Chamber and committees

As outlined in my response to S5W-17339 on 10 July 2018, the Scottish Government has worked with Children’s Hospices Across Scotland to address concerns around the introduction of an upper age limit for their services.

The Scottish Government published the Strategic Framework for Action on Palliative and End of Life Care in December 2015. The Strategic Framework for Action set out a vision that by 2021, everyone in Scotland who needs palliative care will have access to it.

Within the context of integration of health and social care, it is the responsibility of Integration Authorities to commission and plan services and support to meet the needs of their local population, including palliative and end of life care and respite care.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

As Social Security Scotland is not yet operational, no payments have been made.

The security of Special Customer Records is paramount. For that reason our policy on this will not be published.

The outsourcing of some diagnostic imaging reporting allows NHS Boards to maintain service capacity and meet rising demand.

The following table details external agency usage in 2017-18 for radiology reporting services. NHS Borders, Lothian, Western Isles and Golden Jubilee National Hospital are not currently using any external agencies for this purpose.

Individual public bodies are responsible for their own procurement decisions and contract management and monitoring activity.

Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 require public bodies to include contract conditions, relating to the performance of the contract, as reasonably necessary to ensure compliance with environmental, social and employment law.

Scottish Procurement Policy Note 09/2016 provided model contract clauses to provide for termination in these circumstances and the Scottish Government’s standard terms and conditions were updated and are available at:

https://www.gov.scot/Topics/Government/Procurement/buyer-information/standardformsanddocs/SGtsandcs.

Individual public bodies are responsible for their own procurement activity and effective contract management and monitoring should be undertaken to ensure that relevant Fair Work practices, including the Living Wage, continue to be applied throughout the duration of contracts.

The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 requires public bodies with an annual regulated procurement spend of £5 million or more to produce a procurement strategy setting out, amongst other things, a statement of their general policy on the payment of a living wage to people involved in delivering public contracts. Public bodies must also publish a report outlining whether their procurement activities complied with the strategy and where they did not, how they intend to ensure compliance in the future.

Public bodies with an April to March financial which year were expected to produce and publish their first report at the end July 2018, and those whose financial year runs from August to July are expected to publish their report by the end of November 2018.

In their response to the 2013 Review of Scottish Public Sector Procurement in Construction, the Scottish Ministers decided, at that time, not to accept the recommendation that the Government should appoint a Chief Construction Adviser, though it was also made clear they retained the option to revisit that decision should circumstances change.

However, since that decision was taken, a number of significant and high profile issues have emerged within the construction sector. Therefore, I have asked officials to look again at this proposal and develop a series of options for me to consider. As part of this consideration I will wish to hear views from a wide range of interests and, in this regard, the Convener of the Cross Party Group on Construction has already raised the matter with me. I am due to meet her shortly.

With reference to the answer provided for S5W-17659, it is the responsibility of NHS boards to regularly review spending decisions to ensure they deliver fit for purpose services which respond to the needs of their local population. This includes decisions about the number of places available in forensic units.

At this time in the national trainee recruitment cycle, NHS Education for Scotland advise that there are projected to be 6 trainee vacancies in placements rotating through Inverclyde Royal and 5 trainee vacancies at the Royal Alexandra. As is usual practice, any vacancies in trainee posts (with associated funding) are returned to NHS Boards for local recruitment action, which may be through offering career development-style fellowships through offering career development-style fellowships or sourcing locum cover.

Each NHS Board must plan on the basis of providing safe and sustainable services for patients and will have a range of options available to them where rota gaps exist following national trainee recruitment. The Scottish Government continues to support NHSScotland Boards through initiatives like the International Medical Training Fellowships scheme, improving the quality of training programmes through roll-out of the Professional Compliance Assessment tool, and we stand ready to assist Greater Glasgow and Clyde in its efforts to address trainee vacancies.

No; all three hospitals continue to hold training accreditation and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) continues to place trainee doctors in these hospitals. NES officials continue to work collaboratively with Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board to improve the educational quality of medical training, and the supervision of trainees, in certain sites across the Board area.