Individual public bodies are responsible for their own procurement decisions and contract management and monitoring activity.

Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 require public bodies to include contract conditions, relating to the performance of the contract, as reasonably necessary to ensure compliance with environmental, social and employment law.

Scottish Procurement Policy Note 09/2016 provided model contract clauses to provide for termination in these circumstances and the Scottish Government’s standard terms and conditions were updated and are available at:

https://www.gov.scot/Topics/Government/Procurement/buyer-information/standardformsanddocs/SGtsandcs.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-17753 on 2 August 2018. 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.

At this time in the national trainee recruitment cycle, NHS Education for Scotland advise that there are projected to be 6 trainee vacancies in placements rotating through Inverclyde Royal and 5 trainee vacancies at the Royal Alexandra. As is usual practice, any vacancies in trainee posts (with associated funding) are returned to NHS Boards for local recruitment action, which may be through offering career development-style fellowships through offering career development-style fellowships or sourcing locum cover.

Each NHS Board must plan on the basis of providing safe and sustainable services for patients and will have a range of options available to them where rota gaps exist following national trainee recruitment. The Scottish Government continues to support NHSScotland Boards through initiatives like the International Medical Training Fellowships scheme, improving the quality of training programmes through roll-out of the Professional Compliance Assessment tool, and we stand ready to assist Greater Glasgow and Clyde in its efforts to address trainee vacancies.

No; all three hospitals continue to hold training accreditation and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) continues to place trainee doctors in these hospitals. NES officials continue to work collaboratively with Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board to improve the educational quality of medical training, and the supervision of trainees, in certain sites across the Board area.

The number of trainee doctor posts within individual locations and units depends fundamentally on the extent to which a location can (a) meet the General Medical Council(GMC) training standards and (b) deliver all or part of an approved curriculum. These are known as training programmes which may require an individual trainee to undertake several different postings during which they will rotate within and across hospital sites, participating on rotas as appropriate to their training and experience.

In Scotland, NHS Education for Scotland (NES) has operational responsibility for the recruitment and monitoring of trainee doctors in GMC-approved training programmes, which it organises in collaboration with NHSScotland Boards, and is done so at a national or regional level and not specifically by posts within individual hospitals.

With the new training year commencing on 1 August 2018, NES advise that the current headcount of trainees commencing or continuing training across the 3 sites mentioned is 241. Of these, 58 will be placed at Inverclyde and 183 at Royal Alexandra Hospital (which includes rotation in a small number of specialties to the Vale of Leven). There is a round of recruitment yet to complete however NES project that after all rounds of recruitment are finalised, there will be 6 vacancies in placements rotating through Inverclyde Royal and 5 at the Royal Alexandra. Any remaining vacancies, with funding, will be passed to the NHS Boards for local recruitment.

NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde has been reviewing local breast services since late 2016 to ensure that they are consistent with national policy and clinical best practice. The Health Board has confirmed that the early work in this review was informed by engaging with a group of patients who had recently undertaken breast cancer treatment, to ensure the relevant patient experience was taken into account. NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde advises that this patient group was identified by breast cancer nurses in each of the geographical sectors of the Board, including the Clyde area.

It is important to note that this review is still underway and that no service change decisions have been made. NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde has assured the Government that they have been liaising with the Scottish Health Council throughout the review to ensure that the development of their plans are fully informed by appropriate stakeholder engagement. Should formal proposals be developed that are considered major service change then they must be subject to full public consultation and, ultimately, Ministerial approval.

Health Boards should take all the available information into account when reviewing and developing healthcare services, in line with national policy and clinical best practice. We also expect Boards to inform this work through the meaningful engagement of local stakeholders. Both the Scottish Government and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have been consistently clear about the commitment to providing comprehensive hospital, community and primary care services across Clyde, including at the Vale of Leven and Inverclyde Royal hospitals.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-17741 on 31 July 2018. 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.

Whilst it is important to note that no decisions have been made in respect of this review, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde advise that equality impact assessments have been carried out and published on its website. These can be accessed at: www.nhsggc.org.uk/media/249604/eqia-clyde-sector-breat-care-service.htm and www.nhsggc.org.uk/media/246367/breast-services-review.htm.

This information is not held centrally. This is due to there being no consistent definition of a ‘forensic unit’, with NHS Boards using intensive psychiatric care units (IPCUs), mixed purpose rehabilitative facilities or General Adult Psychiatry (GAP) facilities to accommodate forensic patients which are not routinely described as ‘forensic units’.