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This data is not held centrally by The Scottish Government, National Records of Scotland or Public Health Scotland. 

In September 2022 the Scottish Government and COSLA published Scotland’s 10 year suicide prevention strategy and action plan, ‘Creating Hope Together’. This sets out a comprehensive plan to reduce suicide deaths in Scotland.

The initial 3 year action plan will support continuous improvement in the quality of clinical care and support provided by mental health services for people who are suicidal. This includes embedding the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health (NCISH) guidelines into operating practices. NCISH is the UK’s leading research programme into suicide prevention in clinical services, and is supported by the Scottish Government. Data tables from their 2022 Annual Report are available to view here which provides information on location of suicides, but is not broken down specifically to mental health settings.

The new strategy includes a continued focus on rolling out multi-agency suicide reviews across Scotland, which will provide valuable learning about where service opportunities have been missed in preventing a suicide. The suicide reviews will include information on whether the person who died was a mental health services inpatient. It is expected the system will identify the location of death, including whether the person was an inpatient at the time of death. Along with other types of data and insight, the learning from suicide reviews will produce valuable intelligence to inform ongoing service improvements.

We understand that stigma associated with particular health conditions, including liver disease, can create very specific challenges - it can isolate people from their communities and act as a significant barrier to seeking help and support. This can increase the harms experienced due to delayed presentation especially given the generalised association between liver disease and alcohol misuse and/or drug abuse.

The Scottish Government is committed to tackling this stigma. We are continuing to work on tangible actions that can help reduce stigma experience by people who use drugs and/ or drinking alcohol at hazardous and harmful levels

On 20 June 2022, Public Health Scotland launched the Challenging Weight Stigma Learning Hub. The learning hub aims to raise awareness of the impact weight stigma can have on people living with overweight and obesity and what health professionals can do to mitigate this. It is interactive and has been developed alongside academics, health professionals and those with lived experience of stigma.

Data specific to Years of Working Life Lost (YWLL) for liver disease is not routinely published. Scottish Burden of Disease data published in Sept 2021 showed that for liver disease (cirrhosis and other chronic liver disease) the number of years of life lost (YLL) have fallen from 37,467 in 2016 to 32,279 in 2019. This is around 2.9% of all YLL reported in the 2019 study (1,100,944).

We know that 60 per cent of liver disease is caused by alcohol misuse and we are working on initiatives that will support communities across Scotland to reduce alcohol consumption.

Provisions within Part 1 of the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022, introduce a temporary cap on in-tenancy rent increases, which is set at 0% until at least 31 March 2023.

The following tenancies are not covered by the rent cap:

• some assured tenancies where rent increases are controlled by the contract - if a tenant has an assured tenancy where the way their rent will increase is set out in their contract - and the emergency legislation is still legally in force - then rent will be able to increase in the way agreed in the contract;
• regulated tenancies under the Rent (Scotland) Act 1984 - these tenancies already have strong protections in place, and rents for these tenancies can only increase once every three years;
• common law tenancies - this includes arrangements like agricultural tenancies and lodger agreements (where a tenant lives with a landlord in their home), with the exception of student tenancy agreements; and new tenancies.

The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) is a UK Government scheme. Last year Scottish Ministers proposed a more flexible approach to how the new ECO4 scheme would operate in Scotland. Unfortunately the UK Government did not agree to this and has repeatedly failed to engage with us on these matters.

We continue to work with local councils, energy suppliers and stakeholders to ensure as many households as possible benefit from the scheme in Scotland. Further information about delivery of ECO4 financed measures in Scotland will be published on the UK Government website: Household Energy Efficiency Statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Scottish Government would welcome a meaningful discussion with UK Government Ministers about how ECO4 can better tackle fuel poverty in Renfrewshire and more generally across Scotland. We will be writing again to UK Ministers seeking a dialogue about these issues, following the most recent changes in UK Government policy and Ministerial responsibilities.

The Scottish Government published a summary of progress towards implementation of the 2018 GMS Contract and its associated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in June 2022:

Primary care improvement plans: summary of implementation progress - March 2022 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

As the publication sets out, there are now 3,220 whole time equivalent (WTE) healthcare professionals, such as pharmacists, mental health workers and physiotherapists, recruited into multi-disciplinary teams supporting general practice teams. Of this total, nearly 700 are working in areas with remote and rural communities.

It should, however, be noted that it is not expected that all GP practices in Scotland will take up these NHS Board provided services. As service delivery models are designed specifically according to local population needs, there are variations in approach across the country.

The next progress update will be published in summer 2023.

We are also actively incentivising remote and rural General Practice in several ways. The Golden Hello scheme offers a one-off bursary of £10,000 to every GP taking up an eligible post in a remote and rural area.

Furthermore, ScotGEM is a four-year graduate-entry medical degree which began in 2018, with a focus on rural medicine and healthcare improvement, supporting graduates to choose careers in general practice. Students on the ScotGEM course are offered a 'return of service' bursary, a grant worth up to £16,000 in total, in exchange for working in NHS Scotland for up to four years. 70 places will be offered on the course from 2022-23 onwards, following an increase of 15 places in line with the recent PfG commitment.

The Scottish Government is also working closely with partners including the Scottish Rural Medicine Collaborative (SRMC) to find solutions for remote and rural GP recruitment. The four rural boards in the north of Scotland have piloted an innovative recruitment campaign called Rediscover The Joy (RTJ). RTJ aims to recruit experienced GPs to provide support for remote and rural practices and, to date, this has been an initiative run in NHS Shetland, Orkney, Highland and Western Isles.

(a) The number of people accepted onto pre-registration midwifery training courses since the 2016-17 academic year is shown in the following table:

Place Directors are senior civil servants (directors or deputy directors) who volunteer for the role alongside their day-to-day responsibilities. Each Place Director represents Scottish Government in one of Scotland’s 32 local authority and Community Planning Partnership areas. They don't receive any additional remuneration beyond their existing salary.

The role of Place Directors is to understand, promote and support how public services work together and with communities, to improve wellbeing and outcomes on local and national priorities. They provide a bridge between local areas and the Scottish Government, providing two-way intelligence, constructive criticism and, where valuable, support for local capacity building. Their strategic role complements the more detailed responsibility of civil servants in relevant Scottish Government policy teams for testing and supporting how specific policies, services and reform programmes are taken forward in places across Scotland.

The National Cancer Medicines Advisory Group (NCMAG) provides advice on the off-label uses of certain cancer medicines, which are out with the remit of the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC). Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCMAG provided rapid national decisions regarding the use of cancer medicines (sometimes out with the licensed indication for the medicine) to help meet the overall aim of reducing patient risk of COVID-19 infection and to mitigate the potential burden on cancer services.

Cancer services remain under considerable pressure, and cancer patients continue to be vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. As a result, it was agreed that existing COVID-19 NCMAG advice would remain in place until the end of March 2023, after which it will be withdrawn. More generally, extant Scottish Government guidance states that unless there is a specific clinical reason, clinicians should not continue to use an unlicensed medicine or a medicine off-label where there is an available licensed medicine, which has been accepted for routine use by the SMC.

Since 2007 the Scottish Government has retained, and subsequently deployed, any and all net underspends which have been available following the conclusion of the Final Outturn process at the end of each financial year. The mechanism for doing so is via the Scotland Reserve and previously the Budget Exchange Mechanism.

The amount of underspends arising from each year since 1999 was detailed in the answer to question S6W-09370 on 13 July 2022.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers