Key Issues for Session 6 - 2023 Update | Scottish Parliament

Key Issues for Session 6 - 2023 Update

Author: SPICe Research and SPICe Data Visualisation Team

PDF Published: Wednesday 29 Nov 2023 (SB 23-45)

Four numbers representing total confirmed cases, around 2.2 million, total hospitalisations, just over sixty four thousand, total deaths involving COVID-19, just over 18 thousand and long-COVID case, an estimated one hundred and seventy five thousand.

Image: COVID-19 Recovery Update

Two area charts. One showing the performance against the 31 day standard from the decision to treat to the first treatment and the other showing performance against the 62 day standard of urgent suspicion of cancer referral to treatment . For the 31 day standard, the latest data show that the 95 percent target has been meet. For the 62 day standard, the latest data show that there has been some improvement recently but the 95 percent target has not been met.

Image: The waiting time target from diagnosis to treatment is being met, but the target that includes referral to diagnosis is not

A bar chart show the number of excess deaths from January 2013 onward. During the COVID-19 pandemic period the number of excess deaths was higher than normal.

Image: Excess deaths have declined and are around expected levels

Two area charts side by side. The first chart shows the number of people on the outpatient waiting list has almost doubled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second chart shows that the number of people on the inpatient and day cases waiting list has also almost doubled since the start of the pandemic.

Image: The number of people on waiting lists has almost doubled since the start of the pandemic

Data is presented from the report by the Natural History Museum in collaboration with the RSPB ranking biodiversity intactness for 240 countries and territories, where each point represents a country or territory. It shows that the four nations of the UK are in the bottom 25% of nations and territories measured for biodiversity intactness, ranking the lowest of the G7 countries. Scotland comes 28th from bottom out of 240 – with 56% of its biodiversity estimated to be intact.

Image: National and regional biodiversity intactness rankings

A bar chart showing the consumer inflation rate for seven countries ranked from highest to lowest. The UK has the highest rate followed by France, Italy, Germany, the Eurozone, Spain, and the US.

Image: UK inflation has remained higher than many similar economies

A line chart showing number of calls to the NHS 24 Breathing Space service between July 2022 and July 2023. The number of calls has increased each month from February 2023 onwards.

Image: July 2023, mental health service Breathing Space had its busiest month on record

A horizontal stacked bar chart showing the performance of each of the 81 National Indicators grouped by the 11 outcomes.

Image: Of the 62 indicators with performance data, 17 are improving, 31 maintaining performance and 14 worsening

The key indicators for the ‘Entrepreneurial People and Culture’ programme are early stage entrepreneurial activity, the three year survival rate of new businesses, and the number of registered high growth businesses. These data are mostly the baseline setting the context at the launch of NSET – the most significant movement is a fall in the number of high growth registered businesses in 2022 although this will have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Image: The National Strategy for Economic Transformation

The key indicators for the ‘New Market Opportunities’ programme are levels of capital investment, exports as a share of GDP, and number of planned inward investment jobs. Between 2021 and 2022 levels of capital investment and exports as a share of GDP grew encouragingly.

Image: The National Strategy for Economic Transformation

The key indicators for the ‘Productive Businesses and Regions’ programme are productivity, business R&D spend, proportion of businesses ‘innovative active’, and digital skills in business. All the data for these indicators represents the baseline.

Image: The National Strategy for Economic Transformation

The key indicators for the ‘Skilled Workforce’ programme are skills shortage vacancy rate, percentage of young people in education, training or employment, percentage of adults with low or no qualifications, proportion of employers reported at least one employee with under utilised skills, and percentage of people in employment received job related training.

Image: The National Strategy for Economic Transformation

The key indicators for the ‘A Fairer and More Equal Society’ programme are the percentage of employees earning real living wage, the employment rate, gender pay gap, employee voice and proportion of contracted employees in contractually secure employment

Image: The National Strategy for Economic Transformation

A map showing the locations of the current Scottish Government and Scottish Development international offices.

Image: Scotland's international footprint

A timeline of the anticipated next steps of the People's panels recommendations. Chamber debate on this report, along with learning from two academic fellowships to support a future deliberative democracy strategy, October 2023. Topics chosen for two more People’s panels in Autumn 2023. Seconds People’s panel planned for late 2024/early 2025. Mid 2025 there will be an evaluation of People’s panel; Committees to prepare report setting out blueprint for institutionalising deliberative democracy along with parliament services understanding of resources needs, building case study examples of best practice. Mid to late 2025 there will be a chamber debate on report and blueprint and in early 2026 there will be strategy finalised by parliamentary service, including understanding of resources needed. From May 2026 onwards there will be a deliberative practice institutionalised and fully resourced with a practice and accountability framework and a toolkit of deliberative approaches in place from the start on Session 7 of the Scottish Parliament.

Image: What is happening next with the recommendations?

Last Updated: 16/1 11:05am

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