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The following table shows the payments that have been made by NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to NHS boards to fund trainee doctors'' salaries in the period April 2010 to February 2011. These figures vary from month to month depending on rotations and exclude general practioner specialty training (GPSTs) in their periods in practice when NES pays salaries directly to the trainees.

April 2010 to February 2011

NHS Board	Fellows	Fixed Term Specialty Training Appointments (FTSTA)	Foundation Year 1 (FY1)	Foundation Year (FY2)	General Practioner (GP)	Special Registrar	Specialty Training (ST)	Total
Borders	31,182		372,240	247,192			1,976,414	2,627,028
Forth Valley*		9,525	1,045,656	893,262			4,499,103	6,447,546
Highland	182,108		735,456	825,846			3,309,602	5,053,012
Lothian*		190,500	3,325,344	4,661,536			25,999,537	34,176,917
Ayrshire and Arran*	18,319		943,008	1,423,602			6,286,126	8,671,055
Dumfries and Galloway			446,688	556,182			2,185,787	3,188,657
Fife*			918,192	834,273			5,502,062	7,254,527
Grampian*		15,875	2,527,860	2,067,985			13,205,066	17,816,786
Greater Glasgow and Clyde*		278,874	5,750,544	7,188,233			47,093,902	60,311,553
Lanarkshire*			1,513,776	2,008,435			9,315,000	12,837,211
National Services Scotland*							79,394	79,394
Orkney	40,400							40,400
Shetland*			24,816	61,798			154,572	241,186
Tayside*			2,083,545	2,869,111	213,063	64,666	12,344,320	17,574,705
Western Isles			49,632	123,596			193,215	366,443

*Note: Excludes payments for general practioner (GP) trainees when in practice as payment is made through NES GP Payroll.

Under the reshaping the medical workforce policy it has been agreed that salaries for training posts which have been disestablished as part of the project will be returned to NHSScotland boards to help to fund trained doctors to replace trainees. In the financial year 2010-11 NES has transferred a total of £682,692 from the NES baseline to NHS boards baseline for disestablished posts, although a number of these will be for Fixed Term Specialty Training Appointment (FTSTA) posts rather than specialty training (ST).

There are no plans to disestablish posts at first or second year level. For 2011 the planned reduction in Specialty Training posts is 49. Reductions in future years will depend upon the rate at which current trainees complete training and will be in line with Scotland''s needs. There will be further consultation before any future reductions are announced.

The National Reshaping the Medical Workforce Project Board, after extensive consultations, made recommendations to me about reductions in specialty trainee intake numbers for 2010 and 2011. A reshaping Working Group has been set up to help boards plan to reach their agreed target training establishments for each specialty and to track which posts are lost and what is put in their place. Boards which lose trainee input will receive the salary for the post to invest in replacement.

I have asked John Ewing, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

If it is identified that an adult prisoner may need speech and language therapy as part of their case management or clinical care a referral for consideration can be made to the NHS board where the prison is located.

The Scottish Prison Service has a contract with NHS Forth Valley for the provision of a speech and language therapist to assess and provide appropriate support for young offenders referred by staff in HMYOI''s Polmont and Cornton Vale.

Speech and language therapy is only one possible means to support individuals with some forms of communication impairment and each prison provides a learning service which can also address speech and language difficulties.

A number of meetings have been held between the Management Steering Group and the British Medical Association, the most recent on 8 March 2011. There is a commitment to discussions on both sides but no timetable as such has been agreed. Discussions will be on-going.

A four-year surveillance research project of the epidemiology of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome in Scotland, for which the Scottish Government is providing funding, began on 1 April 2010. The findings and analysis of the results will be published in a scientific paper at the end of the project in 2014. We would anticipate that the results will also be presented to the Scottish Paediatric Society, the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, the Neonatal Society, and the British Association for Community Child Health, the Royal College of Paediatrics Research and the European Society of Paediatric Research.

The public consultation A new value-based approach to the pricing of branded medicines is still live and will close on 17 March 2011.

Along with the other Devolved Administrations and key stakeholders, Scottish Government officials will be fully involved in developing the new arrangements taking into account responses to the consultation. In these circumstances it would not be appropriate for the Scottish Government to submit a formal response to the consultation.

The draft clinical standards were released for a 12 week period of public consultation, which closed on 25 February 2011. All members of the Wheelchair and Seating Services Project Board were included in the distribution of consultation documents, which are also freely available on the Scottish Government website at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/12/06095313/0.

Health Protection Scotland has advised that the principal anticipated benefit of the screening programme is a reduction in MRSA infections in acute hospitals. MRSA infection has a negative impact on quality of life and length of stay in hospital, therefore lowering of colonisation rates reduces the risk of infection in the patient population.

The use of clinical risk assessment also allows pre-emptive management of patients identified as being at higher risk of MRSA colonisation in anticipation of laboratory results being available, thereby reducing the risks of transmission to other patients.

Continuing study of the epidemiology of MRSA colonisation and infection will be required.

Please see following table:

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