(a) The Scottish Government is committed to providing high quality eye care throughout Scotland. The eye examination, introduced in 2006, is free to all UK residents and assesses not only whether or not a patient requires glasses/contact lenses, but provides a full eye health assessment which can help identify treatable eye conditions at an early stage in their development. An Optometrist will screen patients for conditions such as Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy and refer those with the disease to the hospital eye service for lifelong treatment.

(b) The Scottish Government introduced its long-term strategy for meeting the needs of people with deafness and/or sight loss, See Hear, in April 2014. The Strategy was backed by £2 million of Scottish Government funding over 2014-15 and 2015-16, which was allocated equitably across the country to support implementation, with a further £320,000 in 2016-17 to continue to support the delivery.

To further develop eyecare services in Scotland, in August 2016 I announced a Review of community eyecare services. This is in the context of developments we are making to primary care and will look at what more can be done to ensure that patients can receive more treatment in a community setting where appropriate, improving patient outcomes and removing some of the burden from secondary care.

The Scottish Government expects food law enforcement bodies to protect consumers, support responsible businesses and take enforcement action where that is necessary.

I have been advised by Food Standards Scotland (FSS) that they do not use Which?’s approach to rank local authorities as it does not consider the nature or variety of formal enforcement actions taken by local authorities, the individual local authority enforcement policy, nor the very varied food business profile within local authority areas.

FSS independently audits local authorities to assess the capability and capacity of environmental health services. Reports from these audits provide valuable feedback on the service and contain advice on areas where improvement is necessary or recommended in order for local authorities to properly fulfil their obligations under Scotland’s Food Law Code of Practice. Good practice is also shared with local authorities through Scotland’s Food Enforcement Liaison Committee.

The information requested is published as part of the Pupil Census Supplementary Data each year. These publications are available from: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/dspupcensus

A price cap is in place through the national framework contract. On 5 May 2017 a new medical framework will be in place which means that the majority of locums supplied to NHSScotland will receive NHS rates of pay. This is ultimately better value for money than hiring staff from non-framework agencies.

Locally, boards should reduce expenditure on agency staff by improvements to governance arrangements, and by developing Regional Medical Banks to ensure access to internal staff before approaching an agency

(a) NHS boards are responsible for the design, delivery and management of services to their population. The support they provide will differ depending on their population’s needs.

(b) Decisions concerning the diagnosis, care and treatment of patients are individual. They involve professional judgement of the patient’s clinician, together with meaningful conversations with the patient that allows them to share decisions relating to their care and is based on understandable evidence about effect. The use of idebenone (Raxone®) to manage Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON) is highly specialist for a very specific condition, and this medicine is licensed only for use in this way.

The Scottish Government is clear that patient safety is a priority, therefore all medicines must be fully tested and researched before they can be licensed and made available on the NHS and this is the same for idenenone (Raxone®). This is in line with the license granted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for the use of idenenone (Raxone®) under exceptional circumstances for the treatment of LHON.

NHS Lothian’s performance of 83.8% is below what we would expect and while the median wait for treatment was 44 days we must continue to do more to ensure timely access to diagnostics and treatment for those patients who did not receive their treatment within 62 days.

Challenges remain to the 62-day cancer access pathway with known capacity pressures in NHS Lothian particularly for the colorectal and urological cancer pathways. The Scottish Government continues to support improved performance across NHS Scotland and are actively engaging NHS Boards where there are challenges to sustained delivery against the 62-day standard. This is backed by additional funding of £698k to NHS Lothian in 2016-17. NHS Boards are working through improvement plans with a clear focus to improve performance by the end of March 2017.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-01881 on 7 September 2016. 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 most recent waiting times data published by NHS Information Services Division on 14 March 2017, showed that the percentage of patients receiving treatment at a pain clinic within 18 weeks has risen from 60.4% to 64.5%. This information can be accessed at the following link: http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Chronic-Pain/.

It is the role of Scottish Government to to provide policies, frameworks and resources to NHS Boards to support them to deliver services that meet the needs of their local populations. Within this context, the actual provision of healthcare services is the responsibility of local Boards, taking into account national guidance, local service needs and priorities for investment.

We continue to support NHS Boards to ensure patients have access to the care they need via, for example, the work of the Ministerial Steering Group and the planned National Advisory Committee on Chronic Pain whose remit will include guiding the improvement of chronic pain management at all levels of health and social care and to advise the Scottish Government on such chronic pain work and outcomes, to inform effective policy development.

The planned National Advisory Committee on Chronic pain will be expected to guide the improvement of chronic pain management at all levels across health and social care. The Committee will, for example, work on the development of a dataset to allow for effective oversight of chronic pain services, including the potential development of Quality Performance Indicators.

The Scottish Government does not agree with the interpretation of waiting times data, as reported in The Herald on 6 March 2017. Accurate waiting times data is published by NHS Information Services Division and can be accessed on their website: http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Chronic-Pain/. The Associate Director (Data Management & Strategic Development) / Head of Profession for Statistics, ISD Scotland has written to The Herald expressing concerns re the inaccurate calculation of these data. A response is awaited. For clarity, there are two data items collected for new patients – waiting times for a first appointment/assessment at the pain clinic/service and waiting times for a first pain psychology services appointment.

Information on return appointments is not collected centrally. Each patient may require a different timescale for follow up appointments, as clinically determined. We do, however, expect patients to be seen within the most appropriate timescale for their condition following a clinical assessment.