’. This sets out a comprehensive plan to reduce suicide deaths in Scotland.

The initial 3 year action plan will support continuous improvement in the quality of clinical care and support provided by mental health services for people who are suicidal. This includes embedding the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health (NCISH) guidelines into operating practices. NCISH is the UK’s leading research programme into suicide prevention in clinical services, and is supported by the Scottish Government. Data tables from their 2022 Annual Report are available to view here which provides information on location of suicides, but is not broken down specifically to mental health settings.

The new strategy includes a continued focus on rolling out multi-agency suicide reviews across Scotland, which will provide valuable learning about where service opportunities have been missed in preventing a suicide. The suicide reviews will include information on whether the person who died was a mental health services inpatient. It is expected the system will identify the location of death, including whether the person was an inpatient at the time of death. Along with other types of data and insight, the learning from suicide reviews will produce valuable intelligence to inform ongoing service improvements.

Data specific to Years of Working Life Lost (YWLL) for liver disease is not routinely published. Scottish Burden of Disease data published in Sept 2021 showed that for liver disease (cirrhosis and other chronic liver disease) the number of years of life lost (YLL) have fallen from 37,467 in 2016 to 32,279 in 2019. This is around 2.9% of all YLL reported in the 2019 study (1,100,944).

We know that 60 per cent of liver disease is caused by alcohol misuse and we are working on initiatives that will support communities across Scotland to reduce alcohol consumption.