Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-33600

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 28 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to use public deliberation methods, such as citizens' juries, to improve cancer services.

The Scottish Government continues to use a range of methods to ensure meaningful public input to our work, including focus groups and formal public consultation.

The Scottish Cancer Patient Experience Survey (SCPES) asks people about their experience of cancer care. The survey is jointly funded by the Scottish Government and Macmillan Cancer Support. The most recent findings of the survey were published in September 2024.

Care Opinion is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that gives people a platform to tell their own story about their experience of health and care services. We regularly look to this resource to understand experience of cancer services by all people affected by cancer accessing services across Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-33955

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 7 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the impact of the fixed fees system on the number of solicitors taking on legal aid cases.

Question reference: S6W-33976

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 7 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what progress has been made with its scheme, Percentage for the Arts.

Question reference: S6W-33603

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 24 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what funding is being provided to ensure that every cancer patient is able to access specialist psychological support throughout their treatment.

Scottish Government’s Psychological Therapies and Support Framework for People Affected by Cancer supports Health Boards in considering the services which should be available to those affected by cancer, including psychological support, at any point of throughout the cancer pathway.

In 2024-25 Scottish Government provided £123 million to Health Boards to deliver improvements to mental health services for people in Scotland, including the delivery of psychological therapies for those with cancer. It is the responsibility of Health Boards to deliver this and to locally commission as required.

Question reference: S6W-33601

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 24 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what recent steps it has taken to (a) increase the number of GPs nationwide and (b) improve access to face-to-face GP appointments.

(a) The Scottish Government remains fully committed to increasing the number of GPs by 800 by 2027.

In November 2024 we published a General Practitioner Recruitment and Retention Action Plan, available online at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/general-practitioner-recruitment-retention-action-plan-2024-2026/documents/

A key action in this plan is to retain newly qualified GPs in Scotland by expanding the current fellowship offer to support early career GPs on completion of their GP training. We have also commissioned NHS Education for Scotland to work with the profession to redesign the current GP Retainer Scheme to make it more flexible to support GPs at times in their career when it is needed. We have created 70 additional GP Speciality Training posts since 2022, with a further 30 to be added in 2025.

(b) The Scottish Government discusses access to general practice with the representatives of the profession. It is important that patients see the right person at the right place at the right time to treat their condition, this may not always need to be a GP. However, where clinically necessary, the option to have a face to face consultation should always be available.

Question reference: S6O-04279

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 January 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 30 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it is working to improve access to support for pupils with additional support needs, including access to speech and language therapists.

Question reference: S6W-33599

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 22 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to improve NHS Scotland’s data and information-sharing infrastructure.

COSLA and the Scottish Government published Scotland’s first Data Strategy for Health and Social Care in February 2023. The Strategy outlines a number of key developments for improving technology and infrastructure to improve the care and wellbeing of people in Scotland by making best use of data in the design and delivery of services

The specific actions being taken can be read in the Strategy: https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/strategy-plan/2023/02/data-strategy-health-social-care-2/documents/greater-access-better-insight-improved-outcomes-strategy-data-driven-care-digital-age/greater-access-better-insight-improved-outcomes-strategy-data-driven-care-digital-age/govscot%3Adocument/greater-access-better-insight-improved-outcomes-strategy-data-driven-care-digital-age.pdf.

You may also be interested to read about our progress in the 2024 update on our progress and priorities: https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/progress-report/2024/04/data-strategy-health-social-care-2024-update-progress-priorities/documents/data-strategy-health-social-care-2024-update-progress-priorities/data-strategy-health-social-care-2024-update-progress-priorities/govscot%3Adocument/data-strategy-health-social-care-2024-update-progress-priorities.pdf

Question reference: S6O-04239

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 January 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 23 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding any implications for its provision of funding for humanitarian aid in Gaza, whether it will provide an update on what discussions it has had with the UK Government regarding recent developments in Gaza.

Question reference: S6W-32712

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 20 December 2024
Current Status: Answered by Siobhian Brown on 15 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what progress it has made towards implementing the recommendations made by the Cross-Party Group on Tackling Islamophobia in its report, Scotland’s Islamophobia - Update 2023.

