Our Programme for Government 2019-2020 commits to establishing a Women’s Health Plan to reduce inequalities in health outcomes that affect women, including reducing inequalities relating to cardiac disease. In order to inform and develop the Plan, key stakeholders have been invited to join a Women’s Health Group which will be chaired by the Chief Medical Officer. The first meeting is due to take place in February 2020.

We continue to implement our heart disease improvement plan, which sets out the priorities and actions that we will take to deliver improved prevention, treatment and care for all patients.

This information is not held centrally. The member may wish to contact each individual Health Board to obtain this information.

Each NHS Board in Scotland has an executive responsibility to ensure safe and effective testing is carried out within its laboratories.

NHS virology laboratories carry out rigorous evaluations prior to the introduction of all the tests to ensure they are both sensitive and specific. Every test is performed using suitable controls to ensure it is performing as expected. In the case of serious infections such as HIV all reactive tests are further subjected to confirmation using additional tests. This is guided by nationally (UK) agreed processes.

All tests are subject to external quality assessment where results obtained from panels of specimens are compared to other laboratories across the UK and beyond which may use the same or a different manufacturer’s test. For further information see https://ukneqas.org.uk .

The whole quality process is overseen by the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS) using an accreditation process to the standard of ISO 15189, a standard which is currently met by all Scottish virology laboratories. Further information on the accreditation and a list of accredited organisations can be found on https://www.ukas.com .

The following table provides numbers of endoscopy procedures reported from inpatient, day case or outpatient settings from 2007 to 2018.

The Scottish Government, along with the rest of the UK, is advised on all aspects of screening by the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent expert advisory group who assesses screening programmes against a robust set of criteria, and based on evidence, the UK NSC recommend routine breast screening for women aged between 50 and 70. If a woman has symptoms which could be suspicious of cancer, she should raise this with her General Practitioner as soon as possible, regardless of her age.

We know that screening remains the best way to detect cancer early and help reduce health inequalities in cancer outcomes. Breast screening is a vital public service and plays an important role in detecting cancer at an early stage.

The Lord Advocate has agreed in principle - subject to approval of the detailed arrangements - to a Police Scotland proposal to introduce speed awareness courses, where appropriate, as an alternative to prosecution.

A working group comprising Police Scotland, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Safety Camera Programme are working together to devise the infrastructure and guidance required for the introduction of speed awareness courses along with identification of potential course providers. The scope of the required work means that it is not possible to provide a specific timescale for any final decision on speed awareness courses and their implementation.

As part of the process of planning the Nursing and Midwifery workforce, each year Ministers recommend the numbers of commissioned places for all fields of pre-registration nursing and midwifery education and training based on the work of the Student Intake Group.

The Student Intake Group, which includes stakeholder representation from Trades Unions, NHS Boards, Third Sector and Independent Healthcare providers, Higher Education Institutions and NHS Education for Scotland, develops an analysis of demand arising from projected numbers of leavers, joiners and newly qualified nurses. The analysis draws on ISD and Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) Workforce Data alongside Professional Judgement Templates submitted by the sectors represented on the Stakeholder Group. This analysis is undertaken for each field of nursing, including Mental Health, and for midwifery by individual years across a 10 year timeframe covering short, medium and long term.

Ministers have recommended a 5% increase to the nursing and midwifery student intake in academic year 2020-21, which delivers 4,206 total places of which 632 are Mental Health nursing places.

We anticipate that the new guidance on physical intervention and seclusion in schools will be published in January 2021. The Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and the Equality and Human Rights Commissioner reached agreement with the Scottish Government on the membership of the working group, which will meet for the first time in January 2020. There will be a full public consultation on the new guidance prior to publication.

The new guidance will be clear that physical intervention and seclusion should only ever be a last resort, and never used for disciplinary purposes. The guidance will sit within a ‘suite’ of documents in the ‘Included, Engaged and Involved’ series, that places at its core positive relationships and behaviour, early intervention, minimilisation of the use of physical intervention and seclusion, and de-escalation techniques. We are committed to taking an explicitly human-rights based approach to the new national guidance, in which everyone can have confidence.

The information requested on how many agency midwives there are broken down by board is not centrally held by ISD or NES.

The following table provides the financial allocation by Local Authority in 2019/20 for the extension of Free Personal Care to under 65s.