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Vaccination policy in Scotland, is based on recommendations from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

Following the Committee’s recommendation, from August 2019 the HPV immunisation programme in Scotland was extended to adolescent boys entering their first year of secondary school (S1).

The JCVI has not recommended a catch up for older boys as evidence suggests they are already benefitting from the indirect protection built up in the population over 10 years of the girls’ HPV vaccination programme.

From 2016 HPV vaccine has been available to men who have sex with men (MSM) up to and including 45 years of age who attend sexual health or HIV clinics. The HPV MSM programme is opportunistic and offers direct protection.

The JCVI keeps its recommendations under review and if the advice on HPV vaccination was to change we would of course give this due consideration.

The NHS Recovery Plan, published August 2021, commits an additional £20m for the Detect Cancer Early (DCE) Programme, to provide greater public awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer and support the development of optimal cancer pathways to improve earlier diagnosis rates. Research is currently being undertaken to better understand the possible barriers and levers to early diagnosis that any new DCE campaigns should focus on. In addition, our public facing website (getcheckedearly.org) signposts people to the possible signs and symptoms of cancer including sarcoma.

The Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer support primary cancer professionals to ensure those patients with potential symptoms of cancer are swiftly referred into secondary care. In addition we have invested £3m in establishing Scotland’s Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres, providing patients with non-specific symptoms suspicious of cancer access to a fast-track diagnostic pathway.

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 provides local authorities with a discretionary power to set up workplace parking licensing (WPL) schemes. Section 71 of the 2019 Act defines what constitutes a workplace parking place. Customer parking at retail outlets (except parking for business customers) is not included in the definition of workplace parking and therefore those places could not be included in any local authorities’ WPL scheme.

It will be for local authorities to decide whether they wish to implement WPL locally and to shape proposals to suit local circumstances. Parking places provided for employees and business customers are included in the definition of workplace parking set out in the 2019 Act. Accordingly, employers will be liable for workplace parking for staff within the context of proposals set out by local authorities.

The position taken by Circularity Scotland Ltd (CSL) in respect of container and return point numbers, as I understand it, is set out at Annex F of the amended Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) for our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) published in December 2021.

CSL’s position in respect of number of reverse vending machines is that they expect roughly 3,000 of these as set out in the Full Business Case for DRS.

CSL had no sight of the content of the amended BRIA in advance of publication.

The economic model underlying the analysis in the amended Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) for Scotland's Deposit Return Scheme was developed in line with best practice by Zero Waste Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government. The key inputs to the model are set out at table 2 of the amended Final BRIA.

The legislative framework relating to the reporting duties of the Scottish Tribunals in general, and on the Housing and Property Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland in particular, are outlined in the previous answer to question S6W-06407.

The Scottish Government is content with the legislative framework and relevant reporting duties on the Scottish Tribunals and has no plans to review these at present.

The NHS Recovery Plan, published August 2021, commits an additional £20m for the Detect Cancer Early (DCE) Programme, to provide greater public awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer and support the development of optimal cancer pathways to improve earlier diagnosis rates. Research is currently being undertaken to better understand the possible barriers and levers to early diagnosis that any new DCE campaigns should focus on, with results expected in April.

A symptom-checker tool is included on our public facing website (getcheckedearly.org) to raise awareness of the early signs and symptoms of cancer, including ovarian cancer. A survivor’s story and a link to the ovarian cancer page on DCE’s website will also be shared on wee c social media pages during Ovarian Cancer Awareness month.

On 30 March, the Scottish Parliament will hold a members business debate for ovarian cancer awareness month to raise awareness of the common symptoms.

As set out in Annex F to the amended Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) for our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), published on 15 December 2021, we consider that there is a degree of uncertainty attached to the figures proposed by Circularity Scotland Ltd (CSL) for the number of scheme articles and return points under DRS. For that reason our final and best estimate remains that set out on p19 of the amended BRIA.

Nevertheless, as Annex F shows, even if we were to adopt these two figures there would continue to be a strong economic case for DRS.

We have seen no evidence for higher numbers of RVMs than the roughly 3,000 assumed in the Full Business Case Addendum and I understand that CSL is continuing to work from this figure. That is therefore the figure modelled in the updated Final BRIA that was published in December last year.

Table 1: Percentage of repeat alcohol-related hospital admissions by NHS board and financial year.

Table 1: Number and percentage of heart-related repeat hospital admissions: Years ending 31 March 2017-2021