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£10 million of funding has been directed to support cancer waiting times (CWT) improvements in NHS Scotland across 2022-23, as announced by me on 10 August 2022.

Funds will be directed across a number of specialties and initiatives including investing in diagnostic tests to extended working days and weekend working, to increase capacity and see/ treat cancer patients as timely as possible.

Three Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres (ECDC) have been established in the last year within NHS Scotland, providing a new referral pathway to primary care for patients with non-specific symptoms suspicious of cancer, which can often be a sign of blood cancer.

Scottish Government fund 31 third sector organisations throughout Scotland to deliver Support in the Right Direction, offering Advocacy and Brokerage Services, of which there is an administrative element. In financial year 2022-23 Scottish Government invested £2,959,658.23 in the Support in the Right Direction programme.

Part of the Grant tender process for SDS funding includes an assessment criterion that all funded projects should be accessible to anyone who might need social care, which includes disabled people.

Scottish Government has provided £46.6m funding since 2014 to organisations providing a range of support services. All people requiring support through the four Self-Directed Support options can benefit from administrative services. Figures are not available solely for the delivery of options 1 and 2, nor available solely for administrative support.

Information on the delivery of SDS Options 1 and 2 is not held centrally nor is the information on administrative support.

We are currently reviewing processes and systems for gathering such data going forward.

The Scottish Government has no direct plans at present to extend the National Cycle Network (NCN) route 73. Sustrans manage the NCN in Scotland and have set out ambitions to improve and extend the NCN in their 2018 Paths for Everyone Document. The Scottish Government has funded Sustrans with £10.6 million in 2022-23 (increased from the £4 million award in 2021-22) to undertake this work.

The second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2) recommends creating new and improving existing active travel routes to connect Scotland’s cities, regions and major gateways, using high-quality active travel infrastructure that segregates users from busy roads, but makes use of quiet roads where appropriate. This will support long-distance active journeys, although it is anticipated that most benefit will arise from relatively short journey routes between or within the communities that the network would pass through.

The long-distance active travel network would enhance the existing National Cycle Network to create a strategic national network of active travel routes mirroring in part the Trunk Road and rail networks. The draft STPR2 report was published on 20 January this year for a three month consultation period. Feedback is now being considered and the final report is due later this year.

Programme for Government in 2016 and 2017 addressed potential transport issues in South West Scotland and extensive stakeholder engagement was undertaken to inform the South West Scotland Transport Study; the initial appraisal report was published in January 2020, and included 23 recommendations for consideration in STPR2, including one to develop the Strategic Active Travel Network in the South West of Scotland and better connect communities to key destinations with cycle paths parallel to trunk roads and improvements to the NCN. This intervention is currently subject to detailed appraisal as part of Phase 2 of STPR2.

The Scottish Government has welcomed the report from Environmental Standards Scotland. They requested some clarifications and made a number of recommendations on how processes relating to the enforcement of acoustic deterrent devices could be improved. They were content with Marine Scotland’s replies and the amendments made to procedures, and concluded that ESS had "no ongoing concerns."

Details of fish farm inspections relating to Acoustic Deterrent Devices will shortly be published on the Scottish Government website, all ESS recommendations will then have been addressed. Marine Scotland continue to monitor compliance with unannounced inspections.

‘Care co-ordinator’ is a recognised term used in NHS England for staff who coordinate care in Primary Care Networks. These networks bring together GP practices to mutually employ staff. They do not exist in Scotland where GP practices are organised into clusters for peer support and health boards directly employ the wider multidisciplinary team. While the term ‘care coordinator’ is sometimes used in Scotland, it is used generically to describe staff co-ordinating care across more than just primary care settings.

As such, the Scottish Government does not hold information centrally on the numbers of full-time equivalents related to this broad range of posts in each territorial NHS Board area.

The Scottish Government is committed to early diagnosis which is why we continue to invest in our £44 million Detect Cancer Early (DCE) Programme. In 2021-22, DCE funded the North Cancer Alliance to support community pharmacy in the identification of patients with symptoms suspicious of cancer and, where necessary, prompt referral to an urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) pathway.

Learnings from this early work will be shared with the Early Cancer Diagnosis Programme Board and help inform possible wider roll-out across NHS Scotland.

A new early cancer diagnosis vision is under development as part of Scotland’s new cancer strategy, due to be published Spring 2023, and will consider the role of community pharmacies in supporting earlier diagnosis efforts.

Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is non-prescriptive in nature, allowing teachers and schools to judge the context for learning that best suits their learners and their individual circumstances. Therefore decisions about which pedagogies to use are for schools and local authorities to determine, in line with CfE.

Although we do not collect the specific data requested, play pedagogy is encouraged and utilised to support the social, emotional, physical and cognitive development of young children in a developmentally appropriate way at the early level of Curriculum for Excellence, from early learning and childcare(ELC) and into the early stages of Scotland’s primary schools.

In 2020 the Scottish Government and Education Scotland published ‘Realising the Ambition: Being Me – Practice Guidance for the Early Years in Scotland’. This guidance for practitioners in early learning and childcare and the early years of primary school updates, extends and strengthens the approaches to active learning and play introduced in ‘Building the Curriculum 2’ (2007). ‘Realising the Ambition’ reflects current evidence and the progress made in understanding how best to support learning and care for children in their early years.

In July 2022 Education Scotland updated the online Early Level Play Pedagogy Toolkit. The toolkit was co-produced with Scottish practitioners and complements the quality improvement support Education Scotland is providing in collaboration with Regional Improvement Collaboratives and local authorities. The toolkit aims to support a deeper understanding of play pedagogy and increase the confidence of early level practitioners (including those in schools) in using play effectively to support children’s learning and development.

Procurement of the MVA vaccine is being managed by UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on a 4 nations basis. Scotland has secured a limited supply of 3,000 doses so far and will have access to more stock once it becomes available.

UKSHA have procured a further 100,000 vaccines that will be arriving in September. Date of arrival and details on Scotland’s share are still to be confirmed.

The Scottish Government and Public Health Scotland (PHS) are working together with Health Boards to support their planning and the safe delivery of monkeypox vaccination to support the response to the current outbreak.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has recommended offering the vaccine to people who are at higher risk of coming into contact with monkeypox to help reduce the spread.

There is currently a limited global supply of existing MVA vaccine which Scotland has secured its share of. Vaccination is underway and it is currently being offered to those at highest risk first.

Additional supplies are expected in September, and people will be offered a first dose in priority order as soon as it becomes available.

Under the current constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom the application process for all immigration routes is fully reserved to the UK Government and is dealt with by the Home Office.

The following link contains visa data and arrivals for the four nations of the UK, and includes a breakdown of data relating to visas sponsored by the Scottish Government: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ukraine-sponsorship-scheme-visa-data-by-country-upper-and-lower-tier-local-authority. The webpage includes the Devolved Administrations and Local Authorities datasets.

Scottish Government will be publishing a further breakdown of those placed in accommodation in due course.