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The development of a domestic hydrogen sector will play an important role in supporting a just transition to Net Zero by 2045, and presents significant long-term economic opportunities.

We are taking forward an Energy Transition Scotland programme, including the Energy Transition Fund (ETF), which in its first year of operation is already funding key transition projects – such as the Global Underwater Hub, the Energy Transition Zone, the Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub, and the Net Zero Technology Transition Programme.

These projects will help to ensure Scotland’s energy sector plays a leading role in the development and deployment of new, low carbon projects.

Additionally, the Emerging Energy Technologies Fund (EETF) will provide £180m over the next five years to support the development of hydrogen, and carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) that underpins negative emissions technologies (NETs).

Details on the £100m capital funding that will be dedicated to the support of the Scottish hydrogen sector as committed in our Hydrogen Policy Statement will be published alongside our Hydrogen Action Plan targeted for publication in the first year of this Parliamentary term.

The Hydrogen Action Plan will set out the actions that will be taken over the coming five years to support Scottish supply chain activity and drive the development of a low-cost hydrogen capability to meet our initial ambition to generate 5GW of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen by 2030.

We also support to the Acorn Hydrogen projects at St Fergus, Aberdeenshire, where 35% of the UK’s annual gas supply enters the National Transmission System. We believe Acorn can be the first large-scale hydrogen project developed in Scotland. Acorn Hydrogen will be enabled by its sister project, Acorn CCS, considered the most advanced CCS project in the UK. Acorn is leading the Scottish bid into the UK Government’s cluster sequencing process to allow Carbon, Capture and Storage (CCS) to be deployed by the mid-2020s, and we are supportive of the Scottish Cluster’s bid into the UK Government’s cluster sequencing process. It is critical that the UK Government recognises Acorn CCS as one of the first two projects to commercialise in the 2020s as part of this cluster sequencing process, and does not delay these Scottish projects, which are essential for meeting our emissions reduction targets.

The Acorn Hydrogen project will initially involve the construction of a 200 MW hydrogen production plant that could become operational by 2025, and which would allow for a 2% hydrogen blend by volume into the National Transmission System (NTS). The emissions from the hydrogen production would be captured, transported, and safely stored offshore deep underground, reusing current oil and gas infrastructure.

Acorn CCS and Hydrogen are key catalysts for clean growth in the north east of the UK and beyond. These projects are highly scalable, due to availability of large volumes of natural gas feedstock, up to 46GT of offshore CO2 storage capacity, and the availability of existing offshore pipeline infrastructure. Large volumes of hydrogen can be generated in the 2020s and beyond, offering an opportunity to establish hydrogen infrastructure before other complementary decarbonisation technologies reach scale.

Please find the requested information set out in the following table.

The figures provided below include patients waiting to have their initial appointment with a consultant (new outpatient) and patients who were waiting to be admitted for treatment (inpatient or day case) within select specialties relating to the question.

In the field of orthopaedic medicine, trauma is categorised as a severe injury to the elements of the musculoskeletal system (muscles, joints, ligaments, bones, and soft tissue). These trauma injuries are often the result of a sudden accident, such as a fall or car accident, and so the patient requires immediate medical attention. Consequently, no waiting times are provided here.

Table 1 shows the total number of patients waiting for a new outpatient appointment across NHS Scotland at 31 May 2019, 31 May 2020 and 31 May 2021, broken down by specialty. Note that 95 th percentile waits have been provided rather than the longest wait as a more robust measure. This is due to the likelihood of the longest wait for each specialty being a data quality issue as opposed to a true waiting time.

Table 1: Total waiting for a New Outpatient appointment and 95 th percentile waits, 31 May 2019, 31 May 2020, 31 May 2021; NHS Scotland

In response to the pressures on NHS services caused by the pandemic over the past 18 months, the First Minster launched the NHS Recovery Plan, on the 25 August. The Plan sets out the Scottish Governments key headline ambitions and actions to be developed and delivered now and over the next 5 years.

While it is important to stress that recovery is the immediate task, this Plan is fundamentally about ensuring that the process of recovery focusses on alternatives pathways of care that allow people to be treated more quickly closer to home and also delivers long term sustainability. The plan is backed by more than £1 billion of investment over the next five years.

The core criteria for defining a stroke unit are well described in the academic literature, including in Langhorne et al (2002). Though the size and configuration of stroke units across Scotland may vary depending on local factors, most will be in a defined ward setting and have a specialist stroke multidisciplinary team.

Covid-19 has had an unprecedented impact on the world, NHS Scotland and stroke services. Each service will have responded in the best way that it could, depending on the specific issues affecting them.

The 2021 Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme Report (which includes 9 months of the pandemic) shows slight deterioration in performance against the stroke standards for stroke unit access (77% in 2020 compared to 82% in 2019).

While stroke unit access declined, achievement of standards in other areas, including brain imaging within 12 hours of arrival (86% in 2020 compared 84% in 2019), time to carotid intervention (61%; 59%) and mean thrombolysis door-to-needle (DTN) time (51 minutes in 2020 compared to 53 minutes in 2019), improved.

All of these aspects also have an important impact on recovery from stroke, and therefore it is not possible to isolate the recovery impact based on one standard (such as stroke unit access).

Work is ongoing to produce a progressive stroke pathway document by December 2021. This will take account of international evidence, including the World Stroke Organisation’s roadmap to delivering quality stroke care, to define what a progressive stroke pathway should look like in Scotland.

The progressive stroke pathway will, similarly to the roadmap, follow the continuum of care starting at the onset of a stroke event through the acute phase (emergency department and inpatient care), and stroke rehabilitation and long term supported recovery.

Following this, an implementation plan will identify any gaps between current capacity and the progressive stroke pathway vision, and outline clear actions to take.

ScotGEM students are very specifically entitled to apply for a £4,000 per year ‘return of service’ bursary. This means for every year they take this they are committing to stay and work in NHS Scotland for a corresponding amount of years. Once the first cohort of ScotGEM students graduate in Summer 2022, we intend to evaluate the effectiveness of the ScotGEM bursary in retaining trainee doctors in hard to fill posts within our healthcare service. Further consideration to any extension can be made at that point.

We continue to work with key partners across Scotland to ensure that relevant information from patient health records is available to healthcare staff when and where they need it. Significant investment in national IT systems, such as those for GP practices and the TrakCare hospital patient management system in secondary care, has improved the flow of information across different healthcare settings and services. In addition, the availability of Regional Clinical Portals, the roll out of HEPMA ( Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration ) and availability of the patient Emergency Care Summary (ECS) to Community Pharmacists, Dentists and Optometrists have all improved the accessibility and quality of electronic patient information available to frontline staff.

Further improvements will be made including the implementation of Office365 across the entire NHS. This will include the rollout of single identities for NHS staff which will simplify secure access to relevant patient information. The refreshed Digital Health & Care Strategy, scheduled to be published in September 2021, will set out ambitions for greater access to medical information both for staff and the public.

Information on the location of vaccinations, cross referenced with the recipients health board, is not held centrally.

There is evidence that achieving the stroke bundle reduces mortality and increases the chance of patients returning to their usual place of residence after stroke.

There are a number of other factors in achieving an acceptable level of care for people with stroke. However, the stroke bundle is a simple metric which has been shown to be associated with improved outcomes. The Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme Team will continue to support NHS Boards to achieve the Stroke Bundle as well as supporting improvements across the stroke pathway.