Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-00871 on 5 July 2021. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-00914 on 5 July 2021. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Government and Health Protection Scotland issued a range of clinical guidance relating to the discharge of older people from hospital into community settings.

This guidance has been continuously updated and a timeline of the clinical guidance issued is available in Annex A of the Public Health Scotland publication Discharges from NHSScotland hospitals to care homes which is available at https://beta.isdscotland.org/find-publications-and-data/population-health/covid-19/discharges-from-nhsscotland-hospitals-to-care-homes/28-october-2020/.

Lateral Flow Device (LFD) tests are approved for use by the MHRA, the UK's regulator of medicines and medical devices, responsible for ensuring their safety, quality and effectiveness. LFDs are all packaged with Instructions for Use, which are required by the MHRA to be easy to follow and available in a range of languages and formats. The Scottish Government has developed a range of resources in accordance with this.

The Scottish Government worked with NHS Inform to promote information on how to accurately take an LFD test. This included commissioning a video from Professor Jason Leitch with instructions on how to take the test. This has been translated into multiple languages including BSL, Arabic, Polish and Urdu, as have written instructions. The gov.scot site points to NHS Inform as the primary place to read the instructions.

Working with Young Scot, content was created that was aimed at children and young people on how to take an accurate LFD test, including a video from Dr Punam Krishan. A range of marketing assets have also been developed on how to do an LFD test, including posters for health and social care workers to share with local authorities and health boards.

Anyone who experiences any harm, injury, false positives or negatives, or difficulties in using the self-test device should report this to MHRA via the Coronavirus Yellow Card website, which helps identify issues which might not have previously been known that can then be addressed.

The Scottish Government is committed to a long term vision for active travel that encourages walking, cycling, public transport and car sharing in preference to single occupancy car use for movement of people, and encourages efficient and sustainable freight.

A range of programmes are underway to encourage more parents and carers to choose alternatives to using their car. This includes Sustrans’ Safer Routes to Schools programme, which is helping to fund and deliver improvements to school routes to make them safer and better places for people to walk and cycle. Cycling Scotland also runs the Bikeability programme which delivers training to school children to give them the skills and confidence needed to cycle safely to school.

The Scottish Government also provides local authorities with funds towards the provision of dedicated school transport and funded travel on public transport services for eligible pupils which also supports reduced use of cars.

The Scottish Government has put in place financial support packages, through emergency Covid Support Grants, paid at pre-Covid levels, paid to bus operators to provide and maintain essential bus services.

The National Bus Travel Concession Scheme for Young Persons will also enable all young people aged under 22 to become eligible for free bus travel throughout Scotland. Up to 930,000 young people could benefit from the scheme, which aims to encourage greater use of public transport and reduce reliance on cars.

In 2020/21 the key focus of the National Transition Training Fund (NTTF) was supporting those individuals and sectors affected by the economic impact of Covid-19. As part of this, a number of projects offered support for skills needs linked to the transition to net zero. This included wind turbine safety training, green construction provided through the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, and heat in buildings training such as the installation of heat pumps. Delivery of the Year One projects continues in colleges and universities until the end of the academic year and we will report on the training provided and its outcomes when the full year’s data is available.

In Year Two, NTTF has a broadened remit to address the economic impact of both Covid-19 and Brexit and also to support emerging skills needs to support the transition to net zero.

Of the initial 25 projects in Year Two announced by the First Minister on June 16 2021, a number will support transition, with details set out in the following table:-

Consumer protection remains reserved to the UK Government but through advice and advocacy, we are doing all we can with them to support consumers.

Consumer Scotland will have a general function of providing consumers advocacy and advice with a view to reduce harm to consumers in Scotland. The board was formally appointed on 1 July 2021.

Any specific complaint should be directed to the consumeradvice.scot consumer helpline funded by the Scottish Government.

The numbers of babies reported in the Scottish Birth Record (SBR) as having a diagnosis of ‘foetus and newborn affected by maternal use of drugs of addiction’ or ‘neonatal withdrawal symptoms from maternal use of drug addiction’ in Scotland during the period 2006-07 to 2016-17 are provided in the following table. The figures presented cover three year aggregates to avoid disclosing small numbers in each individual year. Further suppression of small numbers has been applied as per ISD’s Statistical Disclosure Control policy in order to protect patient confidentiality.

Number of babies affected by maternal use of drugs, financial three year aggregates, 2006-07-2008-09 to 2014-15-2016-17 1,2,3

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-00728 on 5 July 2021. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The following table shows the number of properties receiving a non-domestic rates relief or exemption from rates for unoccupied properties since 2011, except for 2014 and 2017 as no data is available for those years. The figures are as at the snapshot date and may therefore underestimate final numbers of recipients in a given year, and include entire local authority areas as data by parliamentary region is not held.

Data for 2021 is expected to become available in late 2021.