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The regulation of consumer protection is reserved to the UK Government which includes the work of Trading Standards Scotland.

The Scottish Government does not hold the requested information.

The total number of NHS patients that have been treated in private (independent) hospitals in each of the last five financial years and reported to PHS is presented in the following table.

The legislative changes recommended by the completed review of the Storage and Spreading of Sewage Sludge on Land in Scotland (‘The Sludge Review’), are being implemented via the forthcoming Integrated Authorisation Framework (IAF) regulations.

The proposed changes are designed to strengthen SEPA powers to ensure effective management practices are implemented and followed by operators within the industry.

A consultation on proposed IAF regulations is due to be published early next year and stakeholders will have the opportunity to comment on the proposals relating to sewage sludge.

Trading Standards Scotland, when it takes possession of counterfeit and illegal goods, is subject to Section 34 of the Environment Protection Act 1990 which requires waste to be dealt with in line with the waste hierarchy. The Scottish Government has provided guidance on applying the waste hierarchy - .

I welcome the initiative shown by Falkirk Council and the local Trading Standards Scotland team in finding alternative destinations for seized counterfeit and illegal goods, to prevent them becoming waste. I would encourage others to follow this example.

Part (a) The Scottish Government does not hold data on missed GP appointments. Individual GP practices are responsible for their own appointment arrangements.

Part (b) Information on consultant led new outpatient appointments where the patient did not attend is published within Public Health Scotland’s annual acute hospital activity and NHS beds publication. Information can be found in ‘Table 1 – outpatient activity (consultant led).xlsx’ which presents data by NHS Board of Treatment for 2012/13 to 2021/22 (available under the ‘Data files’ heading on this Public Health Scotland web page: ).

In addition, monthly trend information from May 2015 to September 2022 on the number of planned operations typically carried out within an inpatient or day case setting in NHS Scotland, that were cancelled the day before or the day of treatment by NHS Board of treatment (including cancellation reason, cancelled by patient). This information is published within Public Health Scotland’s monthly cancelled planned operations publication (available under the ‘Data files’ heading on this Public Health Scotland web page:

).

The next Public Health Scotland’s monthly cancelled planned operations publication covering October 2022 is due to be published on 6 December.

Zero Waste Scotland sourced this information from SEPA’s waste data tool ( , to which their researchers applied a compositional analysis to provide the detail found in the table.

The following tables show the percentage of pupils by school condition for each local authority from 2018 to 2022 as reported in the School Estate Statistics.

In response to how many ministerial regulated appointments that declared a political affiliation over the five years, a total of 37 individuals have noted political activity where a party was specified. The breakdown is as follows:

(a) Public Bodies a total of 19

We do not hold this information.

In line with the principle of industry responsibility for Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), it is for retailers (in consultation with the scheme administrator, Circularity Scotland Ltd) to decide how to comply with the obligation to provide a takeback service for scheme articles sold online. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has published guidance to support retailers in complying with their obligations:

However, as set out in the answer to S6W-12236 on 1 December 2022, we are considering measures to reduce the burden this obligation places on industry, and are working closely with SEPA to ensure that the guidance is updated if necessary as a result of this work.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .