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Under the Equality Act 2010, individual NHS Boards are responsible for ensuring that they make reasonable adjustments to meet the needs of people with disabilities. These adjustments include ensuring that NHS Boards communicate with people with sight loss in an accessible way. Responsibility for complying with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 rests with individual organisations, including NHS Boards.

Decisions on the application of a particular course of treatment are a matter for the responsible clinician, in conversation and agreement with the patient.

Regarding the use of Botox to treat migraines, this would be undertaken following a clinical assessment against the criteria detailed in Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) guideline “SIGN 155: Pharmacological management of migraine”.

The support team for SCI-Diabetes is currently funded on a 3 year programme ending 31 March 2018. The funding level recognised a need to catch up on a development backlog due to a technology refresh. Moving forward, the same level of development is not anticipated and as such resources will need to be adjusted to take account of this. A final decision on resource levels and budget is still to be taken but it is envisaged that this will be a Business As Usual (BAM) model plus capacity for moderate development.

Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre flash glucose monitoring device was added to the Scottish Drug Tariff from 1 November 2017.

It is now for NHS Boards to consider inclusion on their local formulary and stipulate through guidance the sub-categories of patients for whom this product is recommended.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the numbers of devices provided in each of the last 5 years.

Requirements for revalidation vary between the nine regulatory bodies; however, the introduction of formal revalidation processes has been relatively recently introduced by the General Medical Council (GMC), Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and General Dental Council (GDC). NHS Healthcare Improvement Scotland undertakes a formal annual report in relation Medical Designated Bodies appraisal and revalidation completion rates and these are formally published. The NMC introduced revalidation in March 2016 with a three year rolling programme to ensure that all registered nurses and midwives on the NMC register have complied with the first tranche of revalidation. The Scottish Government is currently working together with the NMC, Department of Health and Social Security and the other devolved administrations to ensure that formal, independent evaluation of the progress of revalidation and its impact is monitored and measured.

The nine health professions regulators have each established their own systems for ensuring continuing professional development and fitness to practise. In each case, the responsibility for meeting the conditions for continued registration lies with the individual practitioner rather than their employer. The Scottish Government has no statutory function in monitoring or collating revalidation compliance data.

The Scottish Government, in collaboration with the Scottish General Practitioners' Committee of the British Medical Association, is in the process of establishing the Rural Short Life Working Group which will help to assist in the implementation of the new GP Contract from April 2018, subject to parliamentary procedure.

The Scottish Government welcomes the commitment made by the Rural GP Association of Scotland, in their November 2017 publication, to engage with the aspirations of the proposed 2018 GP contract, and their agreement that the themes of workload, recruitment and sustainability were core elements to address through the new contract and transformation of primary care.

The Scottish Government will continue to work to promote rural general practice through the remote and rural incentive scheme and through the Short Life Working Group on Rural General Practice which will help to ensure that the contract is delivered in a way that works well for rural areas, and will also look for additional ways in which rural general practice can be supported.

This information is not held centrally.

The management of Employee Conduct PIN Policy sets out the rights and responsibilities of boards, managers, employees and trade unionists/professional organisations in respect of employees who are subject to any disciplinary action and includes guidance on the suspension of staff. Decisions relating to disciplinary actions and how any related statistics are collated is a matter for each individual health board within the framework of their conduct policies and procedures.

The Inquiry has yet to complete the Oral Hearings that are currently taking place and details of the order of events, documents and transcripts of the oral hearings are published on the Inquiry website at http://www.edinburghtraminquiry.org/ .

The Inquiry will then need to review the information obtained and consider further responses from witnesses who are subject to criticism before Lord Hardie can publish the report. The Inquiry must remain independent of Scottish Ministers, as it would be inappropriate for us to intervene with its investigations, particularly as Transport Scotland is cited as a Core Participant in the Inquiry.