Accessibility obligations for taxi and private hire car drivers and Local Licencing Authorities are reserved to the UK Government under the Equality Act 2010.

However, the taxi licensing system is devolved under the Civic Government Act 1982 and is implemented by (local authority) licensing authorities. Therefore, the day-to-day administration of the licensing regime for taxis and private hire cars rests with independent local licensing authorities, who are best placed to take local circumstances into account in the decision making process to ensure that they provide safe and appropriate services for members of the public.

This is a matter for local authorities. The information requested is not held centrally.

As this is a matter for SEPA, outlined in answer to S6W-28593, the Scottish Government does not hold the information being requested. I will therefore ask SEPA to write to the member to provide any further detail on the matter, where it is available.

Land is key to ensuring that rural and island communities can thrive, to giving people places to live and work, to providing essential infrastructure that people need and to help us keep people on the land.

When land is transferred at scale this makes it more difficult for communities and others to purchase land, as the supply of smaller and more affordable plots of land is restricted. This can be detrimental to the sustainability of those communities.

Further information on the transfer test proposals in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill can be found in the Policy Memorandum (parliament.scot)

The Scottish Government recognises the significant and wide-ranging impacts of the decision by Bakkafrost to temporarily close its Arnish Harvest Station and Marybank Processing Facility in Stornoway.

I met with representatives of Bakkafrost Scotland on 12 July and highlighted the importance of the aquaculture sector to the islands and the negative impact on jobs, the local communities and supply chains and asked whether any further support could be provided to reverse this decision. Officials from the Scottish Government and Highlands and Islands Enterprise have continued in dialogue with the business over recent weeks to consider all viable options to ensure that high value jobs are secured in the region.

The Scottish Government is making arrangements to speak with Bakkafrost’s senior management team, based in the Faroe Islands, as soon as possible to explore ways to mitigate the effects of this decision.

The Scottish Government’s Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE) team has met the company to offer its full range of support to any employees who may be facing redundancy. PACE organised a group meeting for affected staff which was held on 7 August, with further CV/Employability workshops held on 14 and 15 August and a Jobs Fair on 16 August.

Over the past 10 years, there has been a 50% increase in consultant oncologists, from 94.8 WTE (whole time equivalent) in March 2014, to 142.6 WTE in March 2024. We have also increased consultant radiologists by 31.9%, from 288.2 WTE ten years ago (March 2014) to 380.1 WTE in March 2024.

In addition to this, we have been increasing the number of available specialty training places for junior doctors in Radiology and Oncology training programmes, and more junior doctors are joining NHS Scotland than ever before, with more than 1,100 specialty trainees recruited throughout 2023.

To specifically support scope based diagnostics, the National Endoscopy Training Programme has been established within the NHS Scotland Academy to commission and deliver endoscopy training to a wide range of learners from different professional backgrounds, with representatives from every mainland health board in Scotland.

This ensures the availability of appropriately trained endoscopists and endoscopy support staff to deliver safe, high quality endoscopic investigations for Scotland’s patients. To date this has supported 80 trainees to complete Basic Skills courses, 137 trainees to attend upskilling courses, 54 trainees to attend immersion training at the Golden Jubilee University National Hospital, and 113 trainees to develop their ability to recognise lesions, primarily to support improved cancer detection.

We have also funded NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to develop a non-medical endoscopy programme. Since 2021, 53 places in total have been made available for non-medical endoscopy training and 20 places have been made available for non-medical cystoscopy training.

The Scottish Government has not made such an assessment. These are operational matters for Scottish Canals as part of their Asset Management Strategy work and responsibility to maintain and develop Scotland's canal network.

The Scottish Government has no plans to change its visual identity from the current saltire.

Since 2021, Scottish Government has provided three permanent CT scanners to support core diagnostic imaging capacity within Boards, including a mobile CT pod which is deployed flexibly to Boards that require additional capacity. One further mobile CT and seven mobile MRI scanners are also being used across multiple NHS Boards to provide additional capacity and earlier diagnosis efforts.To specifically support scope-based diagnostics we have published an Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan backed by £70 million. The plan focuses on key areas including infrastructure. Funding has been allocated to extend the use of mobile endoscopy units for 24-25 to provide additional capacity.Further to this and despite the extremely challenging capital funding position, we are committed to continued investment in our capital radiotherapy replacement programme. We intend to invest more than £65 million over the next 3 years for this programme.We continue to invest in cancer services across NHS Scotland, with £11.3m recurring funding provided to Health Boards in 2024-25 to support cancer waiting times improvements, focusing efforts on the most challenged tumour types.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

SPS currently share information regarding the number of individuals released under Emergency Early Release (ER) on the SPS website. Further work has commenced on an analysis of the entire ER tranche data, and the SPS hope to be able to publish a full data report, which will be available on the SPS website by the end of August.

SPS continue to be as open and transparent as possible, whilst continuing to meet our statutory obligation to ensure that those in our care have their personal information protected; as such we have taken the decision not to publish a breakdown of establishments of those released under the ER scheme as some of the data could relate to a small group of individuals, which may lead to their inadvertent identification. SPS will however, share information that does include individual local authorities and health boards as part of the released data set.