Chamber and committees

Any form of human trafficking or exploitation is completely unacceptable.

The Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015, which was passed unanimously by the Scottish Parliament, gives police and prosecutors greater powers to detect and bring to justice those responsible for trafficking as well as strengthening protections for survivors.

In the current financial year, Migrant Help and the Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance will share over £2.1m to support adult victims of human trafficking and exploitation. We are also providing funding to Justice and Care to support two Victim Navigators who work alongside Police Scotland's National Human Trafficking Unit; funding to JustRight Scotland to support the work of their Scottish Anti-Trafficking Centre, including the provision of early legal advice to potential victims. Furthermore, we are funding Survivors of Human Trafficking in Scotland to deliver a long-term support pilot to those recovering and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to provide a national psychological trauma support service to adult trafficking victims.

We will continue to work with partners across Scotland and beyond to provide support to victims and combat those who seek to profit from the exploitation of others.

We recognise that accurate local data on long COVID prevalence, distribution across the population and symptoms are needed to forecast and plan for the need for NHS services and specific specialties arising from long COVID.

a. Diagnosis of cases. We do not anticipate that the pausing of the ONS COVID-19 Infection Survey will have any impact on the ability of clinicians to diagnose individuals with long COVID (which includes the case definitions of ‘Ongoing symptomatic COVID-19’ and ‘Post-COVID-19 syndrome’). The identification, assessment and management of patients with long-term effects of COVID-19 in Scotland is guided by the UK-wide clinical guideline developed by the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). Further information can be accessed at Overview | COVID-19 rapid guideline: managing the long-term effects of COVID-19 | Guidance | NICE .

b. Monitoring of cases. The ONS survey data has provided a valuable means of estimating the prevalence of self-reported long COVID over time in Scotland. While a pause in the COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) will create a gap in the tracking of time-series data on long COVID, long-term trends in prevalence estimates are unlikely to change markedly within a short timeframe. Further, to improve local data collection, we are already supporting activity with NHS National Services Scotland’s long COVID Strategic Network. The Network is taking forward a dedicated workstream to agree outcomes, indicators, monitoring and evaluation to accelerate progress on capturing data to inform the planning of health service provision for people with long COVID.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has been running the monthly COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) for almost three years. Since 2021 this survey has included long COVID questions and has provided high-level estimates for Scotland of the number of people with long COVID by duration.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is now reviewing its approach to COVID-19 surveillance, and survey data collection has been paused since mid-March. The then Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Humza Yousaf MSP, wrote to the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 8 March to express his concern about the delay in deciding the future of the survey, which will result in a gap in the provision of data on long COVID in the first quarter of the 2023-24 financial year. We are in touch with UKHSA to clarify the details of the updated scope, design and implementation plans for CIS, which will inform our planning for local surveillance.

Our Chief Scientist Office has funded the Early Pandemic Evaluation and Enhanced Surveillance of COVID-19 (EAVE II) long COVID study. EAVE II forms part of our Scottish Respiratory Surveillance Programme. This is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and Public Health Scotland to identify adults at greatest risk of developing long COVID. The study was able to identify cases of long COVID in Scotland using routinely collected clinical data from almost the entire adult Scottish population. The clinical data derived from electronic health records, comprising GP records (coded, free text and sick note data), hospital data, GP Out-of-Hours data, outpatient data, NHS 24 data, medication data and mortality data. The University has drawn on this work to publish an initial report on the estimated prevalence of long COVID among adults in Scotland, titled ‘ Identifying Long Covid Using Electronic Health Records: A National Observational Cohort Study in Scotland ’ . Please note that these findings are preliminary and have not yet been peer-reviewed.

The study team acknowledge that their estimated prevalence findings are lower than estimates derived from surveys such as the COVID-19 Infection Survey and Scottish Health Survey, in which participants self-report having long COVID, rather than long COVID being diagnosed by a medical professional. They also acknowledge that their findings are likely to underestimate total cases because not everyone with long COVID will attend their GP, and not all cases or symptoms will be recorded. However, the report still makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of long COVID prevalence and distribution in Scotland.

We are working closely with Public Health Scotland to develop an approach and methodology for the longer-term surveillance of long COVID, which will in turn inform the planning of health service provision for people with long COVID.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. The allocation of SEPA staff resource is the responsibility of SEPA’s CEO and Senior Management Team.

SEPA’s Corporate Plan will be renewed in 2024 and Ministers will work with SEPA to agree the Key Performance Indicators and priority areas to be included in that Plan.

The Scottish Government does not operate any TikTok accounts.

The Scottish Government recognises that all recorded information relating to its business is subject to Freedom of Information law, irrespective of its format or the platform on which it is held. This includes any information held in or originally generated in Microsoft Teams or similar messaging apps. This responsibility is discharged through the relevant business units who have the responsibility for capturing this information as set out in the Scottish Government Records Management Policy

The Scottish Government recognises that all recorded information relating to its business is subject to Freedom of Information law, irrespective of its format or the platform on which it is held. This includes any information held in or originally generated in WhatsApp or similar messaging apps. This responsibility is discharged through the relevant business units who have the responsibility for capturing this information as set out in the Scottish Government Records Management Policy

Following a recent review of updated security advice, the Scottish Government have restricted the use of, and installation of, the TikTok app from any Scottish Government managed phones including those used by Ministers. TikTok is therefore not installed on any Scottish Government managed devices. This approach brings us inline with other governments around the world.

Information on Ministerial meetings is routinely published on the Scottish Government website and can be found at: www.gov.scot/collections/ministerial-engagements-travel-and-gifts/ .

Civil servants should be present for all discussions relating to Government business. Where that is not the case any significant content should be passed back to the Private Office as soon as possible after the event, who should arrange for the basic facts of such meetings to be recorded.

We are unable to provide a breakdown of minutes prepared. The basic facts of formal meetings between Ministers and outside interest groups are recorded, setting out the reasons for the meeting, the names of those attending and the interests represented. Routine meetings with policy officials may only require a short note setting out the reasons for the meeting, the names of attendees and any action points or decisions taken. For courtesy conversations where no policy decisions arise it may be sufficient to record within the official diary that the meeting has taken place.