Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all people living with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) in Scotland are able to access the best possible care and support, and benefit from healthcare services that are safe, effective and put people at the centre of their care.

Public Health Scotland collect Management Information on the number of adults receiving Hospital at Home. However, no data is collected on children receiving this service or on patients receiving a Hospice at home services, although some of the patients receiving hospital at home may be receiving end of life care.

The following table shows the total number of adults (16+) who have been supported through Hospital at Home services by calendar year and Health Board, and shows a 60% increase in patients treated since 2015. A patient could have one or more admission to Hospital at Home services within the year. However, individual episodes are not counted, and the same patient is not counted more than once within the same year.

The available spend information on youth work by local authority for 2020-21 and 2021-22 is set out in the following table. Please note that the information you have requested is not available at individual local authority level prior to 2020-21.

The Scottish Government does not routinely collect data on the ethnicity of people participating in clinical trials in Scotland.

The funding allocated for the 85 per cent funding floor from the introduction in 2012-13 up to and including 2023-24 is set out in a document that has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, Bib number 64023

The Local Government Finance settlement also includes a main funding floor however that is self-funding which means that the 85 per cent funding floor is the only funding floor mechanism where the Scottish Government provides additional funding. The purpose of the main funding floor is to provide a degree of stability for all local authorities where the alignment of funding with relative need results in a lower-than-average change in the year-to-year funding. The main funding floor forms part of the needs based distribution formula that is discussed and agreed with COSLA on behalf of all their members each year.

The Scottish Government, along with the other UK nations, takes advice on whether or not to introduce any new screening programmes from the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent expert advisory group.  

The UK NSC conducts an Annual Call for Topics, which allows members of the public and stakeholders to submit new potential screening programmes for the Committee to consider and assess against internationally recognised criteria. In the 2021/22 Call, Metachromatic leukodystrophy was submitted and accepted for review.  

It is not yet possible to say when this review will be complete, but we continue to monitor the situation closely. Should the UK NSC recommend screening following this review, the National Screening Oversight (NSO) and Scottish Screening Committee (SSC) will then consider the best course of implementation for Scotland.

The Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office (CSO) along with partners in the UK Clinical Research Recovery, Resilience and Growth programme considers it important that clinical trial populations reflect the populations that could benefit from the treatments as closely as possible. For this reason, a theme of this programme is the widening of opportunities for people to participate in clinical research. CSO is working with partners on the UK-wide Be Part of Research initiative and invests in the Scottish Health Research Register and Biobank (SHARE) with this aim. CSO is also funding a research project looking at ways to support ethnic diversity in clinical trials populations.  

The Scottish Government does not hold the full level of information requested for reasons outlined in the answer to S6W-15113 on 8 March 2023. Each Fuel lnsecurity Fund partner is distinct in terms of their delivery with the use of funding and targeted support measures and approach, which will determine their level and volume of applications, proportionate on a case-by-case basis.

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

The average repairs and maintenance expenditure per council house by local authority from 1998-99 to 2021-22 is set out in a document that has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, Bib number 64022.

It should be noted that the vast majority of funding available to councils is provided by means of a block grant from the Scottish Government. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on maintenance of council housing, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The number of full time equivalent staff employed by the Scottish Government varies throughout the financial year, so figures provided represent a snapshot. On 16 February 2023 the Scottish Government employed 53.7 full time equivalent frontline communications (press office) staff whose role includes media relations.

The recruitment of media relations staff by public bodies and agencies is a matter for those organisations and the information requested in regard to this is not held centrally.