Tackling religious or race-based intolerance, including Islamophobia, is a priority for the Scottish Government. The Cross-Party Group’s report, Scotland’s Islamophobia - Update 2023, attributes three recommendations to the Scottish Government:

1. Integrate an understanding of Islamophobia into compulsory components of the Scottish education curricula and all teacher training education.

Curriculum for Excellence purposefully does not mandate curriculum content. However, this recommendation and the wider report will be considered in the context of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle. The Cycle commenced in early 2024 and involves the review and update of each curricular area within Scotland’s curriculum.

In terms of teacher training, teachers in Scotland are required to meet the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s Standard for Full Registration, found at: Document > The Standard for Full Registration- a commitment to the professional values of social justice, trust and respect and integrity is at the heart of this. The Standard recognises that our increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world faces many social challenges, and an effective, responsive and inclusive education system is vital if we are to address these. The Standard also explicitly states that social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities now and in the future.

2. The Scottish Government should ensure that the Public Sector Equality Duty is enforced in schools and provide additional training so that this can be better implemented and enforced.

Enforcement of the Public Sector Equality Duty is the responsibility of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), not the Scottish Government. The EHRC rightly operates independently. The Scottish Government does however encourage all organisations to appropriately implement the Public Sector Equality Duty. The guiding principles of our Learning Estate Strategy, which was co-produced with COSLA and other partners, also makes clear that learning environments should support the wellbeing of all learners.

3. The Scottish Government should fund and support organisations and initiatives that support social cohesion and integration, particularly for Muslim women.

The Scottish Government is committed to building resilient communities within which divisive narratives will not resonate. We work cooperatively with a wide range of organisations throughout the country to support social cohesion and integration, tackle hatred and promote inclusion. Turning specifically to Muslim women, the Scottish Government has provided over £150,000 in the current financial year to Amina, The Muslim Women’s Resource Centre to deliver a range of ambitions which address a number of issues including: violence against women and girls; children, young people and families’ intervention; adult learning and empowering communities.

Question reference: S6W-32708

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 20 December 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 15 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it is working to tackle any inequalities in HPV (a) vaccination and (b) screening coverage rates.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of HPV vaccination and screening.

The latest published HPV vaccination uptake data from Public Health Scotland (PHS) shows that pupils living in the most deprived quintiles had lower coverage of the HPV vaccine compared with pupils from the least deprived quintiles. We are working with PHS and territorial Health Boards to consider what further actions can be taken to increase vaccination uptake, support those eligible for vaccination, and to address any inequalities in accessing immunisation services. Reducing vaccine inequalities is one of the three primary objectives in PHS’s recently published Scotland's 5-Year Vaccination and Immunisation Framework and Delivery Plan.

Completion of consent forms is required to participate in school vaccination programmes. We therefore welcome the return of the PHS marketing campaign, “chat.sign.protect”, which will build on the messages of last year’s campaign to raise awareness of vaccines offered in secondary school and encourage an increase in the numbers of parents and young people giving consent to be vaccinated.

Timed to coincide with the distribution of informed consent materials to young people, the campaign aims to increase understanding of why these vaccines are important, and the seriousness of the diseases they protect against, and encourages parents and carers to take action and sign consent forms to ensure our young people receive the protection offered by immunisation.

Addressing the inequalities in HPV uptake and maximising the opportunities for young people to receive the vaccine will be a primary focus of cervical cancer elimination work.

The Equity in Screening Strategy, combined with an action plan, was published on 27 July 2023. The vision of the strategy is for access for all eligible individuals, across the full screening pathway. The Strategy launched alongside the Equity in Screening Network which supports the strategy by capturing local and third sector research activity and allows individuals that work across screening to share evidence, best practice and learning around screening inequalities.

Several national projects are being supported by the Inequalities Fund of £1 million. This includes changes to national IT systems to improve engagement with participants. Research and learning from past projects has shown some ways to increase access to screening and uptake, including appointment reminders and targeted follow-up with non-responders.

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