Chamber and committees

The cost of the NHS Highland Elective Centre is £42m.

Following review at the Capital Investment Group in January 2020, approval of the Full Business Case for the project and associated costs was confirmed in a letter from the Director General, Health and Sport dated 13-05-20.

Advance enabling works will commence in June 2020 with construction commencing in October 2020. Construction is expected to be complete in August 2022.

Officials have worked with all of the Health Boards including NHS Highland to formulate Local Mobilisation Plans in which Cancer has remained the number one clinical priority, alongside ensuring capacity for any increase in Covid-19 cases.

Boards will be asked to keep their remobilisation plans under constant review to ensure there is enough COVID surge capacity in place. This work will be cognisant of national guidance and policy frameworks, including those relating to infection prevention and control, testing and PPE.

To support this an additional £645,000 has been made available to NHS Highland for 2020-21 to support Access to Cancer Services.

The Scottish Tourism Recovery Task Force was set up to have advise on and have strategic oversight of recovery plans in response to the Covid-19 impact on Scottish tourism and hospitality. The Taskforce will look to ensure that the tourism recovery plan is fully coordinated with wider Scottish Government and other relevant sectoral recovery plans, and with our tourism strategy Scotland Outlook 2030. I intend that the Taskforce will have a report ready to be published in early September.

The group has had two plenary sessions, on 25th June and 10th July. Papers and minutes from those meetings, along with a list of the taskforce members, will be published on the Scottish Government website very shortly.

An additional £645,000 has been made available to NHS Highland for 2020-21 to support Access to Cancer Services.

Officials are now working with NHS Highland to ensure that robust plans are in place through their remobilisation plans to ensure cancer service remain a top clinical priority, ensuring patients have appropriate and timely access to treatment.

On 4 June 2020 the Cabinet Secretary announced the Framework for Recovery of Cancer Surgery to assist NHS Scotland to prioritise those most in need of cancer treatment. The Framework sets out how health boards should prioritise cancer surgery as NHS Scotland resumes more services.

Through the Pivotal Enterprise Resilience Fund, we are providing support to pivotal SMEs which is unavailable elsewhere in the UK. Due to significant demand, we doubled the Fund to £90m and have since further increased it to £120m. Similarly we have increased our Creative, Tourism and Hospitality Enterprises Hardship Fund by £10m to £30m.

Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise were asked to develop and implement a full, systematic and shared approach to enable the appraisal of a high volume of applications for these funds. Given the immediacy of the situation, they secured external support to build at pace a technical platform for the two new funds and to support part of the appraisal process.

All decisions on awards were made by the agencies themselves, with expert advice from delivery partners VisitScotland and Creative Scotland. WeareUMi is the delivery partner for the agencies and the final cost of the contract is still to be confirmed as work relating to the funds is ongoing.

The National Elective Centre Programme received a report update on 2 nd June regarding the NHS Highland Elective Centre Project. This followed a discussion with the NHS Highland Elective Centre Senior Responsible Owner on 28 th May and a follow-up discussion took place on Monday 15 th June.

The National Elective Centre Programme is regularly updated on the development of the North of Scotland Elective Care Centre.

Construction is due to commence in June 2020 with a Construction Completion Date of August 2022.

Ministers and Scottish Government officials regularly meet with representatives of all Health Boards, including NHS Highland.

I joined a weekly virtual meeting of health board CEOs on the 5th of June.

At this present time the Scottish Government are in frequent contact with all NHS Boards on their planning and preparations to safely and gradually resume some paused services, while continuing to maintain Covid-19 capacity and resilience.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise is currently finalising proposals around next steps for the Cairngorm funicular railway in light of the Cairngorm National Park Authority decision. HIE is expecting to put recommendations to the Scottish Government over the summer and the outcome of these considerations will determine the level of funding required.

On 31 May, the Scottish Government published Re-mobilise, Recover, Re-design: The Framework for NHS Scotland . This sets out the guiding principles that will underpin the approach to the next phase for the NHS; and how we will make critical decisions guided by clinical prioritisation. The document sets the broad direction not only for re-mobilising and recovering the NHS, but recognises that there have been some very positive innovations (e.g. how patients can access more services digitally) that we want to retain. The aim is to set out a clear and evidence-based methodology that promotes as much robust and informed decision making as possible; recognising that we are not be able to resume everything at the same time. The Framework recognises that local circumstances will be a key determinant for how and when services can be resumed, alongside clinical prioritisation. The Framework has been informed by on-going engagement with key stakeholders including Royal Colleges, Academies, unions and others. This will continue, with patient representation, under a Recovery Group to be set up by the Health Secretary.

NHS Boards submitted their plans to end July 2020 and these have been subject reviewed by the Scottish Government. We are working with Health Boards to get to a position where all mobilisation plans are ready to be formally signed off and fully implemented. In the meantime certain key services are being commenced where it is clinically safe to do so. Boards will be asked to keep their plans under constant review, and to continue to review the clinical prioritisation of services. This work will be cognisant of national guidance/policy frameworks.

A further phase of mobilisation planning, to the end of March 2021, will be commissioned in the near future.

No. Subject to phase 3 of the route map commencing, it will be possible to meet with people from more than one household indoors with physical distancing and hygiene measures. This will apply to self-catering accommodation also.