Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to finding cancer early, when the chance of survival and even cure is higher. NHS Dumfries & Galloway established Scotland’s first Early Cancer Diagnostic Centre in May 2021. The Centre provides primary care with a new referral route for patients with non-specific symptoms suspicious of cancer, such as weight loss, fatigue and nausea – this is often how blood cancers present.

In addition, we continue to invest in our £44m Detect Cancer Early Programme which adopts a whole-system approach to diagnosing and treating cancer as early as possible across Scotland. The NHS Recovery Plan, published August 2021, commits an additional £20m for the Programme.

There are no current SIGN guidelines for myeloma.

The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network’s (SIGN) list of current guidelines, guidelines under development and archived guidelines that have been, or are being developed or updated by SIGN is available at www.sign.ac.uk.

Where there is no SIGN guideline in place, NHS Boards and Integration Authorities may choose to consider other relevant guidelines such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines in the planning and delivery of services.

As part of the national conversation about our National Parks, we are considering the roles and functions National Park Authorities should have to help them continue delivering the aims set out in the 2000 Act, but also to play a key role in addressing the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. We will consider consultation responses carefully, including any which propose changes to primary legislation.

Part of the current national conversation about our National Parks is aimed at developing an Evaluation Framework to identify the next areas to be progressed to National Park status. The Scottish Government and NatureScot will shortly be announcing the second phase of this consultation, at which time further details of the process will be published.

The information requested is not yet publically available.

Scotland’s first three Early Cancer Diagnostic Centres (ECDC) are pilots to help inform wider roll-out of an optimal model for patients with non-specific symptoms suspicious of cancer.

All three Centres are using a nationally agreed minimum data-set, capturing patient identifiable data locally. A sub-section of this data will be published by the three Boards later this Summer to mark one-year since the early adopter sites were established.

Meanwhile, work is underway with Public Health Scotland to scope and progress the national data collection of ECDCs as more sites are expected to come on-stream.

We agree that everyone should have fair and equitable access to high quality care. It remains an unwelcome reality that communities experience health, quality of life and even life expectancy differently across our society.

The Scottish Government is supporting rural, remote and island communities to address the unique health and social care challenges they face, ensuring that patients receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time. NHS Education for Scotland (NES) has been commissioned to write a business plan detailing how the Health Board will create and host the National Centre of excellence for rural and remote health and social care, which is due to be operational by spring 2023. The National Centre will coordinate, facilitate, fund and promote excellence under the following Four Pillars: ‘Recruitment and Retention’, ‘Ideal Practice and Evaluation’, ‘Training and Education’, and ‘Research and Innovation.’ This will ensure that the issues impacting remote and rural areas in Scotland are given the focused attention necessary to be addressed innovatively and effectively.

With regards to cancer services, our National Cancer Plan advocates a ‘Once for Scotland’ approach to cancer services and will help to ensure that access to care and treatment is equitable across Scotland. The Scottish HepatoPancreatoBiliary Network (SHPBN) is a key partner in improving cancer services to ensure equity of care for all patients living with liver cancer. Under the National Cancer Plan, the SHPBN has been awarded £653,000 over two financial years for the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and pancreatic cancer (PC) Patient Pathways Improvement Project to redesign the pancreatic and liver cancer pathways. The key aims of this project are to shorten the time taken to stage and decide the best treatment for patients, streamline patient pathways and improve communication with patients, carers, primary care & health professionals.

The Scottish HepatoPancreatoBiliary Network (SHPBN) is a key partner in improving cancer services and ensuring equitable access to treatment for liver cancer patients. Under the National Cancer Plan, the SHPBN has been awarded £653,000 over two financial years to redesign the pancreatic and liver cancer pathways. The key aims of this project are to shorten the time taken to stage and decide the best treatment for patients, streamline patient pathways and improve communication with patients, carers, primary care & health professionals.

Care for people towards the end of life has always been an important priority for the Scottish Government, and Scotland is already widely recognised for providing high-quality palliative and end of life care. There is always more we can do to improve our services and therefore we are committed to producing a new strategy for palliative and end of life care to achieve the very highest standards of care right up to the end of life, and ensure that everyone who needs it can access seamless, timely and high quality palliative care.

Scotland has the most comprehensive public charging network in the UK outside of London, with close to 3,000 public charge points. The Scottish Government has invested over £50 million to develop the ChargePlace Scotland network, with over a third of charge points installed in rural areas. Dumfries and Galloway Council has received £1.65 million to develop public electric vehicle charging.

In January we launched our vision for the future of Scotland’s electric vehicle charging network, and announced a new fund to enable £60 million of public and private investment in this network. We have also provided £2 million to local authorities to develop their charging strategies and expansion plans, with Dumfries and Galloway Council receiving £60,000.

The Transport Scotland, Scottish Transport Statistics 2020 reported 66 publicly available electric vehicle charge points in the Dumfries & Galloway Boundary Area. This figure has increased in 2021 to 80 publicly available charge points in the Dumfries & Galloway Boundary Area. The 2022 statistics will be released in January 2023.

We don’t routinely collect or analyse data on a constituency area basis, and there may be additional commercially financed and operated charge points that aren’t routinely captured in the Scottish Transport Statistics.

The Scottish Government has recently closed an initial consultation to start a national discussion about our National Parks. We will be working with NatureScot over the summer to engage further with the general public and stakeholders to help develop the evaluation framework that will be needed to determine which area or areas should be designated as National Parks. We will soon share further information about the process and timescales which will be followed to progress one or more areas to statutory designation.