Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government supports clinicians writing directly to patients where they are able and willing to do so. The Chief Medical Officer’s annual report, ‘Practising Realistic Medicine’, shares examples of good practice to encourage others to consider adopting this approach.

Scotland’s Health Literacy Action Plan, ‘Making it Easier’, also sets out a range of actions to ensure that communication with people about their healthcare is done as clearly as possible. This enables people to be partners in their own healthcare and supports the drive to a culture of shared decision making.

A health literacy demonstrator project took place in NHS Tayside from 2015-2017. Based on its findings, work is ongoing across Tayside to simplify and improve written communication with patients by letter.

The Action Plan runs until 2025 and as part of its next phase we will look at spreading the findings from the Tayside demonstrator project across Scotland.

We are aware that many clinicians across Scotland are now writing directly to patients, supported by work around active clinical referral triage under The Modernising Patient Pathways Programme. We are exploring with our partners in NHS Scotland how this approach can be supported and spread more widely.

The Scottish Government are aware of the issues around leading edge erosion, but have had no specific discussions with Siemens on this topic.

The voluntary review into Glasgow homelessness services is a partnership approach by Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council focused on improving practice around the failure to provide temporary accommodation to homeless households. The voluntary review is on - going and is aligning with the inquiry of the Scottish Housing Regulator into Glasgow's homelessness services. I have been clear with Glasgow City Council that he expects it to meet its statutory duties to provide those at risk of homelessness with appropriate housing and support.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with the Council to ensure that duties to provide accommodation to homeless households are met.

Any recommendations from this process will be for Glasgow City Council and it will be a matter for the Council to consider the publication of any findings.

The Working Group has identified options in Lancashire and between Abington and Glasgow that, in conjunction with HS2, could also increase capacity and achieve an air competitive Glasgow to London journey time of approximately 3¼ hours.

The Working Group is currently taking forward work to determine if there would be a strong business case for implementing these options, which will be presented to the Scottish Government and the UK Government in due course to inform their investment decisions.

Scotland’s response to the global climate emergency must be a truly national endeavour. There is a significant role for the whole of Scottish society in supporting transformational change. For this reason, constructive dialogue with the Scottish public must be a central pillar of our approach.

Last summer, the Scottish Government ran a series of public engagement events called the Big Climate Conversation. Over 2,500 people across Scotland in rural, island, and urban areas participated. These events were an opportunity for people to voice their opinions and concerns about climate change, Scotland’s net-zero target, and the Scottish Government’s response to the global climate emergency. All the findings have been summarised in the Big Climate Conversation Report that was published on 30 January and is available on the gov.scot website.

The findings from the report will be used to inform the revision of our new climate change public engagement strategy, which is due to be published in Spring 2020. This strategy will set out our approach to engaging the Scottish public on climate change and encouraging public participation in the transition to net-zero emissions.

As we update our Climate Change Plan, three cross-cutting engagement events are being held this month in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Several hundred stakeholders, including a mix of public, private and third sector organisations, as well as community groups are invited to join the national dialogue. These events have been designed to gather views on Scottish Government policy proposals, and invite further constructive proposals, as well as offer advice and support for businesses, communities and the public sector on the collective action that’s required to end Scotland’s contribution to climate change.

Later this year a Climate Citizens’ Assembly for Scotland will meet. The Assembly will play an important role in informing decision making as we consider the far reaching changes across society that will be required to meet our ambitious targets.

COP 26 in Glasgow will be focused on addressing the global climate crisis and setting the world on course to transition to a net-zero world in a way that is fair and just for everyone. Our approach to tackling climate change is supported by the Just Transition principles, to help ensure that no one is left behind as we move to a net-zero economy. We established an independent Just Transition Commission which is conducting a wide range of engagement to ensure its recommendations will reflect the concerns and aspirations of people across the country.

 A number of impact assessments which consider socioeconomic factors are undertaken for new Scottish Government policies and strategies, where appropriate. This includes the Fairer Scotland Duty, Equalities Impact Assessments and Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessments.

In particular, the Fairer Scotland Duty places a legal responsibility on the Scottish Government and other public bodies in Scotland to actively consider how they can reduce inequalities of outcome caused by socioeconomic disadvantage, when making strategic decisions.

The Scottish Government is committed to tackling the global climate emergency and reaching net-zero emissions in a way which is fair and just for all.

The Scottish Government strongly supports the circular economy and while Scottish Ministers do not directly have responsibility for what are commercial decisions by operators, or the industry standards for blades manufactured outside of Scotland, but we are encouraging the industry to consider opportunities to improve the sustainability of components utilised within projects located in Scotland.

As regards infrastructure to undertake recycling of wind energy components we are aware of 'Renewable Parts', a recycling and repair centre in Lochgilphead which opened in 2018. The centre aims to significantly reduce the level of waste from decommissioning wind turbines by refurbishing parts for resale. Onshore wind is the lowest cost form of electricity generation at scale and the Scottish Government strongly encourage the reuse, recycling and recovery of resources.

The Scottish Government currently funds a number of schemes to support the uptake of renewable and low carbon heat, including support for heat networks and for individual households and businesses to install low carbon heating. Where we currently provide funding for fossil fuel heating systems we have already increased support for renewable and low carbon heating, for example via Warmer Homes Scotland.

We recognise the need to phase out support for fossil fuel heating, which we will do between now and 2024, where it is appropriate and does not adversely affect achieving our statutory fuel poverty targets. We are also committed to working with industry to introduce a requirement for new homes to have low carbon heating from 2024, i.e. for all new build properties to no longer use fossil fuel boilers from this date.

The Draft 2020-21 Budget allocates £120 million for a Heat Transition Deal to accelerate the deployment of low carbon heating sources. Later this year, we will publish a Heat Decarbonisation Policy Statement which will include a programme of actions to scale up deployment of low carbon heating and taking into account the need to scale up capacity within the supply chain.