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The Scottish Government is committed to supporting the vital role of Scottish Hospices. In June 2020, we provided £10.1m in emergency funding to hospices to meet in full their funding requests for loss of income during the first lockdown period.

On the 24 March 2021, we confirmed that an additional £16.9m will be provided to Scottish Hospices to fully meet their requests for support relating to loss of income during the most recent lockdown. As such, the total funding allocated to hospices to support their work during the pandemic in the financial year 2020-2021 is approximately £27m. The breakdown of payments can be viewed in the following table.

We have asked NHS Lothian to carry out a review of its eye care services.  We remain committed to working with NHS Lothian to support this and protect specialised eye services for the city and the wider region.  Health Boards do not receive the funding for major capital projects until the project has completed the approval process set out in the Scottish Capital Investment Manual.

The SPIRE Multi-morbidity local report has the following Respiratory Conditions

•Patients with currently treated asthma

•Patients with Bronchiectasis

•Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

This is a local report which sits within local GP IT systems, and it is for practices to manage this information themselves.

Thank you for your Parliamentary Question asking how many people have been prescribed (a) Erenumab and (b) Fremanezumab for migraine treatment since Scottish Medicine Consortium approval was granted.

The Scottish Medicine Consortium granted approval for Erenumab and Fremanezumab for migrane treatment on the 8th April 2019 and 13th January 2020, respectively.

Information on the total number of patients who have been prescribed Erenumab and Fremanezumab is not available centrally.

Erenumab is prescribed in both primary care and secondary care and Fremanezumab is used in secondary care only. Patient information is not recorded in the secondary care prescribing dataset (the Hospital Medicines Utilisation Database (HMUD)) and as a result it is not possible to provide patient counts for Erenumab or Fremanezumab in secondary care.

According to Rape Crisis Scotland, as of October 2019 and October 2020 waiting list times for each centre were as follows:

The SPIRE ‘Respiratory search’ report is currently on hold, however it should be noted that this is a local report which sits within local GP IT systems and would allow GPs/Practice Managers only to see the data for their patients.

The current licence to operate, between Scottish Government Ministers and the Scottish Exhibition Campus (SEC) for the NHS Louisa Jordan Hospital, established to support Scotland’s response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, is due to end on 31 March 2021 and will not be extended. The Mass Vaccination Centre which is currently operating in NHS Louisa Jordan will be relocated to The SSE Hydro with no gaps in provision. More information can be found in the Scottish Government Press Release dated 18 March 2021

https://www.gov.scot/news/nhs-louisa-jordan-to-close/

The Scottish Government’s Alcohol Framework 2018 is clear that action is needed to inform consumers about the health impacts of alcohol consumption and the UK Chief Medical Officers’ lower-risk maximum drinking guidelines.

We delivered the Count 14 marketing campaign over two phases in 2019 and 2020. This aims to increase awareness of the 14 unit weekly lower-risk guidelines and translate 14 units into specific alcoholic drinks. The campaign included TV, radio, print and digital advertising as well a roadshow in local supermarkets and a range of partnerships.

A campaign evaluation report summarising the findings of independent pre and post tracker surveys was published on 22 March 2021: Alcohol - count 14 campaign: evaluation report - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . The findings demonstrate that the Count 14 campaign has made a positive impact on increasing awareness and understanding of the UK CMOs’ low-risk drinking guidelines in Scotland. For example, among all of those surveyed, awareness of the 14 unit limit increased from 17% pre-Count 14 activity to 32% after both phases. We will consider future national marketing and health messaging on alcohol consumption in light of these findings.

Product labels and packaging are an important source of information for consumers. A report published in 2020 by the Alcohol Health Alliance, based on 2019 data, found that more than 70% of the labels reviewed did not include the official, up-to date lower-risk drinking guidelines at the time of data collection: DRINKING-IN-THE-DARK.pdf (ahauk.org) .

As indicated in the Alcohol Framework, we will consider whether a legislative approach is required to improving health information on products. The Scottish Government, along with the Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive, are discussing with the UK Government their plans for calorie labelling on alcohol products in England, in order to explore options for approaching alcohol labelling requirements on a four-nations basis.

Forensic toxicology services are currently provided by the University of Glasgow under a contract with COPFS. COPFS has agreed a contract extension with the University of Glasgow to 31 March 2022 to facilitate transfer of service provision to another provider.

As part of the process aimed at improving the delivery of toxicology services, the University of Glasgow agreed an Improvement Plan with COPFS which sets out performance targets and requires the University to provide data on a weekly basis to COPFS on the progress of their outstanding cases. The current work in progress is ahead of the Improvement Plan target and the level of work in progress has reduced significantly since June 2020. There are seven outstanding 2020 cases and these will be completed shortly. The average turnaround time is currently 48 days.

COPFS has identified a new provider of toxicology services and detailed transition planning work is being undertaken by this provider with a view to the service transitioning to them at the cessation of the University of Glasgow contract. COPFS and the University of Glasgow have agreed to work together to assist the new provider to manage that transition effectively.

We are continuing to work with sportscotland to continually review and establish the needs of the sector. For leisure centres which are owned by the public sector, the Scottish Government and COSLA have now finalised a lost income scheme, including support for ALEOS worth £200 million. Taken together with the £49 million previously announced the total support for lost income is now potentially £249 million. The Scottish Government are also committed to passing on any additional UK Government consequentials for lost income, in full to local government. However, it is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them on the basis of local needs and priorities.

Since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak the Scottish Government has worked closely with the UK Government and private and public sector partners to develop a range of support mechanisms for businesses. Information on all available support for businesses can be found on Find Business Support . The website is regularly updated with information on any new support packages or changes to existing ones.