Chamber and committees

Correspondence from MSPs is routinely answered by Scottish Government Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers. The Health and Social Care portfolio has experienced a huge and unprecedented increase in correspondence over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order for MSPs to receive timely responses, much of the correspondence previously signed by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport is being reviewed on their behalf by Scottish Government Deputy Directors. This remains under review and normal process will resume when volumes allow for timely responses.

The Scottish Government aim to respond to ministerial correspondence within 20 working days. Performance is monitored at local and corporate levels of government.

The Scottish Government has a corporate correspondence system. Correspondence addressed to Ministers and requiring a response is added to the system on receipt.

Anonymous Voter Registration is available to anyone meeting certain statutory requirements where, if their name or address were listed on the electoral register, their safety would be at risk (or where the safety of other people at the same address as them would be at risk).

An anonymously registered elector has the same options for voting at an election as other electors. They can vote in person at a polling station or they can apply to vote by post or by proxy.

If they choose to vote in person, they will receive a poll card before the election. The poll card will be sent in a covering envelope. An anonymously registered elector must take this poll card to the polling station and will not be able to vote without it.

If the elector wants to vote by post or by proxy, they can ask the Electoral Registration Officer who will provide them with an application form which can also be downloaded from electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter

Further information on anonymous registration can be found in the following guidance which was produced in partnership between the Electoral Commission and Scottish Women’s Aid: ‘Anonymous registration: Supporting survivors of domestic abuse to register to vote’

The Scottish Government wants to improve opportunities, outcomes and support for people with Down’s Syndrome. To this end, we have committed to introducing a Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodiversity Bill as part of the Programme for Government. This Bill will ensure that the rights of people with Down’s Syndrome, among others, are respected and protected. To help make sure the new legislation is championed when it is implemented we will create a Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodiversity Commissioner through the new law.

The Scottish Government position is that we take a wider view of Down’s Syndrome within the rights of people with all learning disabilities.

Rather than duplicate the Down Syndrome Bill, we will continue with our commitment to introduce a Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodiversity Bill as part of the Programme for Government. This will ensure that the Bill meets the needs of people with Down’s Syndrome in the Scottish context.

Scottish Legislation already exists that requires Scottish public bodies meet the needs of people with Down’s Syndrome. The Additional Support for Learning Act (Scotland) 2004 (as amended) places duties upon education authorities to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils. The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 places duties upon Local Authorities and the NHS to provide services in a way which takes account of the particular needs of different service-users, and also takes account of the particular characteristics and circumstances of different service-users.

We continue to liaise regularly with our stakeholders around policy developments, and this includes the Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities, People First and Down’s Syndrome Scotland.

The Scottish Government aims to carry out scoping work on the remit and powers of a Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodiversity Commissioner in this Parliamentary year. This year we will begin an engagement exercise explore the Commissioner role, how it will be developed and what it will be responsible for. We will engage with all learning disability and autism stakeholders across the public and third sector, this includes Government officials across the 4 UK Nations and those with lived experience, who will be at the centre of the work.

The Scottish Government is not undertaking any specific research on utilising household waste and crop waste to manufacture bacterial cellulose for use in the production of yarns and other textile applications. The Scottish Government does not centrally collate research on individual topics.

Delayed discharge data can be broken down by age, gender and specialty of treatment. Ethnicity and disability is not routinely collected although there is potential for ethnicity to be identified through linked data.

Regulations amending the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 were made today.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022 amend the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 (“the principal regulations”) and will take effect on17 January 2022.

The Amendment Regulations remove the physical distancing requirements in the Principal Regulations at outdoor event venues, outdoor exhibitions and outdoor spaces in sports stadia.

The Regulations also amend definitions in the Principal Regulations in relation to the certification requirements, in particular to the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’. To be considered fully vaccinated for domestic certification purposes, a person must have had a booster, if 120 days have passed since their primary course of a MHRA vaccine. If not boosted within 120 days, the person would be treated as if they had not been vaccinated and would require to show evidence of a negative test result within the previous 24 hours as an alternative to requiring full vaccination.”

The Regulations also remove the requirement in the Principal Regulations that a person must not organise an outdoor event of more than 500 people.

The Regulations have been published at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ssi/2022/6

The National Centre for Resilience (NCR) whilst an independent body is fully funded by the Scottish Government, and works closely with it. In the past its remit had focused on natural hazards, but early in the pandemic it adapted its efforts into health resilience - bringing to bear its existing work on recovery to the particulars of the emerging threat.

The NCR was already working with the Scottish Government’s Resilience Development Service (ScoRDS) on recovery as the pandemic began. In collaboration with ScoRDS it had held a series of national workshops where policymakers, practitioners, and academics shared their experiences and the challenges faced when supporting communities through recovery from significant disruptive events. An initial findings paper was published. That laid very firm groundworks for recovery across sectors, and has also placed the NCR in an excellent position to continue to support those sectors.

Building immediately on this work, and following participation in the Scotland responders’ Covid lessons group in the summer of 2020, the NCR identified a need to help responders understand an evidence-based approach in order to not only recover, but to build back better. It used its networks to connect with the third sector responders and SG policy teams, to gain a clear understanding of new issues arising, and also how existing challenges were being amplified by the pandemic.

As a result, a series of symposiums were hosted - bringing together senior leaders in response organisations, academia, and policy teams in order to engage and identify cross sector ways to help find and deliver practical solutions, to improve and mitigate reported issues. Full reports on these symposiums were shared with all participants and have been published on the NCR website.

The NCR has also conducted literature reviews, looking at areas such as mutual aid and the role of the third sector through the lens of the pandemic, as well as mapping changes in policy in Scotland over the last ten years. Reports on these reviews will be published on the NCR website. Its staff and researchers continue to engage in a spectrum of activity across Scotland and the UK in support of the recovery from the pandemic, but also to understand how the pandemic has affected other aspects of resilience.

The Chair of the NCR Steering Group has also been invited to attend the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Post Covid Future Commission's Resilience Roundtable event on 19 January.

In summary, the NCR has been building its understanding and knowledge of the effect of the pandemic on its relevant audiences, as part of its ongoing strategic objectives. It has been seeking ways to collaborate and work together across sectors in order to provide robust evidence to inform policy. It has fostered ways to provide a gateway to networks of academics for government and responders, and it has identified the challenges and barriers that need to be addressed to promote and adopt the concept of evidence-based transformational change, in order to build back better across the wider resilience sector.

I responded to the Committee’s pre-budget scrutiny report on 23 December and my letter is published on the Parliament’s website.