Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Draft Scottish Biodiversity Strategy includes commitments to continue effective species recovery, reintroduction and reinforcement programmes and to introduce an agricultural future support framework which delivers for nature restoration and biodiversity.

The Scottish Government is clear in its expectation of producers to drive mortality to the lowest possible levels. Our Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture articulates our expectation of improvements to fish health and welfare, and we will continue to work with regulators, producers, innovation centres and fish vets to better understand the reasons for mortality and to encourage adaptation to challenges. Increases in sea water production mortality should be considered in the context of the trend seen since 2002, which indicates stable average mortality levels with peaks and troughs in different years.

The Scottish Government and NatureScot have agreed to undertake a review of the Sea Eagle Management Scheme and White-tailed Eagle Action Plan. Terms of reference for this work have been drafted and will be shared with the Sea Eagle National Stakeholder Panel shortly.

The review will assess progress on delivering the aims of the Sea Eagle Management Scheme to support farmers and crofters to manage their livestock alongside a growing sea eagle population.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has a number of options in its enforcement toolkit, ranging from informal advice and guidance to the use of formal enforcement measures including final warning letters, statutory notices, monetary penalties, and reports to the Procurator Fiscal recommending prosecution.

SEPA’s licences set out actions operators are required to take and SEPA’s enforcement action is designed to secure compliance using the most appropriate and effective method. Scottish Water has received one fine in the last five years for a sewage spill.

Improving Scotland’s health data capabilities remains a key objective in improving outcomes for patients. We are continuing to progress work to implement changes to how we improve data collection on medicine use and outcomes. Changes to existing systems or any new systems take time to develop and implement and we continue to work with Scottish Government colleagues, industry, NHS Scotland and academia to evolve our approach to medicines data.

In relation to the first action, capturing medicines use for patients in all clinical settings, there are several relevant work programmes underway. Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (HEPMA) has been rolled out in eleven Health Boards and work is underway to rollout HEPMA in the remaining Health Boards. The medicines data from all Health Boards who have HEPMA deployed have been used throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to inform clinical practice and drive improvements. The Digital Prescribing and Dispensing Pathways programme is on track to replace the current paper prescription in Scotland with an entirely digital approach to capturing prescribed and dispensed medicines by the end of this parliamentary term.? There is also progress with the development of a national Homecare (medicines prescribed via hospital specialists and delivered direct to patients at home) medicines dataset whereby third-party suppliers are providing regular data (monthly) to Public Health Scotland (PHS). These data have also been used to support COVID activities and work is progressing to enhance the quality and completeness of data flows.

Action two, including medicine indication in all prescribing systems , is more complex, requires in most of the cases retrospective addition of indication data and is reliant on IT system changes. We are seeking to progress this as part of our wider work programme.

Action three , to create a national laboratory data resource , this is also reliant on work being progressed further in response to the other actions from the report, and we will consider further in due course.

In relation to action four, to improve recording of patient outcomes of medicines , we have funded the Cancer Medicines Outcomes Programme (CMOP) which has developed a robust and reliable process to understand the effectiveness and safety of cancer medicines in routine care in Scotland. We are also funding PHS to establish a National Medicines in Pregnancy surveillance asset. This asset will support monitoring and reporting to progress improvements in the safe use of sodium valproate and other teratogenic medicines in Scotland by identifying and linking medicines exposure with outcomes data sets.

In response to action five, to create a Scottish Medicines Intelligence Unit , the Scottish Government funded CMOP programme has enabled capability building and intelligence in the use of our national SACT (cancer medicines) dataset and this is generating evidence to support the evaluation of the use of and clinical outcomes from all new medicines approved through the Scottish Medicines Consortium Health Technology Assessment process.

NatureScot, through the Sea Eagle Management Scheme, delivers a range of measures to support farmers and crofters to manage sheep flocks to mitigate the impacts of sea eagle predation.

These include:

• Provision of one-to-one advice from experienced contractors to land managers experiencing sea eagle impacts
• Co-ordination of recording/logging of sea eagle activity and flock management information at a farm/croft level
• Loan of scaring equipment
• Payments to land managers who undertake management measures which mitigate sea eagle impacts as part of their livestock management, through Management Agreements.

Payments can be made for flock management (including supplementary feeding, tick and fluke treatments), enhanced management (including additional shepherding and away wintering of sheep) and capital measures (including purchase of scaring devices, creation of hill parks and support for indoor lambing).

More details are available on the NatureScot website at https://www.nature.scot/professional-advice/land-and-sea-management/managing-wildlife/sea-eagle-management-scheme

The Scottish Government does not hold estimates of how many people are not currently registered with a GP. Health Boards make arrangements for patients who are unable to find a practice which will register them.

An expansion to S6W-21642 requesting % of payments made within 5 working days, which are not inclusive of electronic procurement card. As noted in the response to S6W-21642, top level figures on payments made within 5 days is only held from 2014 onwards.

Kindred Advocacy provide independent advocacy, advice, one-to-one support and support groups for families raising children with complex needs. Kindred Advocacy currently supports 800 – 900 families a year. Most of these families are from Edinburgh, the Lothians and Fife, however Kindred Advocacy supports families from across Scotland.

In 2022, Kindred Advocacy received funding through the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention Fund and Adult Learning and Empowering Communities Fund (CYPFEI and ALEC).

Kindred Advocacy’s objectives for this funding were:

• Parents will feel less isolated and better able to cope.
• Parents will feel better informed about their child’s diagnosis or medical condition.
• Parents will feel more confident about caring for their child.
• Parents will report that there is less impact on family life of caring for a child with disabilities.

The Scottish Government has provided £145.5 million in this year’s budget on the condition that local authorities:

• Maintain teacher numbers at 2022 census levels, as published in the Summary School Statistics in December 2022.
• Maintain pupil support staff numbers at 2022 census levels, as published on 21 March 2023 based on the data collected from local authorities in September 2022.

£100 million of this funding is distributed to local authorities as part of the 2023-24 General Revenue Grant. The remaining £45.5 million will also be distributed to local authorities following confirmation that these conditions have been met.

In assessing whether these conditions have been met, we will consider any mitigating circumstances individual councils may wish to put forward.