Chamber and committees

The Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Programme Board are currently considering a final version of its Terms of Reference. This document along with minutes from Programme Board meetings will be published on www.gov.scot in October 2019.

The Terms of Reference document will make reference to the work of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Taskforce as well as the work of the Youth Commission on Mental Health.

The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting the parties to jointly agree an appropriate resolution; I wrote to Unite on 21 August, in advance of the commencement of industrial action to confirm this, and to request that all parties to this dispute work constructively and pragmatically in the interests of the affected staff group. Both NHS Tayside and Unite the union have been advised that established procedures exist for the resolution of disputes of this nature through the Scottish Terms and Conditions Committee (STAC), where it is not possible to conclude a resolution locally.

We understand that latterly NHS Tayside has not been able to conclude a local appeal process. Accordingly the matter has now been referred to STAC who will convene a national job evaluation panel on behalf of the parties. The Committee has now met with the parties to confirm that a national matching panel will be established and it is working to set this up as soon as is practicable.

The total investment in the Scottish Access Collaborative (SAC) since 2017 is approximately £4.3 million. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport launched the Collaborative in November 2017 to support the setting up of the infrastructure to progress this work, which was closely aligned with the Diagnostic and Treatment Centre Strategy, Regional Planning, Realistic Medicine and Performance Management and Delivery Activities and Programmes.

This investment included approximately £1.5 million which was made available in 2018-19 to support the waiting times improvement plan, launched in October 2018. £2.8 million has been committed in 2019-20 to develop and test identified areas of good practice and the findings from these workstreams will be reported and shared, once available.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The Scottish Social Services Council publish annual official statistics on the Mental Health Officer workforce, which include an estimate of the overall shortfall of Mental Health Officers capacity across Scotland. The latest report, published on 20 August, is available on the Scottish Social Services Council website at https://data.sssc.uk.com/images/MHO/MHO_Report_2018.pdf

ISD hold data on admissions to Scottish hospitals, with information on diagnosis coded using the WHO ICD10 system. However, there is no specific ICD10 code for exposure to an e-cigarette or vapouriser.

Our expectation remains to publish the Respiratory Care Action Plan in late 2019 for public consultation which will be open to all. It will be available on the Scottish Government's consultation hub at: https://consult.gov.scot/ .

Officials are already working with third sector on how best to raise awareness and engage with patients.

As indicated in answer to S5W-24624, a contract will be offered on the basis that the merit of any visit is clearly proven and, in this context, it is important that professional diligence is discharged and demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction. In part, this involves surgeons firstly visiting Dr Veronikis in the US. I am disappointed that clinical commitments have prevented that visit taking place over the summer as I had expected. I understand that our surgeons have scheduled their clinical commitments to make a visit possible in November, provided that suits Dr Veronikis. Any contract will be offered subsequent to that visit taking place.

In the meantime the Chief Medical Officer has spoken directly with Dr Veronikis, and they will continue to engage as we seek to bring him to Scotland at the earliest available opportunity. This will clearly be subject to Dr Veronikis' ongoing clinical commitments and availability.

Scottish Government officials sought the GMC's advice on the requirements it would need Dr Veronikis to fulfil prior to a visit taking place. This advice was shared with Dr Veronikis and it is understood that he has made good progress towards meeting those requirements.

Separately, I wrote to the GMC to highlight this particular case.

The member to the answer to question S5W-25227 on  18 September 2019. 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

It is not possible to determine the impact between number of staff and waiting times without additional information, as waiting times can be impacted by a number of factors.

The average (median) waiting time for inpatient or day case admission for gastroenterology has decreased from 14 days in 2017-18 to 11 days 2018-19 whilst average (median) waiting times for new outpatients for the same years has also decreased from 41 days to 40 days.

The number of Consultant Gastroenterologists working in NHS Scotland has increased by 30.2% (from 81.1 Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) from September 2006 to 105.6 WTE as at June 2019). Whilst there has been a small decrease in the number of Consultant Gastroenterologists since June 2018, vacancies have also decreased by over 20% in the last year.