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Information on the number of women, aged 20 to 25 years, who have been offered cervical cancer screening, is not held centrally.

A review of the age range and frequency of the Scottish Cervical Screening Programme is currently taking place. The Expert Review Group undertaking this work is expected to report to the Breast and Cervical Screening National Advisory Group in the Autumn.

Information on the number of women, aged 20 to 25 years, who have taken up cervical cancer screening, is not held centrally.

The percentage of women who have a record of a previous screening test taken within the last 3.5 years is available on the ISD website at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Cancer/Cervical-Screening/.

A review of the age range and frequency of the Scottish Cervical Screening Programme is currently taking place. The Expert Review Group undertaking this work is expected to report to the Breast and Cervical Screening National Advisory Group for consideration in the Autumn.

Once received, this report will be published on the Scottish Government website.

I met senior executives from Scottish Power on 8 June 2011. I expressed the Scottish Government's serious concerns over the impacts of their recent price rises on consumers, and vulnerable consumers in particular. I also met Alastair Buchanan the Chief Executive of OfGEM on 29 June 2011. I urged OfGEM to press ahead with their promised radical overhaul of the complex array of tariffs which exist in the retail energy market, and specifically to consider the possibility of compulsory tariffs for the fuel poor.

The Scottish Government is not currently considering changing the frequency of breast cancer screening.

It is not yet clear what the Barnett Formula implications may be of the range of potential reforms the UK Government is considering introducing in its response to Lord Hutton’s recommendations, which can be found at the following web address – http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/hutton_final_100311.pdf. The Scottish Government understands that the UK Government is currently engaged in high-level negotiations with Trade Unions and does not intend to announce the detail of potential longer-term reforms until autumn 2011.

At our request, the Scottish Muscle Network is developing a job description for these posts so that we can better understand how their establishment might be taken forward.

The Ministerial statement published on 17 March 2011, acknowledges the importance of the role of specialist physiotherapists, and outlines the action that the Scottish Government has taken to ensure that people living with neuromuscular conditions have access to specialist physiotherapy.

The Scottish Muscle Network is also planning to improve the education of
non-specialists, including community physiotherapists and is also undertaking work to identify all professionals across Scotland working with people with neuromuscular disorders, to ensure they are able to draw on appropriate peer and expert support.

It is however for individual NHS boards to determine the number of dedicated physiotherapists they require to meet the full range of needs of their resident population, including people living with neuromuscular disease.

The last major reform of the NHS Superannuation Scheme (Scotland), which took effect on 1 April 2008, had the following key features:

an increase in the Normal Pension Age (the age a scheme member is normally able to draw their accrued pension benefits without penalties) from 60 to 65 for new members from April 2008;

introduction of tiered employee contribution rates, which become progressively higher the more scheme members earn;

introduction of ‘cap and share’ arrangements as a means of dealing with any future cost increases;

introduction of two-tier ill-health provisions.