Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government spent a total of £507,452.36 in 2021-22. This spend relates to a public information for the Travel Demand Management campaign, which ran during October-November 2021 to encourage people who would previously have driven into Glasgow city centre during the two weeks of COP26, to leave their car at home and commute using public transport.

b. No campaign activity involving buses or coaches has taken place from April 2022 to date.

The Scottish Government has not spent any money directly on marketing of trains in 2021-22 or since the 1 April 2022, and has no specific budget for this purpose because this is a matter for ScotRail as the relevant train operating company.

According to the latest published statistics (April 2022) there were 2953 electric vehicle charge points in Scotland at this time. This figure includes 2257 from ChargePlace Scotland, Scotland’s publicly funded electric vehicle charging network.

NHS Scotland Assure has carried out twenty Key Stage Assurance Reviews (KSARs) since it was established. At the conclusion of the KSAR, NHS Assure advises whether it supports or does not support a project. Where a project is not supported, an action plan is prepared by the responsible Health Board with support from NHS Scotland Assure to address the issues identified. The project can subsequently be reassessed. Twelve of the twenty KSARs resulted in a “supported” decision and eight resulted in a “not supported” decision and work is underway to address the issues identified. Responsibility for approving business cases continues to lie with the Scottish Government.

NHS Scotland Assure has so far supported the following projects at the full business case stage:

Cabinet last met on 28 June 2022 in Bute House, Edinburgh. The programme of travelling Cabinets was paused as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and there are currently no Cabinet meetings planned in the Highlands and Islands region.

The Government produces quarterly statistics, available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, which show how many parliamentary questions were cleared after the substantive date and those still outstanding at the time of audit.

An independent report on our consultation on potentially introducing further restrictions on advertising and promoting vaping products will be published this summer.

We will engage with a wide range of stakeholders, such as the Armed Forces Families Federations, the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, Forces Children Scotland and the Napier University’s Centre for Military Research, Education and Public Engagement, as well as schools and local authorities to ensure that the views and needs of children and young people from Armed Forces and veterans families are taken into account in development of future versions of the UK-wide Strategy For Our Veterans as well as our own Veterans Strategy Action Plan. We intend to publish imminently our latest Strategy Action Plan, during the development of which we engaged with the Families Federations.

Approaches to address the specific needs of the children of serving families are currently being considered through the work being undertaken jointly by the UK Government, Devolved Administrations and third sector on the development and implementation of the Ministry of Defence’s Families Strategy.

Marine Scotland officials have been in touch with the pay team and have confirmed that the remaining claims for pay for specified leave days will be paid in July’s salary. Steps are being taken to review the current process to reduce the chance of similar delays occurring in the future.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the newborn hearing test and newborn infant physical examination. These would need to be requested from health boards directly.

Further to the answer to question S6W-02448 which provided information on the number of babies screened using the bloodspot test in the newborn screening programme for each month between January 2019 and 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 provides information on the number of babies screened using the bloodspot test in the newborn screening programme, for each month in the period that followed from August 2021 to June 2022: