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We engage with the UK Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on a range of issues.

We are not working with DHSC on this particular matter.

Information on the number of Clinical Nurse Specialists by specialist cancer fields is not held centrally.

However, we recognise the scale of the challenge facing Health Boards across Scotland. We are working closely with partners to accelerate domestic and international recruitment to Scotland. New investment of £300m has helped services deal with system pressures over winter and the NHS Recovery Plan, backed by over £1bn, has introduced a range of direct workforce investments and new measures to support Boards’ capacity for both domestic and international recruitment.

Overall NHS staff and nursing staff levels are currently at a record high, following ten consecutive years of NHS Scotland workforce growth. We are investing £11m over the next five years in new national and international recruitment campaigns and have established a national Centre for Workforce Supply to provide labour market intelligence. We are also recruiting at least 200 registered nurses from overseas, with funding of £4.5m available to Health Boards to take this forward.

Our latest DCE lung cancer campaign entitled - ‘Settling In’ – was launched in May 2021 with the aim of increasing awareness of the early signs of lung cancer and encouraging people with possible symptoms to contact their GP practice. Almost two-thirds (64%) of those who saw the campaign did something as a result, including looking out for symptoms and deciding to go to their GP practice with possible signs. As committed to in our NHS Recovery Plan, a new early cancer diagnosis vision for Scotland is also being developed to direct early diagnosis efforts over the coming years, including that of lung.

This is a matter for individual NHS Boards. The information requested is not held centrally.

Scottish Water’s Board is responsible for setting charge levels with approval from the Water Industry Commission for Scotland. Scottish Water takes both maintaining critical services, and affordability, into account when setting charges.

The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting people facing issues paying their water bills. The maximum discount for the water charges reduction scheme (available to households which are in receipt of council tax reduction) has increased to 35% - up from 25% and I refer the member to the answer to S6W-06329 on 10 March 2022 for further information on measures to assist domestic customers.

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

We are committed to being open and transparent about data on waiting times performance, including against the Clinical Prioritisation Framework, that was developed to provide guidance to all NHS Boards around prioritising their planned care waiting lists throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data that is published on Waiting Times performance is subject to continual review, development and quality assurance by PHS, the holders of this data.

PHS plans to publish statistics on Clinical Prioritisation for the first time early September 2022, this will be specific to patients waiting for treatment as an inpatient or day case who are covered by the Treatment Time Guarantee.

PHS, with support from the Scottish Government, will continue to work with NHS Boards to improve the completeness and quality of the data to ensure the data is sufficiently robust to be released as official statistics on the scheduled date.

As required under the Water Industry (Scotland) Act 2002, the scheme of charges will be set by Scottish Water’s Board, with approval from the independent economic regulator the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS). The scheme is subject to the cap across the 2021-27 period (CPI+2%) imposed by WICS’s Final Determination of charges and must be consistent with meeting the Ministerial Objectives.

This data is not centrally available; aggregated data for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Waiting Times is sent to Public Health Scotland (PHS) from each NHS Board. It does not contain explicit information on the type of assessment or treatment children and young people are waiting for. It reports on the number of referrals for young people to CAMHS; numbers waiting to start treatment and total waiting; not accepted for treatment from referral and Did Not Attend status numbers for 1st contact appointments; and the time between referral and first treatment.

The CAMHS statistics capture children and young people who meet the CAMHS criteria. Children and young people who are waiting for a neurodevelopmental assessment but do not meet the CAMHS criteria are not reported in these statistics.

PHS are developing a patient-level dataset to provide detail for these aggregate CAMHS statistics. This Child, Adolescent and Psychological Therapies National Dataset (CAPTND) will contain reason for referral to CAMHS

The Scottish Government is committed to working with Boards to implement both the National Neurodevelopmental Specification: Principles and Standards of Care for Children and Young People and the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Service Specification. The National Neurodevelopmental Specification was published in September 2021 and the CAMHS Service Specification was published in February 2020. These set out service standards that all children’s services should follow, to ensure access to support is effective and consistent across Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07731 on 25 April 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

Scottish Government’s delivery partner, Inclusion Scotland, published a report in May 2021 after the Parliamentary elections. The report includes an evaluation that Inclusion Scotland held with award holders. Most award recipients said their overall experience of the Access to Elected Office Fund was very good or excellent. Most participants said the fund removed some impairment-related barriers to campaigning and importantly, most recipients said that the funding did help them to campaign and/or pursue party selection on a more level playing field with non-disabled candidates.

Immediately after the Scottish Parliamentary elections were concluded, the Access to Elected Office Fund needed to promote the upcoming local elections for May 2022 in order to ensure sufficient lead time for any applicants, whilst incorporating learning from the impact of COVID-19.

Inclusion Scotland has worked with the Equal Representation Coalition and the Scottish Government to develop an equalities monitoring form with the aim of collecting data on the protected characteristics of candidates for the May 2022 Local Authority elections.

Further improvements include the updating of processes and procedures. For example, for those receiving a Personal Assistant (PA) support award, the option was added to allow them to use a self-employed PA with the aim of tackling the barriers to recruitment.

Under the Equality Act 2010, individual public authorities are responsible for ensuring that they make reasonable adjustments to meet the needs of people with protected characteristics. Responsibility for complying with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 rests with individual authorities/organisations.