Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has published a draft Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill today. The Bill is accompanied by Explanatory Notes and draft Impact Assessments, including a draft Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA).

A full consultation on the Bill has also opened today. The consultation can be accessed and responses submitted online at https://consult.gov.scot/family-law/gender-recognition-reform-scotland-bill . The consultation has a closing date of 17 March 2020.

By consulting on a draft Bill, the Scottish Government is providing details of our rationale for reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and what we propose in this area.

It has been possible for a trans person to obtain legal gender recognition for almost 15 years. However, the current system for obtaining legal gender recognition is widely seen as demeaning and intrusive. Therefore, our proposals are to reform that process and to reform the 2004 Act.

The consultation reaffirms that we do not propose any changes to the Equality Act 2010. The Scottish Government is committed to exceptions in the 2010 Act which allow trans people to be excluded in certain circumstances when this is a proportionate way of achieving a legitimate aim. We also remain committed to equality for women and girls and safety for women and girls. We do not believe that the proposed reforms to the process of obtaining a gender recognition certificate will have an adverse impact on women’s rights.

Under our proposals, applicants for legal gender recognition:

• Will no longer need to provide medical evidence to the Gender Recognition Panel, a UK tribunal.
• Will instead apply to the Registrar General for Scotland.
• Will continue to provide a statutory declaration that they intend to live permanently as a man or a woman.
• Will need to state in the statutory declaration that they have already been living as a man or woman for at least three months.
• Will go through a reflection period of at least 3 months after an application has been made. The gender recognition certificate will only be granted once the 3 months have passed and the applicant has confirmed that they still wish to proceed.

It is, and will remain, a criminal offence to make a false statutory declaration and it will be a new offence to make a false application.

The consultation also proposes the minimum age of applicants for legal gender recognition should be reduced from 18 to 16. This is in line with when young people in Scotland gain a number of rights, such as the right to vote in Scottish elections and the right to marry or enter a civil partnership. The Bill does not propose that legal gender recognition should be extended to those under 16. We will seek views separately on what support should be available to those under 16 who are uncertain about their gender identity.

My statement of 20 June 2019 also outlined action in a number of other areas, apart from the publication of a Bill.

We have established a working group to make recommendations on the collection and disaggregation of data in relation to sex and gender. Information on this working group can be found at https://www.gov.scot/groups/sex-and-gender-in-data-working-group/ .The Chief Statistician has committed to report to Minsters with a finalised set of guidance in late Spring 2020.

We are developing guidance for the Scottish Government and the wider public sector on trans rights and the rights of women, which we plan to publish by summer 2020. We are also establishing a working group to consider steps to improve the lives of non-binary people which will meet for the first time in early 2020.

We committed to provide guidance for schools to help them to support transgender pupils. This work continues and the guidance will be published in the New Year.

The information requested is available at: https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/General-Practice/Publications/2019-12-03/2019-12-03-GPWorkforce2019-Report.pdf .

I refer the Member to the answer to question S5W-26483 on 6 December 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

I can confirm that Scotland's first National Action Plan on Neurological Conditions will be published before the end of the year as announced when I published the draft Plan on 13 November 2018.

The Scottish Government is not aware of data that suggests doctors are retiring before reaching the state pension age due to overwork.

However we know that Annual and Lifetime Allowances, and particularly the Annual Allowance taper, are a serious issue for affected NHS senior clinicians and are impacting on service delivery across NHS Scotland. From 1 December 2019, an interim policy will give eligible NHS staff who opt out of the pensions scheme the option to get their employer pension contributions paid to them as part of their basic pay. This new temporary policy will provide eligible staff with an alternative option to restricting their hours in order to reduce financial penalties and will ensure crucial services are maintained as demand on the health service continues to increase. It will run until the end of the current financial year 31 March 2020.

We welcome the UK Government's commitment to review the operation of the tapered Annual Allowance across the public service, and urge HM Treasury to proceed urgently on this review.

We are aware of the pressures that doctors face with an increase in demand on health and social care, and the impact this can have on those delivering frontline services.

The new GP contract will ensure GPs can spend more time with patients and less time on bureaucracy. It will help cut doctors’ workload and make general practice an even more attractive career choice for young doctors.

The Scottish Government's priority is the wider development of the multi-disciplinary team to free up GPs' workload. This is being carried out over a 3 year transitional period from 2018-21.

Our commitment is to increasing the number of GPs by at least 800 over ten years to ensure a sustainable service that meets increasing demand on our services.

The Scottish Government advocates the use of the Scottish Therapeutics Utility to assist clinicians with identification of possibly non-adherent patients in order to prioritise them for a medication review. At review, clinicians are strongly advised to discuss medication options with patients as part of an honest and holistic conversation, and talking about medication adherence is an important element of this.

We will shortly be publishing Scotland’s first National Action Plan on Neurological Conditions; through this we will work with others to make information on neurological conditions more readily available and improve access to resources that promote self-management.

Each institution is allocated a number of full time equivalent funded placements and it is for the universities themselves to decide; how to distribute the places between faculties, the courses they offer, how many of the total funded places they make available and the admissions criteria for each course. This includes the credits attributed to both Scottish and UK wide qualifications.

The University of Strathclyde have outlined their entry requirements for the engineering faculty within their 2020-21 prospectus. As an autonomous institution, this is a matter for the University of Strathclyde to answer directly.

Scottish universities have sole responsibility over the courses they make available and the admissions process and criteria applied to them. However, the latest UCAS statistics which show the overall UK Higher Education Institutions application and acceptance rates and placed applicant numbers for general engineering in 2018 were;

Survival data from ISD (2007-2011) show the 5 year survival for Oral Cavity cancers is 57.2%.

To ensure progress is made the Scottish Government launched £42 million Detect Cancer Early Programme demonstrating commitment to early detection. The ‘Survivors’ campaign was on air in September which aims to reduce fear of cancer, which we know remains a key barrier to people presenting early and encourage those with any unusual or persistent changes to their body to visit their GP practice.

To support earliest referral the Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer were clinically reviewed and published on 22 January 2019. Specifically to support dissemination and use of the guidelines education events have taken place across NHS Scotland and officials are in discussion with NHS National Education Scotland to develop further online learning resources to ensure that the guidelines are being utilised consistently.

We also published the Oral Health Improvement Plan in January 2018, an ambitious programme of work, which sets the direction of travel for NHS dentistry for the next generation of patients. The focus of the Plan is to introduce a more preventive-based system of oral health care, including an Oral Health Assessment (OHA) for adult patients. Patients will receive tailored advice on how to manage and look after their oral health, including lifestyle factors such as drinking and smoking, which are clear risk factors associated with oral cancer.

The Oral Health Improvement Plan identified a range of actions, some of which have been completed. The current programme of work comprises two key highlights.

The introduction of new arrangements for dentists to provide enhanced domiciliary care in care homes. A second cohort of dentists are currently in training and the intention is for further cohorts to be rolled out next calendar year.

We have also launched an Oral Health Community Challenge Fund for Third Sector organisations to work with families living in areas of multiple deprivation to design and lead oral health improvement initiatives. The Fund comprises 22 projects throughout Scotland running from 1 July 2019 to 31 March 2022.