Chamber and committees

Non-disclosure agreements (NDA) are used for a variety of purposes and may be included in a number of different contractual and settlement arrangements. The Scottish Government has no plans to review the use of NDAs at this time. In an employment context, the UK Government consulted on measures to prevent the misuse of NDAs in situations of workplace harassment or discrimination in 2019 and further information can be found here . Responsibility for employment law is a reserved matter.

Asylum and immigration are reserved to the UK Parliament and handled by the Home Office. This includes decisions relating to leave to enter and remain in the UK. The Scottish Government has no control of these processes.

However, the Scottish Government is clear that all forms of gender based violence are completely unacceptable. We are committed to eradicating it within Scotland. We work to protect all women who flee abusive partners within Scotland and those who come here seeking refuge can expect the same level of protection that we provide to all women.

Police Scotland is committed to working with local authorities and partners to support the individuals and families who are fleeing the atrocities caused by the conflict in Ukraine. Where a report of domestic abuse is made, it will be taken seriously, victims will be listened to and it will be thoroughly investigated. This is a developing situation that requires a flexible approach, with examples of ongoing engagement including the:

• Creation and circulation of a Scots Law booklet translated to the Ukrainian language to advise on how, why and when to call the Police;
• Review of translation provisions to ensure we have Ukrainian language coverage;
• Participation in key strategic groups to ensure delivery of a coordinated response;
• Engagement with the Scottish Refugee Council to understand specific needs of displaced Ukrainians.

Within the first 100 days of this government we provided £5 million to rape crisis centres and domestic abuse services to help them cut waiting times, on top of £5.75 million we allocated in 2020-21 to help redesign frontline services. In addition, our Delivering Equally Safe (DES) Fund is providing £38 million over the next two years to organisations helping to prevent abuse and to aid recovery where it does happen. This includes funding to front line services across Scotland who provide a range of counselling, outreach and peer support to women and children experiencing domestic abuse.

A project to deliver an essential upgrade of the Parliament’s security system was completed in 2019. Part of that project involved the upgrade of the Parliament’s CCTV system.

The specification required that all components, including CCTV cameras, successfully passed a security evaluation prior to installation.  Careful consideration was also given to information handling and storage of CCTV images.

The SPCB can confirm that the Hikvision brand of CCTV camera has never been used at Holyrood.  They were not used prior to 2019 and are not a component part of the current system.

NHS Lothian is currently developing plans for The Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion replacement project which is one ten new National Treatment Centres that form part of the National Treatment Centres (NTC) Programme.

NHS Lothian reports that progress of Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion replacement project continues at pace. Recent progress includes the successful appointment of the senior project team and work to complete the exemplar building design.

The NTC Programme, which is supported by a significant investment of over £400 million investment, will create the biggest single increase in ring-fenced elective care capacity in NHS Scotland.

The new Health and Social Care Standards came into effect in April 2018. These replaced the National Care Standards and are applied to a diverse range of services, including early learning and childcare and services for children and young people. The Health and Social Care Standards were updated on 31 March 2022, following a public consultation, to include two new standards on visiting rights for care homes for adults.

The Scottish Government has had several discussions with lead breast clinicians. The most recent was on 18th March at a meeting with the group leading on quality performance indicators for breast cancer. The group has indicated an interest in improving data on breast cancer recurrence and metastatic disease.

The Scottish Government met with the charity Breast Cancer Now on 3rd November 2021 and requested updated evidence of need for improved data. This was received on 26th January 2022 followed by email exchanges over the recent months.

The Scottish Government has been discussing the need for better data on metastatic breast cancer over several months including seeking advice from Public Health Scotland and breast cancer specialists. Additionally, officials have met with the Third Sector to discuss evidence of need. Dialogue continues as we seek to improve data collection methods.

From November 2020 to October 2021 a total of 551 delegate places of clinical skills training for pharmacists were delivered. 126 delegate places of clinical skills training for pharmacists were delivered from November 2021 to end of December 2021 and a further 316 delegate places of clinical skills training for pharmacists were delivered between January and March 2022.

These clinical skills training days are delivered by NHS National Education for Scotland (NES) as part of the Pharmacist Clinical Skills training contract. NES organise and run courses to support pharmacist prescribers and those in training to develop appropriate clinical skills, at both core and advanced levels.

In 2021-2022 NES have also to date commissioned a total of 244 Independent Prescriber training places (116 for Community/78 for Primary Care/50 for Hospital).

The updated Climate Change Plan (CCPu) introduced a chapter on Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs), and accompanied this with a commitment to review progress for developing NETs. Policies in this chapter place a focus on developing the evidence base for NETs to be deployed at the end of the decade, and assessing the feasibility of various technologies.

We are making progress on developing our evidence base. As we made clear to the committee in our response in March 2021, should a need arise for a ‘Plan B’, there is flexibility to adjust sector pathways and reassign any abatement to other sectors.

We will continue to review our progress and evidence as we work towards the next full Climate Change Plan, a draft of which we will make available to Parliament by November 2023 at the latest.

Vaccination policy in Scotland, is based on recommendations from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

Following the Committee’s recommendation, from August 2019 the HPV immunisation programme in Scotland was extended to adolescent boys entering their first year of secondary school (S1).

The JCVI has not recommended a catch up for older boys as evidence suggests they are already benefitting from the indirect protection built up in the population over 10 years of the girls’ HPV vaccination programme.

From 2016 HPV vaccine has been available to men who have sex with men (MSM) up to and including 45 years of age who attend sexual health or HIV clinics. The HPV MSM programme is opportunistic and offers direct protection.

The JCVI keeps its recommendations under review and if the advice on HPV vaccination was to change we would of course give this due consideration.