Chamber and committees

The last year has been extremely difficult for many of Scotland’s businesses and we have engaged widely with businesses and representative organisations throughout this crisis to ensure we understood all the impacts and how best to support businesses.

It has not been possible to meet directly with every sector impacted by the pandemic and whilst we have not met directly with their representative organisations, we have engaged extensively with the cattery and kennels sector through correspondence.

Additionally, a regular programme of engagement continues with organisations that represent businesses including the Confederation of British Industry, Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors, Scottish Chambers of Commerce, SCDI, Scottish Financial Enterprise, Scottish Retail Consortium, Scottish Tourism Alliance and Scotland Food and Drink to discuss a range of priority issues, including economic recovery as restrictions are lifted and business support.

The Scottish Government does not hold any specific data on the number of kennel and cattery businesses operating in Scotland and so is unable to provide an estimate of how much it would cost to target additional support at this sector.

The use of the local authority discretionary funding was entirely at the discretion of local authorities and we do not currently hold data on applications by or allocations to individual type of business.

The Scottish Government regularly publishes statistics and management information relating to its Covid-19 business grants on its website which can be found at Coronavirus (COVID-19): business support funding statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. Data on missing children can be sought from Police Scotland.

To help free up capacity during the initial coronavirus outbreak, Health Boards were asked to postpone non-urgent operations and procedures to allow vital NHS staff and resources to be redeployed to support the response to the pandemic. All Health Boards were written to in March 2020 and asked to take a structured approach to scaling down all non-urgent elective procedures, making clear that urgent, maternity and vital cancer services should remain.

From May 2020, while NHS Boards needed to maintain capacity for the priorities of COVID-19 as well as continuing to provide urgent, emergency, maternity care and support the care home sector, they started to use spare capacity to safely and incrementally restore services which had been paused. In restarting paused services, each Health Board, whilst ensuring their approach was consistent with national guidance, made their own decision on which services could safely and effectively be resumed; as informed by local circumstances; and both local and national clinical priorities.

National screening programmes restarted over summer 2020 in a phased way with an initial focus on higher risk screening participants, with all adult screening programmes now running again, including those for breast, bowel and cervical cancer.

Remobilising and supporting the NHS remains one of the Scottish Government’s top priorities and the NHS Recovery Plan will be published shortly. This will set out how we will continue to support patients to receive the highest quality of care; safely and effectively expanding NHS capacity whilst ensuring operational resilience.

Published data on performance is available at Publications - Public Health Scotland

NHS Scotland National Procurement works with NHS Boards to assess and evaluate all supply requirements, this includes an assessment of product substitution and material choice. Where replacement of a single use item is practical and meets infection control and regulatory requirements, then this is undertaken. Where product substitution is not possible, National Procurement works with manufacturers and suppliers to look at increasing recyclability and circular supply systems, ensuring the value in the material is maintained.

The information requested is not centrally held by Scottish Government, as aspergillus and Cryptococcus are not part of the mandatory surveillance policy. As stated in the National IPC Manual, Appendix 13 alert organism surveillance should be guided by local Board intelligence.

The information requested is not centrally held by Scottish Government regarding clinician led case reviews. Information on case reviews is held by the appropriate health board for local learning and quality improvement purposes.

To date, over 75 expressions of interest have been submitted by local authorities. Zero Waste Scotland is currently working with local authorities to develop detailed bids. These will be reviewed in line with the fund’s governance arrangements before a decision is made on initial funding awards.

The Scottish Government has worked in partnership with COSLA, SOLACE and Zero Waste Scotland to develop arrangements for the fund. More information on the aims, scope and distribution of the fund is available at: https://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/local-authorities/recycling-improvement-fund

In line with Investing for jobs: Capital Spending Review , the table outlines the distribution of the £70 million fund over the 5 year period:

Due to the presence of new and emerging COVID-19 variants of concern, vaccine efficacy is continuously monitored and assessed. Public Health England (PHE) monitors the efficacy of COVID 19 vaccinations currently approved for use in the UK.

On 14 June PHE published its most recent analysis on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against hospital admission with the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant, first identified in India. The analysis suggests the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96% effective against hospitalisation after 2 doses and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 92% effective against hospitalisation after 2 doses.
‎ Note: These data remain subject to peer review.

Table 1: Estimated vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation