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In March 2023, the Scottish Government ran an endometriosis public awareness campaign in partnership with Young Scot, targeted primarily at increasing young people’s awareness of the condition.

Following the campaign a post-evaluative survey ran to measure the impact of the information on the audience. Key statistics are as follows:

• 82% of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they are more informed about the symptoms of endometriosis
• 71% of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they are more informed about how to support someone with endometriosis
• 74% of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they would know where to get support or what steps they could take if they thought they may have endometriosis
• 97% of young people who visited young.scot/Endometriosis found it useful or very useful

The Scottish Government is unable to provide a detailed explanation of the selection process. As a Parliamentary Commissioner, the selection of the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland will be a matter for the Scottish Parliament.

Part 2 of Schedule 1 of the Bill states that the Commissioner will be “appointed by His Majesty on recommendation of the Scottish Parliament”. This process is covered by Rule 3.11 of the Parliament’s Standing Orders. Selection will be carried out by a “selection panel” comprising the Presiding Officer, the convener of the relevant Committee and between 4 and 7 other cross-party MSPs selected by the Presiding Officer. Any member of the selection panel may propose that Parliament nominates the person recommended by the panel.

Our emergency planning portal; ready.scot, was updated in June 2022 to include a new ‘Learn’ section to support the public, community groups and Voluntary Sector partners, by raising awareness of emergency resilience structures and processes, and to strengthen understanding of how they might participate in an effective and joined-up response to an emergency. Between March and April 2023 a series of four online community resilience workshops took place, joined by approximately 240 participants. We will continue to work with the sector, and in particular Local Authorities who have the lead role on engaging with local communities, to understand their training needs and to provide any additional resources required.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

On 09 October 2023, there were 36 cells, containing two or more individuals across the prison estate, which had a living space of less than 7m²: 1 cell at HMP Dumfries and 35 cells at HMP Edinburgh.

Freight Sailings from Aberdeen

The Scottish Government’s Storm Arwen Review provided a detailed review of such a situation, and our two follow-up reports made clear that the organisations who are responsible for emergency planning and response in Scotland had formally incorporated those recommendations into their workplans.

The Scottish Government’s forthcoming Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Action Plan will set out priority areas for action over the next three years. Ensuring that people have access to the information and services they need to make informed choices and take care of their sexual health are key outcomes of the plan.

A national sexually transmitted infection (STI) awareness campaign led by Public Health Scotland launched in July with targeted work for groups who have seen the highest rates of STIs, particularly gonorrhoea.

The Scottish Government is also investing in a national roll-out of an online STI testing service.

We continue to monitor the impact and effectiveness of the Young Patients Family Fund (YPFF) and keep this under review.

The purpose of the Scottish Dental Access Initiative (SDAI) is not for the recruitment of dentists, but to improve access to NHS dental services by encouraging dentists to set up a new practice or extend an existing practice in areas where access to NHS dental services is challenging.

Since 2007, there have been seven dental practices in Dumfries and Galloway that have been provided with SDAI grants.

Information on how many hospital pharmacists have been employed in each NHS board area in each year since 2012, can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at https://turasdata.nes.nhs.scot .

Data is not held from before 2012. The following figures include all pharmacists working in any territorial board, in Acute, Mental Health, or in a Community Hospital setting. It excludes ‘central staff’ since some of these were employed in primary care, but includes Golden Jubilee National Hospital and National Waiting Times Centre staff. Figures provided are head count.