Chamber and committees

Caledonian Sleeper advise it has engaged with ACAS and is taking its advice regarding on-going discussions.

Under current UK rail legislation, other than in circumstances where their duty to act as “Operator of Last Resort” is engaged, Scottish Ministers have no power or authority to operate railway services themselves via a government owned company. The Operator of Last Resort duty arises only where a franchise agreement in respect of railway passenger services is terminated or otherwise comes to an end and no further franchise agreement has been entered into in respect of those services.

Under current legislation, an existing public sector body could bid to run rail services in Scotland in any future competition. However, this would be a matter for that body to decide and also to meet the costs of entering a bid which could be in the region of £10 million.

The EMAs covering the period September 2020 to January 2021, will only pay management fees which will be based on levels of performance achieved by the operators and are capped at a maximum of 1.5%.

The Scottish Government has already provided around £250 million of additional financial support which has allowed Abellio ScotRail and Serco Caledonian Sleeper to maintain full employment for their staff despite the significant drop in passenger revenue during the pandemic, and substantial additional sums will be required in future.

The UK Government has not yet provided clarity about the future additional funding for the Scottish Government arising from UK transport spending. Any pay discussions between ScotRail and its staff will need to reflect the extremely challenging budgetary position and the ongoing budgetary uncertainty.

The EMAs which expired on 20 September included a small management fee to be paid at the end of the variation period and were capped at 2%.

Under the new EMAs the payment of any management fees to Abellio ScotRail or Serco Caledonian Sleeper will depend entirely upon achieving satisfactory performance metrics. These are the same metrics as those contained in the previous EMAs - customer experience, operational performance and efficiency of operations and will be capped at 1.5%.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-32023 on 2 October 2020. 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

The initial evidence considered was developed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and has now been published online. It looked at how testing and a shorter quarantine period would compare with other approaches to reducing the risk of people arriving from other countries with COVID-19 causing transmission. The paper uses modelling and is based on a number of significant assumptions. It found that a quarantine period of 8 days on arrival with a PCR test on day 7 (assuming the test result 1 day after the test is taken) could reduce the number of infectious arrivals in the community by an average of 94%, compared to having no quarantine and no testing. By contrast, a 14-day quarantine period (our current approach for high risk countries) would reduce the number of infectious arrivals in the community by an average of 99%.

The Scottish Government has consistently stated that it will prioritise minimising potential health risks but is open to alternative approaches such as utilising testing returning air travellers. To that end we are working with representatives from Scottish airports to explore whether testing offers a viable alternative to a 14 day quarantine period.

As yet, no detailed advice has been given to ministers and no decisions have been taken.

The Scottish Government is committed to transparency and we will always publish material whenever possible.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-32023 on 2 October 2020. 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

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-31897 on 2 October 2020. 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

We appreciate how difficult it has been for people who have had procedures or treatments postponed due to the pandemic. Putting the NHS on an emergency footing has meant the focus has initially been on urgent and essential care including for acute and persistent pain.

Health Boards are continuing to remobilise services in line with the ‘Remobilise, Recover and Re-design Framework’ which we published on 31 May. We remain committed to ensuring that the full range of pain services will be available as quickly as it safe to do so. To support this on 24 September we published the COVID-19 Recovery Framework for NHS Pain Management Services, which was developed in conjunction with a wide range of stakeholders across the clinical community, third sector and patient groups.

In addition to this the Programme for Government 2020/21 commits to developing and improving the current Scottish Model for Chronic Pain, and to publish a new Framework for Chronic Pain Service Delivery in 2021.

This work will also take forward a number of the recommendations of the Scottish Access Collaborative report on chronic pain. As recognised in the report, in order to drive improvement there is a need to record meaningful patient data for chronic pain to better understand the nature and severity of their condition and related health, and to monitor changes in these following treatment.

It is intended that this work will lead to less variation in the quality and availability of services for people with chronic pain, support the sharing of best practice and ultimately contribute to more prompt access to specialist support and services to improve people’s health and wellbeing.