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The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. Decisions regarding the employment of individual members of staff are a matter for each NHS Scotland Board.

Physician Associates (PAs) are a long-established profession within the NHS Scotland workforce. The Scottish Government continues to engage regularly with the PA profession, including through dialogue with the Scottish Physician Associate Network which is represented on our national Medical Associate Professionals Programme Board. The Scottish PA Network also participates in the national MAPs Stakeholder Group, with a representative from the network acting as co-chair of the Group.

The Scottish Government is supportive of a gradual and carefully managed expansion of physician associate (PA) and anaesthesia associate (AA) roles, underpinned by robust evidence of the benefit that can be derived from these roles in specific settings and contexts.

In order to achieve this, we have established a national Programme Board to advise on key aspects of the roles and NHS Scotland’s approach to their deployment. This work builds on action already undertaken to introduce statutory regulation of the roles which we consider is vital for patient safety. GMC regulation has, for the first time, introduced UK-wide standards for education, training and professional practice with meaningful consequences when these are not met.

(a) The Scottish Government engages with the General Medical Council (GMC) on its regulatory functions as a matter of routine. Many of those operational discussions will have touched upon issues relating to physician associates and anaesthesia associates since the decision was taken that the GMC would be their regulator. The answer to FOI requests 202400422610 and 202400441146, published on the Scottish Government website, provides information on written communications between the Scottish Government and the GMC.

Surgical Care Practitioners, also a Medical Associate Profession, are not regulated by the GMC.

(b) The GMC has no functions in respect of the design of services in NHS Scotland. Health Boards are responsible for determining the services appropriate to the needs of their local populations, and the skills mix necessary to ensure their delivery.

The information requested on how many (a) physician associate and (b) other medical associate profession roles there are in NHS Scotland can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence.

The Medical Associate Professionals (MAPs) Programme Board meets on a quarterly basis to discuss and advise on matters regarding the deployment of MAPs across NHS Scotland. The Board will next meet on 3 April 2025. Papers for the Programme Board can be viewed at https://learn.nes.nhs.scot/77069.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

We know the majority of marine litter is plastic and we know that it has a negative impact on the health of our environment and biodiversity. That is why the Scottish Government’s policy is to reduce the consumption of single use materials. This is in line with the waste hierarchy, which prioritises reduction and reuse over all other interventions.

The Scottish Government’s policy is to reduce the consumption of single use materials regardless of composition, rather than to target specific material types or to displace one single use material with another. This is in line with the waste hierarchy, which prioritises reduction and reuse over all other interventions.