The Scottish Government expects Health Boards to work with practices as constructively and as flexibly as is appropriate to ensure that all patients have access to GP services. Edinburgh’s Health and Social Care Partnership, NHS Lothian and the team at the practice are working together to ensure that Inverleith Medical Practice patients continue to receive safe, effective and timely care.

NHS Lothian has made the Scottish Government aware of concerns around particular recruitment issues in Lothian which will be taken into account as the 2017 GMS contract negotiations. Additionally as part of the Primary Care Fund we have invested over £2 million to test a range of GP recruitment and retention initiatives, including within Lothian taking forward an early career GP fellowship.

In 2017-18 the Scottish Government has committed £72 million of investment for improvements to primary care and GP services, going towards an additional £500 million being invested in this area each year by the end of this Parliament. This commitment will mean that by 2021-22, for the first time, more than half of the NHS frontline spending will be in our Community Health Service.

The Scottish Government promotes evidence based practice for psychological therapies and has funded NHS Education for Scotland to publish the Matrix, which provides a summary of the information on the current evidence base for various therapeutic approaches and guidance and advice on psychological therapies services. The latest version of the Matrix was published in 2015 and includes a section on the range of treatments available, including for panic disorder with agoraphobia.

http://www.nes.scot.nhs.uk/education-and-training/by-discipline/psychology/the-matrix-(2015)-a-guide-to-delivering-evidence-based-psychological-therapies-in-scotland/the-matrix-(2015)-a-guide-to-delivering-evidence-based-psychological-therapies-in-scotland.aspx

The Scottish Government does not have plans to launch a consultation on introducing fixed recoverable costs in lower value clinical negligence claims. However, under current plans, from September 2017, as part of the new Simple Procedure in Scotland, there will be limits to the awards of expenses in all cases with a monetary value of under £3000.

The Expenses and Funding of Civil Litigation (Scotland) Bill, which will be introduced in May, will implement Sheriff Principal Taylor’s 2013 Review of the Cost and Funding of Civil Litigation in Scotland and is an important part of the Scottish Government's commitment to making the civil justice system more accessible, affordable and equitable. It will introduce measures to make the costs of civil action more predictable, to extend the funding options for pursuers, and to bring more equality to the funding relationship between claimants and defenders in personal injury actions.

Information on the number of prescription items uncollected within the time periods requested and the associated costs of those medicines is not readily available.

Each community pharmacy contractor will have a standard operating procedure for dispensing medicine which will include how to deal with uncollected items. However, it is common practice for any medicines not collected and which have not left the premises to be returned to stock for re-use, and no reimbursement payment is made for the medicine in this case. Prescription forms for uncollected medicines are then passed by community pharmacies to National Services Scotland Practitioner and Counter Fraud Services for processing, endorsed by the pharmacy as “item not collected”.

The reasons why a prescription item may be uncollected are multifaceted. However, a new medicine intervention support tool was introduced allowing community pharmacists to provide structured and tailored support to patients. This should increase adherence to new medicines, in turn reducing the number of uncollected items due to poor adherence.

The Scottish Government has not issued any specific guidance on the reuse of uncollected prescriptions. Practitioner and Counter Fraud Services and Community Pharmacy Scotland publish Endorsing Guidance which provides guidance on how to endorse prescriptions for any items not collected.

The Chair of the Scottish Health Council and the members of the Scottish Health Council committee receive a daily rate of £157.09. The Chair of the Scottish Health Council has a basic requirement of two days (15 hours) per month. Members of the Scottish Health Council committee have a basic requirement of one day (7.5 hours) per month.

Details of the remuneration of the Director of the Scottish Health Council are available publically on page 33 of Health Improvement Scotland’s Annual Accounts 2015-2016 Report at:

http://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.org/previous_resources/policy_and_strategy/annual_accounts_2015-16.aspx

An updated report for 2016-2017 will be produced after the conclusion of this financial year.

The salary range for managers within the Scottish Health Council goes from Area Managers (Agenda for Change Band 6 £26,565-£35,577), of which there are currently four posts in operation, to heads of function (Agenda for Change Band 8b £47,092-£58,217), of which there is currently one post in operation.

There are 51 whole time equivalent (full-time) and 15 part-time (10.75 whole time equivalent) staff currently employed within the Scottish Health Council.

The safety of expectant mothers and their babies is of paramount importance. We want to ensure that Scotland is as safe a place as possible for mothers to give birth.

The temporary divert from the maternity unit at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital was in place for a few hours on 12 January and was caused by a combination of high levels of admissions and a number of women and babies developing complications. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde took the rights steps to protect patient safety, ensuring the highest standards of care for women and babies in Glasgow.

We expect Health Boards to have robust contingency measures in place such as these to ensure the safety and quality of patient care. The Health Board has, nonetheless, rightly apologised to the very small number of expectant mothers who were sent to other maternity facilities in the board area.

This Government had already instructed a review of all maternity and neonatal services across the country, which was published on 20 January. This review, based on clinical and expert evidence, made 76 recommendations for a new model of maternity and neonatal care for delivery of the best and safest possible maternity and neonatal services, in the face of changing demographics and birth rates. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde will take full account of this review before progressing any proposals for maternity services in Inverclyde and the Vale of Leven. However, no decisions have been made and these proposals must still be subject to formal public consultation and, ultimately, Ministerial approval.

Sentencing in criminal cases including for housebreaking is a matter for the court. The Scottish Government does not comment on nor intervene in any specific cases.

Housebreaking is generally prosecuted under the common law with maximum penalties up to life imprisonment available depending on the level of court in which a case is prosecuted.

The Whole System Approach is the Scottish Government's programme for addressing the needs of young people involved in offending. It aims to put in place tailored support and management based on the needs of each individual child. Offending by children is either dealt with by the criminal courts where necessary or otherwise through the Children's Hearings System which has a range of options available including Compulsory Supervision Orders.

The independent Scottish Sentencing Council has recently published their first Business Plan for the period up to September 2018 and this includes a commitment to prepare a guideline on the sentencing of young people. Although the guideline will be general to young people, it will include young people who commit acts of housebreaking.

This information is not held centrally. Individual NHS Boards may record this information locally at their own discretion.