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NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde has been reviewing local breast services since late 2016 to ensure that they are consistent with national policy and clinical best practice. The Health Board has confirmed that the early work in this review was informed by engaging with a group of patients who had recently undertaken breast cancer treatment, to ensure the relevant patient experience was taken into account. NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde advises that this patient group was identified by breast cancer nurses in each of the geographical sectors of the Board, including the Clyde area.

It is important to note that this review is still underway and that no service change decisions have been made. NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde has assured the Government that they have been liaising with the Scottish Health Council throughout the review to ensure that the development of their plans are fully informed by appropriate stakeholder engagement. Should formal proposals be developed that are considered major service change then they must be subject to full public consultation and, ultimately, Ministerial approval.

Whilst it is important to note that no decisions have been made in respect of this review, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde advise that equality impact assessments have been carried out and published on its website. These can be accessed at: www.nhsggc.org.uk/media/249604/eqia-clyde-sector-breat-care-service.htm and www.nhsggc.org.uk/media/246367/breast-services-review.htm.

No. The local review is still underway and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde are continuing to engage with the Scottish Health Council on the appropriate level of ongoing stakeholder engagement, including the view as to whether the Board's emerging proposals might be considered major change.

Information in relation to the number of patients in forensic services by NHS Board can be found at Table 9 of the Inpatient Census, 2017 - Part 1: Mental Health & Learning Disability Inpatient Bed Census - Part 2: Out of Scotland NHS Placements;

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0052/00524621.pdf

There is no consistent definition of a ‘forensic unit’ as some health boards use intensive psychiatric care units (IPCUs), mixed purpose rehabilitative facilities or General Adult Psychiatry(GAP) facilities to accommodate patients being managed primarily by forensic services. As such patients in low secure services are defined on a patient basis rather than by unit.

There is one high secure facility (The State Hospital, Carstairs), three health boards operating medium secure facilities which operate on a regional basis (Lothian-South & East, Glasgow - West and Tayside-North). There are nine health boards operating low secure units (Grampian, Highland, Tayside, Fife, Forth Valley, Ayrshire & Arran, Dumfries & Galloway, Lanarkshire, and Greater Glasgow and Clyde).

Local Authorities have the statutory responsibility for the delivery of homelessness services in their area. The vast majority of the funding which the Scottish Government provides to tackle rough sleeping is included, but not separately identifiable, within the annual local government finance settlement.

The Scottish Government is providing local government with a finance settlement in 2018-19 amounting to £10.7 billion. The vast majority of this funding is provided by means of a block grant It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including funding to tackle rough sleeping, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

Additionally, in order to catalyse change as part of the work initiated by last year’s Programme for Government and the work of the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group, we have allocated an additional £220,000 to be spent on proven rough sleeping interventions in 2018-19. This is on top of £328,000 worth of investment (£262,000 from the Scottish Government and £66,000 from Action Group members) to take forward the immediate actions recommended by the Action Group to combat rough sleeping last winter. We will be further considering the learning from last winter’s activities as we consider how to ensure initiatives are effective and sustainable in the long term, as part of ongoing work to implement the recommendations of the Action Group and of the Local Government and Communities Committee.

Details of each local government finance settlement since 2007 are available on the Scottish Government’s website via the following link https://beta.gov.scot/publications/local-government-finance-circulars-index/

Of the £328,000 additionally allocated to rough sleeping initiatives in winter 2017-18, £262,000 was provided by the Scottish Government and £66,000 was provided by other members of the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group. Allocations were made to local authority and third sector frontline services in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen in accordance with the recommendations of the Action Group to safeguard rough sleepers over the winter.

An independent review of the impact of the winter initiative has been commissioned by Simon Community Scotland, Edinburgh Streetwork and Aberdeen Cyrenians and is due to report later in July. The Scottish Government will review this along with other evaluation reports from organisations involved in delivering the immediate actions recommended by the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group to combat rough sleeping last winter, and will provide a summary report to inform key actions for next winter and beyond as part of our plans to eradicate rough sleeping and end homelessness.

An independent review of the impact of the winter initiative has been commissioned by Simon Community Scotland, Edinburgh Streetwork and Aberdeen Cyrenians and is due to report later in July. The Scottish Government will review this along with other reports from organisations involved in delivering the immediate actions recommended by the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group to combat rough sleeping last winter, and will provide an additional summary report to inform key actions for next winter and beyond as part of our plans to eradicate rough sleeping and end homelessness.

The Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group and the Local Government and Communities Committee have both made recommendations around improving the measurement of rough sleeping. We have accepted these in principle and are committed to considering how to take forward action in this space. As recommended by the Action Group, the Scottish Government is already working with the Centre for Homelessness Impact to develop options for a new rough sleeping data collection in Scotland, in collaboration with the wider sector.

The Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group, co-chaired by the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning and COSLA, is overseeing the development of a high level action plan on the implementation of the Action Group's recommendations, and further details will be available in the autumn.

Scottish Government officials have met with Vertex Pharmaceuticals twice this year to discuss Vertex’s proposals for their medicines designed to treat cystic fibrosis. Further to these meetings, officials have encouraged the company to discuss a possible application to the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC).

Decisions made by the SMC are taken independently of Ministers and the Parliament and are based on an assessment of clinical and cost-effectiveness across the Scottish population.