Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-04001 on 8 November 2021. 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

The Scottish Government set out the local arrangements that should be put in place to provide clinical and professional multi-disciplinary team oversight for social care services during the COVID-19 pandemic in a letter dated 17 May 2020.

These arrangements, which build on the foundations of health and social care integration, have contributed to the protective arrangements for care home and care at home services during the pandemic. The Scottish Government wrote to local MDT oversight teams in March 2021 setting out the expectation that these arrangements should continue for the remainder of the pandemic and beyond, although these will need to evolve taking account of learning and local circumstances.

The additional funding announced will enable both the establishment of new multi-disciplinary teams and strengthening of existing teams.

As set out in the announcement, the £300 million is both additional and recurring investment, demonstrating Scottish Government’s commitment to enabling longer term planning, particularly on workforce, to ensure a well-supported and resilient health and social care system.

Further detail on planned expenditure will be determined and set out in the forthcoming 2022-23 Scottish Budget. The 2022-23 Scottish Budget will be published on 9 December.

The level of future funding associated with this Programme for Government commitment will not be confirmed until publication of the Scottish Government multi-year spending review, currently expected to be spring of 2022. The Scottish Budget for 2022/23 will be published on 9 December.

However, the Scottish Government has already committed £2.3 million of funding for genomic medicine for 2021–2022. The funding for 2021-2022 will support the extension of ‘The Bridge to a Scottish Strategy for Genomics Strategy’ which increases laboratory capacity and frontline genetic services for rare and inherited disease.

The Scottish Genomics Leadership Group, jointly chaired by Professor David Crossman, Chief Scientist for Health for the Scottish Government, and Susan Buchanan, Director for NHS National Services Division, are our expert group in genomic medicine and are providing advice to the Scottish Government to plan our long-term agenda for genomic medicine in Scotland.

Reported incidents of spiking are likely to be recorded by the police as either (i) crimes of administering a substance for sexual purposes under section 11 of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009, or (ii) drugging (assault). The former is recorded when a person intentionally administers a substance, or causes a substance to be taken, with the purpose of stupefying or overpowering, to enable any person to engage in a sexual activity involving the victim. The latter is similar in that a crime is committed when drugs are feloniously administered with intent to produce stupefaction, however there doesn’t need to be further intent, and it is not necessary that any injury to the victim is caused.

The data we receive from Police Scotland does not include information on the circumstances of individual crimes. We are therefore unable to identify how many of these crimes specifically involve drink spiking or spiking by injection.

Number of crimes of administering a substance for sexual purposes recorded by the police, by local authority, 2016-17 to September 2021

As part of our Future Skills Action Plan, we will provide more opportunities for the current workforce to upskill and retrain. To support this, we increased our investment in workforce development to £20m per annum from
‎ 2020-21.

The Flexible workforce Development Fund is now open to all employers, with up to £15,000 per year available for UK Government Apprenticeship Levy payers and £5,000 for SMEs to support workforce development supporting business growth.

In some sectors, such as Tourism and Hospitality, Cyber Security, green Construction, Aviation, Aerospace, and Digital, the National Transition Training Fund is supporting in-work skills development to enable economic recovery from Covid-19 and EU exit, as well as helping businesses gain the skills to for the transition to net zero.

In the current financial year, there is also support for businesses in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire through the North East Economic Recovery and Skills Fund. This £14.3m fund recognises the dual impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the downturn in Oil and Gas/ Local partners are working with businesses in key sectors to provide skills support to aid economic recovery in the area.

The need to raise awareness amongst employers on the necessary behaviour changes that will support a just transition to net zero is also recognised as a priority area in the Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan (CESAP), which was published in December 2020.

The current activity taken as part of the CESAP includes training developed by Keep Scotland Beautiful that has helped organisations to better understand the climate emergency and respond to the risks and opportunities it presents and the development of multi-disciplinary training on natural capital approaches. In addition to the actions already being taken, over the next year there will be a ‘toolkit’ developed to help small/micro businesses develop the skills and knowledge they need to adapt to the demands of the transition to net zero.

There has been no discussion between the UK and Scottish Governments over the introduction of a digital sales tax in Scotland. The Scottish Government is closely monitoring the UK Government’s planned forthcoming consultation on the arguments for and against an online sales tax, as announced in its final report to their fundamental review of business rates published alongside the UK Budget on 27 October.

The Scottish Government provides various grant funding each year to support and expand allotments and community growing groups in Scotland.

Scottish Government community funds, including Climate Challenge Fund, Climate Challenge Asset Fund and Investing in Communities Fund more broadly support a wide range of community growing and community garden projects.

The Scottish Government provided funding through the Community Growing Fund which was a grant scheme for the years 2019-2020 and 2020-21, providing a total of £80,000 to local community growing groups public bodies and third sector organisations.

Scottish Government officials have a weekly call with NHS Tayside’s Cancer Team to track all patients on an urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) pathway and update on service delivery, including workforce.

To support Cancer and Diagnostic services the Scottish Government has invested £10 million to support cancer services during and beyond the pandemic. This will support increased access to cancer diagnostics and staffing. A further £9 million will also be allocated this year to support diagnostic imaging capacity. We have also invested in mobile units located in NHS Highland and NHS Tayside to increase capacity.

The provisions of the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000 enable the Scottish Ministers to make a formal proposal to establish a new National Park. We are aware that there are several areas which may be interested in obtaining National Park status. There is therefore a need to have an initial non-statutory evaluation process to determine what area or areas should be subject to a formal proposal. This evaluation process will be fair and transparent and stakeholders will be closely involved in developing it.

Further, section 3 of the Act allows the Scottish Ministers to require NatureScot, or another public body with relevant expertise, to report to Ministers on a proposal for a National Park. The reporter appointed under section 3, as part of preparing the report, must consult with every local authority and community council whose area (or part of whose area) is within the area to which the proposal relates, persons the reporter considers are representative of the interests of local residents and businesses, any other persons as the reporter thinks fit.