Chamber and committees

According to the Office of Road & Rail (ORR), 257,518 passengers used the Prestonpans station in the 2016-17 year.

There are no plans to close Prestonpans railway station. East Lothian Council are considering multi-modal infrastructure interventions to facilitate housing developments and enhance connectivity at Prestonpans and the surrounding area.

Transport Scotland instructed Network Rail in July 2017 to develop options to enhance line capacity as part of development work being undertaken on the East Coast Main Line. This study will determine the most efficient solutions for enhancing service capacity whilst considering the available forecast growth information. Options being considered at present include the potential for four-tracking between Prestonpans and Drem and the potential for a new station at Blindwells.

1,052 in September 2016 to 1,055 in September 2017.

The Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland published on 12 December 2017 shows that there are 543 more full-time equivalent teachers than last year, increasing from 50,970 in 2016 to 51,513 in 2017. This is the second year in a row that we have seen teacher numbers increase

The distinct representation of males in our recruitment campaign seeks to encourage men with the right skills and aptitudes into the sector, while addressing some of the wider societal perceptions and perceived barriers men face.

We continue to work with a range of partners on initiatives to attract men in to childcare roles. We are seeing a number of successful examples of this:

Perth and Kinross Council recently won an award for a project involving a free bespoke night class, specifically for men, which provided an introduction to working with children in a professional capacity.

And Glasgow City Council have developed a career pathway for males called “Approved by Dads” where men are recruited in to training via nurseries.

The Scottish Government is working closely with health Boards across Scotland to support delivery of a range of key performance targets.

We have invested more than £50 million this year (2017-18) to improve all parts of the patient pathway - outpatient consultation, diagnostic tests and inpatient and day case treatment. We are working closely with the health Boards on a regular basis to ensure this funding supports the reduction of waiting times.

We launched the Access Collaborative Programme towards the end of last year (2017), This programme will reduce planned waiting times by improving communications between staff working in the community and in hospitals to identify the right clinician and treatment, and streamline patient care to minimise unnecessary processes in the system.

Additionally, we are investing £200 million in a network of five new elective and diagnostic treatment centres in Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee, Livingston and Edinburgh, and expanding the Golden Jubilee. This is part of a record investment and reform, working to shift the balance of care away from hospitals and into community settings. These changes will not happen overnight, but are part of a clear, long-term strategy of matching increased investment in our NHS with reform to ensure our health service is providing care to the people of Scotland long into the future.

Cancer testing remains a key priority for Boards. Again, towards the end of last year, we launched a new, easier bowel screening test which we hope will increase the number of people accessing home testing and reduce the number of unnecessary colonoscopies being carried out in hospital. An additional £1m funding is also being deployed through the National Radiology Redesign Programme to roll-out new radiology reporting technology. This will allow consultants to report on diagnostic scans taken anywhere in the country – helping address short-falls in capacity in some areas.

We have invested record levels of additional funding this year of £22.4 million to support unscheduled care and winter pressures. This will support health boards to meet A&E waiting times. In fact, the latest published monthly figures for November 2017 shows 93.3% of patients were seen, treated and discharged or admitted with four hours. Scotland’s core A&E departments continue to be the best performing in UK for more than two and a half years.

This is just a few examples of what we are doing across Scotland to support the reduction of waiting times for patients across the system. We will continue to work closely with Boards to support delivery of all targets.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-13214 on 18 January 2018. 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 Scottish Government’s 2018-19 Draft Budget sets out details of a 3.7% uplift in funding for frontline NHS Boards, comprising budget increases of £179m and a share of £175m additional funding for reform. In the Draft Budget, the Scottish Government has set a pay policy of a 3% increase for those on less than £30,000 and 2% above that, however for the NHS we will also respect the views of independent pay review bodies and look to ensure that our health service staff are treated at least as fairly as those in any of the UK nations. The UK government has said that funding will be provided in England to meet the recommendations of the pay review bodies for NHS Agenda for Change staff, and as always any Barnett consequentials from NHS spending in England will be passed to the NHS in Scotland.

We have recently announced our commitment to increase the number of GPs by at least 800 over ten years, to ensure a sustainable service that meets increasing demand on our services. Our strategy to recruit and retain our existing GPs will be set out in part 3 of the national health and social care workforce plan to be published early next year. Investment in the GP Recruitment and Retention Fund has increased five-fold this year, to £5m, and will increase again to £7.5m in 2018-19.

As announced in the Draft Budget on 14 December, the Health and Sport resource budget will increase by over £400 million to £13.1 billion in 2018-19. We have prioritised investment in frontline services, and total additional funding for our frontline NHS Boards will amount to £354 million. These increases have only been made possible, without impacting on other public services, through the progressive tax policies set out in the Draft Budget.

Our estimate is that Conservative tax policies would have resulted in a reduction in the Scottish Government’s resource budget of £501 million in 2018-19.

Through the Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime (PAW) Scotland, the Scottish Government works closely with law enforcement bodies, land managers and conservation groups to raise awareness of hare coursing, encourage incident reporting and improve detection and prosecution.

Police Scotland’s Lothians and Scottish Borders Division has a dedicated full-time wildlife crime liaison officer and there have been several well publicised, successful, prosecutions for hare coursing in the region in recent years. The penalties handed to those convicted included fines, community payback orders and orders banning them from keeping dogs in Scotland.

The Scottish Government’s Wildlife DNA Forensics Unit at Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) analyses DNA recovered from animal victims and also from dogs belonging to the perpetrators of wildlife crime. The unit’s work has played a key role in progressing several hare coursing cases towards successful prosecution, including a 2012 case in the Lothian and Borders region.

Police Scotland is undertaking analytical work in 2018 in conjunction with the UK National Wildlife Crime Unit to assist in targeting the individuals and vehicles involved in this type of crime. Several arrests have already been made in East Lothian and the Scottish Borders in January 2018, in connection with suspected hare coursing.