We are committed to improving the prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment and aftercare for all people living in Scotland who are affected by any form of cancer. This is reflected in our £100 million, 5 year national cancer strategy, ‘Beating Cancer: Ambition and Action’.

We are particularly committed to early detection, through our £42 million Detect Cancer Early Programme and national bowel screening programme. Such screening can identify pre-cancerous signs in men and women over 50, and treatment at such an early stage is usually incredibly effective.

A clinical refresh of the Scottish Referral Guidelines has been completed, based on the latest evidence and published on 22 January 2019. The revised guidelines will support primary care clinicians, including GPs, refer patients, regardless of age, that have a suspicion of cancer, allowing for earlier diagnosis and treatment and increasing their survival chances. Eight pathways were updated as part of the clinical refresh, including Lower GI which colorectal cancer falls under.

I am aware that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have required, on occasion, to temporarily close Out of Hours centres often for a short period of time. This is due to the difficulty in finding GPs willing to fill certain shifts in the out of hours period. The decision to close any Out of Hours centre is taken on the grounds of patient and staff safety.

Patients should access Out of Hours services by first contacting NHS 24 where, if assessed as being required to attend an Out of Hours service, they will be directed to the closest most appropriate centre. NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde also provide a home visiting service in the Out of Hours period for those patients who cannot attend a centre.

I am aware that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde are in the process of reviewing their Out of Hours service and are looking at a range of options to make the service more resilient including the use of Advanced Nurse Practitioners and salaried GP posts for the service.

NHS Scotland advertised vacancies through focussed campaigns in ten countries during the first quarter of 2018. Subsequently candidates have been through selection, shortlisting and assessment phases.

Advertising spend on the campaign was £28,400, this was met by the participating health boards. The campaign attracted some 60 applications, of which health board selection and assessment panels determined that there were 8 potentially appointable candidates, health boards have confirmed that they have made five appointments.

The work to develop the Respiratory Care Action Plan for Scotland is currently being taken forward with a wide range of stakeholders and the expectation, at this stage, is that it will be published in late 2019.

Through the Forestry Grant Scheme, the Scottish Government supports the public access improvements within woodlands and the management of woodlands within the Woods In and around Towns (WIAT) initiative area.

The Scottish Government provides enhanced support through the Forestry Grant Scheme for woodland creation in WIAT areas within the Central Scotland Green Network (CSGN) area. Approvals for woodland creation in urban areas across Central Scotland were worth approximately £10 million during 2018-19, with similar funding expected for 2019-20.

In addition Forest Enterprise Scotland continues to manage in excess of 40 WIAT woodlands within the CSGN, with the sites receiving almost 1.5 million visits in 2017. This will require an annual management and maintenance investment of approximately £1.5 million.

The Scottish Access Collaborative has developed a comprehensive programme of work over the last year to support a sustainable balance between demand and capacity in the health and care service in Scotland. It has endorsed a number of challenges which are being taken through an agreed development, testing and mandate process, and is actively working to identify new high impact challenges for future inclusion in the programme. Current workstreams include:

• Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT)
• Enhanced Recovery Pre-operative anaemia programme
• Waiting List Validation
• Team Job Planning
• Accelerating the Development of Enhanced Practitioners (ADEPt)
• Virtual Attendance scoping and piloting
• Clinical Pathways Infrastructure Scoping

It has also supported a series of Specialty Group workshops through the year, which are co-producing a series of recommendation reports. These are completed for Cardiology, Urology, Gynaecology, Gastroenterology, Respiratory and underway for ENT, Chronic Pain, Neurology, Dermatology, Breast Services, General Surgery and Vascular Services. Orthopaedics and Ophthalmology continue to contribute through their existing national Specialty Groups.

Work is underway to develop a comprehensive plan to help address some of the recruitment and retention challenges faced by our health and care sector. We have already published workforce plans covering the NHS, Primary Care and Social Care.

We intend to publish our integrated health and social care workforce plan this year, as the Health Secretary made clear when she updated parliament in November. We are also currently taking our safe staffing legislation through the Scottish Parliament – the first multidisciplinary workforce and workload planning legislation in the UK.

Workforce supply pressures are compounded by the impact of Brexit, and we will undertake additional international recruitment activity in this financial year to promote the resilience of NHS Scotland as a result of EU Withdrawal.

The requested information is not held centrally as ISD do not collect clinical waste data on support staff, including hospital porters.

ISD do not hold details of the contracts which individual NHS Boards have with hospital porters.

Further notes:

• Further information on the statistics, including information on how the data are collected and notes to aid interpretation, is given in the 'FAQs' section of the Workforce Statistics website at http://www.isdscotland.org/workforce/ .

The Scottish Government is supportive of the innovative approach being developed by NHS Grampian to set up an international health office to provide support and guidance for staff who choose to get involved in global citizenship. These plans are aligned to the aims of the NHS Scotland Global Citizenship Programme, which is a key part of the delivery of the Scottish Government’s International Development Strategy.

The requested information is not held centrally as ISD do not collect vacancy data on support staff, including hospital porters.

Further notes:

• Further information on the statistics, including information on how the data are collected and notes to aid interpretation, is given in the 'FAQs' section of the Workforce Statistics website at http://www.isdscotland.org/workforce/ .