Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not provide direct support to land managers to manage beavers through either lethal control or translocation.

However, NatureScot, through the Scottish Beaver Mitigation Scheme, offers free advice and support to land managers and can provide and install equipment to help them mitigate the impact of beavers on their land. More information about the support available from NatureScot under this scheme is available on their website - Beaver Mitigation Scheme | NatureScot

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the 2021 grade results broken down by state and independent school.

The SQA plan to publish information on results be centre type - Attainment Statistics for every National Qualification in 2021, tabulated by Centre Type (Education Authority Schools, Independent Schools, Colleges) - on their website ( Statistics 2021 - SQA ) on 21 September 2021.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the 2021 grade results broken down by state and independent school.

The SQA plan to publish information on 2021 results broken down by centre type on their website ( Statistics 2021 - SQA ) on 21 September 2021. This will provide information on the percentage of entries which resulted in a grade A, B, C etc.

The Scottish Government recognises how important healthy meals are for boosting children’s energy, concentration and behaviour which, in turn, leads to improvements in academic attainment.

All children in primaries 1 to 3 have benefitted from access to free school lunches since January 2015, and from this month all children in funded early learning and childcare are receiving a free meal in every session. Ministers are now committed to going further by expanding free school meals to all pupils in primary and special schools during the course of this parliamentary session, as well as introducing free year-round breakfast and lunch provision to support children outside of the school term. We are also committed to piloting approaches to universal meal provision in secondary schools.

To start delivering on this commitment, we have provided local authorities with funding of £49.75 million to enable them to provide support to families who are eligible for free school meals during the school summer holidays, and to expand the provision of free school lunches during school term-time to all children in primaries 4 and 5, throughout the course of this school year. Further expansion of universal free school lunches will be delivered for children in primaries 6 and 7 by August 2022.

In addition to the free meal commitments, the Scottish Milk and Healthy Snack Scheme launched on 1 August 2021 replacing the existing UK Nursery Milk Scheme in Scotland. All pre-schoolers who spend two hours or more a day in eligible childcare settings registered with the scheme will be entitled to a serving of fresh milk. Unlike the UK scheme, a piece of fruit or portion of vegetables will also be offered and children who cannot drink cow’s milk for medical, ethical or religious reasons will be offered a specified non-dairy alternative.

This is a major programme of change during this Parliament that will deliver benefits for hundreds of thousands of children.

How to treat ear wax is a clinical decision: ear syringing is not the current preferred procedure and is no longer routinely provided by clinicians.

NHS Lanarkshire has continued to provide services to patients throughout the pandemic. However, due to the pressures of the pandemic some routine condition management needed to be paused but only in those instances where it is safe to do so.

Patients who have sought private treatment will not be reimbursed.

Current guidance for ear irrigation services is that patients should speak to their pharmacist for minor problems and patients with particularly troublesome symptoms should contact their GP to discuss the most suitable treatment. This guidance is available online at NHS Inform and was last updated on 22 December 2020.

From 9 August, national guidance was updated to remove physical distancing requirements in most settings. This, however, did not extend to health and social care settings.

On 11 August, the Chief Nursing Officer Directorate (CNOD) commissioned NSS Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare Associated infections (ARHAI) and Public Health Scotland (PHS) to review current Infection Prevention and Control guidance as a matter of urgency, with a view to implementing a step by step reduction of physical distancing in non-clinical/para-clinical areas. ARHAI and PHS produced draft guidance which went out for consultation with key stakeholders including NHS Chief Executive Officers on 18 August with a closing date of 19 August.

ARHAI and PHS are currently drafting updated guidance which will issue to boards once this has been formalised.

The Scottish Government works with partners to encourage all forms of sport and physical activity to be made available to all people across Scotland.

We provided £1.72 million of funding to enhance work led by Scottish Swimming and local authorities to provide swimming lessons for primary school children across Scotland between 2011 and 2015. An evaluation of the programme was subsequently carried out.

sportscotland works in partnership with all local authorities to invest in and support the Active Schools Network. Active Schools aims to provide more and higher quality opportunities to take part in sport and physical activity before school, during lunchtime and after school, and to develop effective pathways between schools and sports clubs in the local community. In academic year 2018/19 there were 50,954 swimming visits in 18-19 across 21 local authorities.

We are continuing to work with partners, including Scottish Swimming to consider how the provision of community swimming could be expanded.

ACER UK Limited was one of three companies to submit a tender for the contract for phase two delivery of the national standardised assessments in Scotland – incorporating both the Scottish National Standardised Assessments and their Gaelic equivalent, the Measaidhean Coitcheann Niseanta airson Foghlam tron Ghidhlig.

ACER’s tender did not progress to the Price Analysis stage of the evaluation as it did not achieve the minimum requirements for the Quality Analysis stage. Cost comparisons with the successful tender cannot therefore be drawn.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring there is resilience and capacity in the health and social care system to aid us in our mobilisation, support staff to recover from previous COVID-19 waves, and to manage the need to remain vigilant against any future wave.

The most recently published data indicates a total of 258,269 patients were seen at new outpatient appointments during the first quarter of 2021. This is down 20.4% from the same period in 2020, prior to implementation of social distancing restrictions. At 31 March 2021, 48.1% of those waiting for a new outpatient appointment had been waiting 12 weeks or FEWER. This IS down from 74.4% in the same period in 2020. At 31 March 2021,184,224 new outpatients had experienced ongoing waits greater than 12 weeks, up 177.8% from the same period in 2020 (66,325).

It is difficult to quantify the impact that the two-metre social distancing restrictions have had on capacity and throughput in outpatient settings, not least because of the differences in Wave one where elective services halted and Wave two where services began to remobilise. In addition to this there is considerable variance in the layout, structure and fabric of NHS facilities across Scotland.

Whilst the two metre distancing restrictions will have played a part in capacity and throughput, other factors will also have influenced them. These include bed closure, staff absences (including those who have been deployed elsewhere to assist with the pandemic or were shielding) and throughput lost to other IPC controls, which include removal of beds to reduce potential risk of COVID-19 transmission.

There has been a change in the way services have been delivered in outpatient settings, for example – staggered waiting times to avoid overcrowding within these areas/ reduce footfall, one-way access/egress and the use of Near Me where possible to avoid face to face consultations.