Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government is committed to its obligations under the Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

In line with the WHO Guidelines for implementation, the Scottish Government Tobacco Control Team is undertaking a number of measures to support compliance. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Continuing to raise awareness of Article 5.3 across Scottish Government, Local Government and related bodies.
• Asking consultation respondents to make a declaration of any links to the Tobacco Industry within tobacco and vaping consultations, including the 2022 consultation on tightening rules on advertising and promotion of vaping products. and the recent 4-nations consultation on mandating quit information messages inside tobacco packs.
• Sharing UK Government guidance on engagement with the tobacco industry with internal and external stakeholders.

Further information on implementation of Article 5.3 will be included in our refreshed Tobacco Action Plan which will publish later in autumn.

Work is already underway to create a new payment structure, and as with the current one, which has seen 2023 Basic payments begin at the earliest point ever in September year in a row, our intention is for the future structure and system to make payments in a timely manner.

In line with normal processes, transfers of budget, including those to the Scottish Police Authority, will be communicated to Parliament through the Autumn and Spring Budget Revisions.

We have worked to develop and implement a quality assurance programme for the General Standards for Neurological Care and Support. A Self-evaluation tool was published by Healthcare Improvement Scotland in April 2023, to help enable services to measure their own implementation of the standards.

Undertaking this work will identify areas of good practice and improvement across NHS Scotland and help to drive forward better standards of care for people with neurological conditions, including migraine.

Our National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care supports the remobilisation and recovery of health and social care services and sets out priorities for recruitment, training and retention.

The Scottish Government has made clear on a number of occasions its intention to maintain direct payments in support of active farming, and to continue to fund farming and food production in a way that delivers for climate and nature.

The Scottish Government recognises the disruption and harm to businesses from theft and antisocial behaviour, and Police Scotland and partners are taking action to tackle and reduce it.

As the First Minister made clear in the chamber on 5 October 2023, while the latest recorded crime data for shoplifting shows an increase, the level remains below pre-pandemic levels.

The Scottish Government fully supports the innovative Scottish Partnership Against Acquisitive Crime, which is led by Police Scotland and includes a number of other organisations including retailers.

The Partnership is taking a collaborative approach to preventing and deterring crimes such as shoplifting through the sharing of best practice and intelligence, alongside enforcement activity.

Anyone affected by this kind of incident should report it to Police Scotland who remain focused on keeping our communities safe from harm.

Pathologists will only retain whole organs on rare occasions when it is absolutely necessary to establish a cause of death. In such cases, there are well-established procedures for ensuring that families are immediately advised when organ retention is a possibility and the options for return of that organ are discussed with them.

It is a matter for the pathologist conducting the post mortem examination to decide whether it is necessary to remove a whole organ, such as the brain, from the body of a deceased person during a post mortem examination for further testing. COPFS keeps a record of all cases where a pathologist has decided that it is necessary to retain a whole organ during a post mortem examination. This record includes details of when an organ is returned to the family of the deceased at the conclusion of examinations.

Between 1 January and 31 August 2023, COPFS instructed 4,460 post mortem examinations.

The brain required to be retained by the pathologist for further examination to determine the cause of death in one of those cases. That brain is no longer retained by the pathologist and was released to the nearest relatives in accordance with their wishes.

In 400 of those 4,460 cases, temporary removal of the brain by the pathologist during the post mortem examination took place to enable samples to be taken for neuropathological examination. In each case, the brain was returned to the body prior to the conclusion of the post mortem examination and the release of the deceased’s body to their nearest relatives.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21589 on 5 October 2023, which contains data from Public Health Scotland on the number of inpatient and day case admissions to hospital where a diagnosis of dog attack (bite or strike) was recorded, from 2010 to 2022, in Scotland. Public Health Scotland do not collect that data broken down by dog breed type.

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

In Scotland, the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) appraises the clinical and cost-effectiveness of newly licensed medicines. Following a full submission for rimegepant (Vydura ® ) for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults, the SMC issued ‘accepted for restricted use’ advice for routine use of this medicine in NHS Scotland on 9 May 2023.

The SMC restriction is that the use of this medicine should be restricted to patients who have had inadequate symptom relief after trials of at least two triptans (a group of medicines used to treat migraine or headache), or in whom triptans are contraindicated or not tolerated; and have inadequate pain relief with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and paracetamol. Final draft guidance on routine use of this medicine in NHS England issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is similar to that issued for Scotland.

We understand the distress and pain that migraines cause and want to ensure that everyone living with this debilitating condition can access the best possible care and support.

The Scottish Government awarded a further £135,501 to the Migraine Trust in October 2023 through our Neurological Care and Support: Framework for Action for 2023-2024 towards their work with pharmacists in NHS Grampian to help people manage their symptoms and treatments more effectively.