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We expect all NHS Boards to have robust governance arrangements in place, including those for risk assessment and business continuity; as informed by, and consistent with, national policies and frameworks. NHS Lanarkshire has confirmed that, as part of their routine winter planning work, they have been engaging with local planning partners to ensure all eventualities are carefully considered.

We recognise the importance of improving labour market outcomes for females and we monitor the influence of PACE support through a major survey every two years. The most recent 2022 PACE Client Experience Survey report was published in September 2022,

https://www.gov.scot/collections/partnership-action-for-continuing-employment-pace/

The report shows that female clients were more likely than males to have gone straight to paid work for an employer which may suggest a desire to get a job quickly rather than hold out for a ‘better job’. Female clients were also much more likely to go into part-time work which tends to be lower-paid and require fewer skills; also fewer females than males are actively looking for jobs with greater responsibility or higher skill levels, likely to be due to these jobs not tending to be available part-time or in the sectors within which they typically work.

PACE Advisers assist female clients by helping them to break down barriers to accessing better paid work/sectors. We will seek to ensure as many females as possible access this service and if appropriate are directed to the Women Returners programme. This programme provides one-to-one bespoke support, advice and access to opportunities for women aged 25 and over who have been out of the labour market for six months or more and want to restart their career journey.

A refreshed Fair Work Action Plan, due to be published in the next few months, will refresh and take forward our commitments in our Gender Pay Gap Action Plan making explicit that addressing gender pay gaps is a key element of Fair Work.

Thanks to the progress we have made with widespread vaccination and new Covid treatments, which have reduced the severe health harms of the virus, the purpose of testing has changed from population-wide testing to reduce transmission to targeted testing to support clinical care. As a result, most people in Scotland no longer need to test for Covid.

Some people do remain at higher risk – primarily people who are immunosuppressed. These people should continue to follow the advice of their GP or specialist clinician, who best know their health condition and individual circumstances. Those that have a health condition which means they’re eligible for Covid treatments can continue to access testing.

Since its introduction in June 2015, the Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Fund (KTIF) has received 120 project applications, with the Project Assessment Committee awarding funding to 52 projects delivered by a range of national organisations operating across a wide range of local authority areas in Scotland.

Therefore, it is not possible to provide an accurate distribution of funding across the authorities. On the outcome of KTIF funding rounds, the successful projects are put in the public domain and published on the Scottish Government website .

While the Scottish Government provides the policies, frameworks and resources for high quality healthcare, we fully expect NHS Board's to utilise funding, facilities and staff while taking account of national and local priorities to meet local health needs.

We expect NHS Boards to plan their facilities and workforce to deliver these services, ensuring the provision of safe, effective and high quality patient care, delivered by the right professional at the right time.

Spend on agency is around 2% of the total NHS expenditure. The majority of temporary staffing in NHS Scotland comes from staff banks; these are NHS staff, working on NHS terms and conditions.

The pandemic has had an impact on bank, agency and locum spend. The rising spend is not unanticipated.

Although bank and agency staff play a crucial role, it is important that we continue our long term investments to attract and retain permanent staff.

The number of C-peptide tests taken by people with type 1 diabetes since 1 November 2021 can be found in the following table. The information on the number of c-peptide tests being offered to those with type 1 diabetes is not held centrally.

Digital pathology services have traditionally been the responsibility of individual Health Boards. Recognising the potential for a national approach, a Digital Diagnostics Group was established in April 2022 by the Scottish Government. This group is providing strategic oversight for a number of diagnostic services, including pathology services.

The first phase of this national approach has seen investment of £777,000 during 2022-23 provided to NHS Ayrshire & Arran, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Highland. These three Board's are currently at the implementation stage and the learning from this work will shape plans for a national rollout across all boards in Scotland from 2023-24 onwards.

The Scottish Government have committed £11.2 million to local government to increase the capacity of local resettlement teams, support refurbishment of properties and support integration work. We do not currently plan to publish a further breakdown of costs.

The information requested is not held centrally.

An estimate of the number of people with complex disabilities was published by the charity Sense in a short report in May 2022, which estimated that there were around 157,000 people in Scotland that could have complex disabilities, where complex disabilities were defined as a person having two or more of the following conditions: ‘deaf or hearing impairment’, ‘blind or vision impairment’, ‘learning disability’, ‘autism’. A link to the report is available here: https://www.sense.org.uk/about-us/statistics/complex-disabilities-in-scotland/