Ministers and Government officials regularly communicate with representatives of all health boards, including NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde; to discuss matters of importance to local people. As part of this, any discussions about potential service change take place within the context of the well-established and long-standing process, set out in the national guidance 'Informing, Engaging and Consulting People in Developing Health and Community Care Services' (2010) available at: www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/mels/CEL2010_04.pdf

The roles and responsibilities of NHS Boards and Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) in delivering the National Cancer Quality Programme are set out in CEL 6 (2012) which can be found at: http://www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/mels/CEL2012_06.pdf.

This information is not held centrally by Scottish Government.

Additional specialist posts for radiotherapy healthcare professionals will be created over time to meet projected demand. Planning for these including training capacity will be a matter for NHS Boards based on the advice of the recently established radiotherapy subgroup. This group is responsible for identifying and agreeing a national direction of travel for access to modern radiotherapy treatments and agreeing a collaborative approach to delivering these treatments across all five Scottish Cancer Centres.

Individual NHS Boards are not given a savings target, although collectively NHS Boards are expected to deliver efficiency savings equivalent to 3% per annum to be reinvested in NHS care.

Health boards manage their own expenditure and there may be times when a board opts to use local activity as opposed to the national solution that is in place. The Scottish Government does not hold specific details of this as this is managed directly by the Health boards.

The welfare of NHS staff is critically important with every health board required to have policies in place and to comply with national policies on managing health at work. The Scottish Government is actively addressing the sickness absence challenge.

Under this Government, the number of qualified Nurses and Midwives have increased by 5.2% to over 43,100 Whole Time Equivalent.

It is for health boards to plan and deliver clinical services and ensure that they have the correct staff in place to meet the needs of their services and ensure high quality patient care.

This level of sickness absence information is not held centrally. NHS National Services Scotland, Information Services Department collect and publish sickness absence data at a national and board level once a year:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2016-06-07/Sickness_Absence_M2016.xls

The independent Scottish Health Council (SHC) works with NHS Boards and communities across Scotland to promote and support the involvement of people in NHS Scotland: that includes instances where changes to NHS services are being considered by a Board or Boards. The Health Council's support and advice on potential service changes is offered within the context of the well-established and long-standing process set out in the national guidance: "Informing, Engaging and Consulting People in Developing Health and Community Care Services" (CEL 4(2010)). Specific communications with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde on proposals in respect of Lightburn and Vale of Leven Hospitals are a matter for the independent SHC.

a) NHS Scotland has a mature shared service capability within National Services Scotland, via the National Procurement Organisation. This has increased the value of national/shared procurement arrangements significantly over the last 10 years with the annual value of national/shared procurement arrangements increasing from approximately £350m p.a. in 2005 to approximately £1.3bn p.a. in 2016. Additionally the National Distribution Centre provides a single logistics service for NHS Scotland with a stock holding of approx 9000 products and a throughput of approximately £150m per year.

b) Savings of £35m - £40m are secured every year from the use of national arrangements. These savings are for re-investment in frontline services.

The NHS procurement process complies with the Scottish Government Procurement Journey. This is public sector wide guidance which provides all contracting authorities with information on how to procure, including appropriate steps to ensure separation of duty.

We require Boards to have SFIs, updated annually and these must include a section on declarations of interest.