Chamber and committees

274 responses were received to the consultation on the Inverness Airport draft master plan. While full consideration of the points and views was made in each response, o f the 209 responses opposed to the proposals, 183 were identical automatically generated e-mails that made the same views known.

The 2020-21 Programme for Government (PfG) stated that over £500 million will be invested in active travel over the next 5 years. The 2021-22 PfG states that by 2024-25 at least £320 million or 10% of the total transport budget will be spent on active travel.

Budget allocations for 2022-23 have yet to be set.

ScotRail Trains Ltd. will take on responsibility for the ScotRail section of the Railway Pension scheme in the normal manner when staff transfer from Abellio ScotRail on 1 April 2022 .

The Scottish Stroke Care Audit does not currently directly measure level of disability at the time of hospital discharge. The stroke improvement team rehabilitation sub group is currently considering future updates to measure rehabilitation service delivery, patient outcomes and experiences.

Rehabilitation is a person centred process. People with ongoing impairment and activity limitations following a stroke are assessed by a multidisciplinary team and their wishes and needs are agreed individually as part of their rehabilitation plan. All patients who require stroke rehabilitation should be offered it. Rehabilitation may be delivered via a variety of inpatient, early supported discharge and community teams

As of August 23rd there are 8,220 records flagged receiving 2 doses of mixed COVID-19 vaccine products in the National Clinical Data Store (NCDS).

There are 7,697,632 total records ( first and second doses ) in the NCDS relating to COVID-19 vaccinations therefore this number is 0.11% of records flagged.

The circumstances for these are not recorded.

Data completeness and accuracy checks have not yet been carried out on each of these records, therefore some of these records may be duplicates, or in fact relate to more than a single individual.

The Scottish Government’s guidance for employers on Test & Protect is regularly updated. This sets out the support that employers should give to employees who are required to self-isolate. It also sets out steps that employees can take if they feel that their employer is not enabling them to complete periods of requested self-isolation. The guidance is available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-test-and-protect/pages/advice-for-employers/ .

Anyone who returns a positive LFD test result should self-isolate and book a follow-up PCR test. Employers should be supportive of any colleague who needs to self-isolate following a positive LFD test while they await their follow-up PCR test results, even if the colleague remains asymptomatic.

Furthermore, employers should carry out COVID-19 risk assessments as part of managing risk in the workplace to reduce the risk of transmission.

Regulators (including local authorities and the Health and Safety Executive) have engaged with businesses throughout the pandemic to ensure they understand the guidance and are able to meet the regulatory requirements.

Ministers take decisions on travel restrictions based on evidence provided by the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC). These reports take into account a number of factors in judging the risk associated with travel from each country, including case numbers, incidence of the virus amongst the population, the prominence of variants of concern as well as any other practical factors relevant to each country.

The Scottish Government considers this data in relation to the public health situation in Scotland. Following careful consideration of clinical and scientific evidence, the four nations have agreed to ease inbound international travel restrictions from 4 October.

Restrictions put in place to protect public health have been substantially revised to make travel simpler, with green and amber classifications merged while the red list is retained for those countries deemed to have high COVID19 case rates or variants of concern.

Travellers from non-red list countries who have been fully vaccinated in a country that meets recognised standards of certifications will no longer be required to provide evidence of a negative test result before they can travel to Scotland. The requirement to self-isolate upon arrival will be removed and Scotland will also align with the UK post-arrival testing regime in due course.

In certain circumstances, there may be hardship or welfare arrangements available to travellers who are unable to afford hotel quarantine. The following link provides further information:

Coronavirus (COVID-19): international travel and managed isolation (quarantine) - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The development of a domestic hydrogen sector will play an important role in supporting a just transition to Net Zero by 2045, and presents significant long-term economic opportunities.

We are taking forward an Energy Transition Scotland programme, including the Energy Transition Fund (ETF), which in its first year of operation is already funding key transition projects – such as the Global Underwater Hub, the Energy Transition Zone, the Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub, and the Net Zero Technology Transition Programme.

These projects will help to ensure Scotland’s energy sector plays a leading role in the development and deployment of new, low carbon projects.

Additionally, the Emerging Energy Technologies Fund (EETF) will provide £180m over the next five years to support the development of hydrogen, and carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) that underpins negative emissions technologies (NETs).

Details on the £100m capital funding that will be dedicated to the support of the Scottish hydrogen sector as committed in our Hydrogen Policy Statement will be published alongside our Hydrogen Action Plan targeted for publication in the first year of this Parliamentary term.

The Hydrogen Action Plan will set out the actions that will be taken over the coming five years to support Scottish supply chain activity and drive the development of a low-cost hydrogen capability to meet our initial ambition to generate 5GW of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen by 2030.

We also support to the Acorn Hydrogen projects at St Fergus, Aberdeenshire, where 35% of the UK’s annual gas supply enters the National Transmission System. We believe Acorn can be the first large-scale hydrogen project developed in Scotland. Acorn Hydrogen will be enabled by its sister project, Acorn CCS, considered the most advanced CCS project in the UK. Acorn is leading the Scottish bid into the UK Government’s cluster sequencing process to allow Carbon, Capture and Storage (CCS) to be deployed by the mid-2020s, and we are supportive of the Scottish Cluster’s bid into the UK Government’s cluster sequencing process. It is critical that the UK Government recognises Acorn CCS as one of the first two projects to commercialise in the 2020s as part of this cluster sequencing process, and does not delay these Scottish projects, which are essential for meeting our emissions reduction targets.

The Acorn Hydrogen project will initially involve the construction of a 200 MW hydrogen production plant that could become operational by 2025, and which would allow for a 2% hydrogen blend by volume into the National Transmission System (NTS). The emissions from the hydrogen production would be captured, transported, and safely stored offshore deep underground, reusing current oil and gas infrastructure.

Acorn CCS and Hydrogen are key catalysts for clean growth in the north east of the UK and beyond. These projects are highly scalable, due to availability of large volumes of natural gas feedstock, up to 46GT of offshore CO2 storage capacity, and the availability of existing offshore pipeline infrastructure. Large volumes of hydrogen can be generated in the 2020s and beyond, offering an opportunity to establish hydrogen infrastructure before other complementary decarbonisation technologies reach scale.

Please find the requested information set out in the following table.

The figures provided below include patients waiting to have their initial appointment with a consultant (new outpatient) and patients who were waiting to be admitted for treatment (inpatient or day case) within select specialties relating to the question.

In the field of orthopaedic medicine, trauma is categorised as a severe injury to the elements of the musculoskeletal system (muscles, joints, ligaments, bones, and soft tissue). These trauma injuries are often the result of a sudden accident, such as a fall or car accident, and so the patient requires immediate medical attention. Consequently, no waiting times are provided here.

Table 1 shows the total number of patients waiting for a new outpatient appointment across NHS Scotland at 31 May 2019, 31 May 2020 and 31 May 2021, broken down by specialty. Note that 95 th percentile waits have been provided rather than the longest wait as a more robust measure. This is due to the likelihood of the longest wait for each specialty being a data quality issue as opposed to a true waiting time.

Table 1: Total waiting for a New Outpatient appointment and 95 th percentile waits, 31 May 2019, 31 May 2020, 31 May 2021; NHS Scotland