Chamber and committees

Health Boards are aware of the need to work within the nationally agreed prioritisation schedule to manage the administration of their vaccine supplies. This prioritisation will also include a limited number of non-clinical staff who are working in COVID-19 red pathways and/or as part of vaccinations teams. This includes ancillary staff, such as cleaners, porters, secretaries and receptionists, who may have social contact with patients but are not directly involved in patient care.

Some staff may also be prioritised ahead of others for the vaccine due to their age and/or underlying medical conditions.

In terms of the order in which we exit lockdown, the Scottish Government has always made clear that education should be the priority. In line with the advice of the COVID-19 Advisory Group on Education and Children's Issues, the first phase of children and young people returning to schools went ahead as planned from 22 February.

We will need to monitor the impact of this change very carefully before taking any further decisions. The need to properly assess the impact of the new limited return means we do not envisage, at this stage, any further return to school before 15 March.

As we consider these issues, we are of course doing everything we can to ensure that schools are as safe as possible for children, and for school staff. The guidance on reducing risks in schools, developed in partnership with the Education Recovery Group, sets out a range of additional safety mitigations.

To help Local Authorities to implement these measures, we will be providing local authorities and schools with an additional £40 million, as part of a wider £100 million package to accelerate school recovery. The success of this limited return, and the prospect of getting more pupils back later in March, very much depends on all of us continuing to abide by the wider restrictions in place.

We are not in a position to state, at this stage, at what point all children and young people will be able to return to education settings, as this is dependent on our monitoring and assessment of the first phase of pupils returning to school, and the wider societal picture in the coming weeks.

The Scottish Government remains in daily contact with all NHS Boards, including NHS Ayrshire and Arran, to ensure they continue to have the appropriate resources, capacity and staffing in place to provide a robust response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other pressures.

The NHS Winter Preparedness Plan, published on 28 October 2020, set out our over-riding priority: to ensure that the NHS is not overwhelmed. To that end, we can re-purpose approximately 2,400 acute beds nationally as part of our contingency planning; we have already doubled ICU capacity since the start of the pandemic, and have the ability to extend it further, subject to staffing and supplies. Mutual aid arrangements are also in place between NHS Boards to ensure there is enough capacity to deal with peak levels of demand. In addition, we continue to utilise national assets such as the NHS Louisa Jordan and the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, as well as the independent sector for a range of services, including urgent cancer treatment.

A number of measures have also been put in place to support Health Boards experiencing increased staff absence during the pandemic, including providing a further £500,000 to ensure additional extra practical support for the health workforce; allowing returning health and social care professionals and students to join the service and the continued successful vaccination of frontline health workers. In terms of staff wellbeing, we are establishing a Health and Social Care Mental Health Network to enhance existing mental healthcare provision. As part of the Mental Health Network, we have already set up a National Wellbeing Hub (www.promis.scot) and National Wellbeing Helpline (0800 111 4191): the National Wellbeing Hub contains a broad range of advice and evidence-based digital resources to help staff cope with issues such as stress, anxiety and resilience, and improve sleep; and the National Wellbeing Helpline provides a 24/7 service to those who require psychological support and can offer advice, signposting and onward referral to local services, where required.

We have invested £25m to support digital inclusion, which to date has delivered over 63,000 devices and almost 12,000 connectivity packages. In total, over 70,000 individuals will benefit from this investment.

In addition, we have made a further £45m available to local authorities which can be used flexibly to further support digital inclusion where necessary, and to provide additional staff or to deliver wider family support measures to support remote learning.

Local authorities and schools know their learners and families best. As such, they are best placed to identify those leaners who are suffering from digital exclusion, drawing on their strengthened understanding of need as a result of engaging with families on digital inclusion work to date.

The Scottish Government has emphasised to all Health Board Chief Executives the importance of ensuring individuals, who are clinically vulnerable or housebound and who are contacting them for an appointment, are offered alternatives options. Individuals who are unable to leave their own homes will receive their vaccination at home.

Reducing flood risk is a priority for this Government and we will continue to support authorities to deliver actions that protect our communities. To support flood protection measures, the Scottish Government provides £42 million each year to local authorities. In September 2020, the Programme for Government also committed an additional £150 million over the next five years to support flood risk management actions.

The Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 encourages a co-odinated, plan-led approach to flood risk management, which runs in six year cycles. Actions to reduce flood risk in North Ayrshire within the 2016-22 flood risk management cycle are included in the Ayrshire Local Flood Risk Management Plan. These actions include three flood protection schemes, the Upper Garnock Flood Protection Scheme (FPS), Mill Burn (Millport) FPS and the estimated £27.5 million Millport Coastal FPS, all of which are being progressed by North Ayrshire Council. The Scottish Government provides grant funding to cover 80% of the schemes costs.

SEPA and local authorities are currently in the process of reviewing and updating the Strategies and Local Plans for the 2022-28 cycle and these will be published for consultation later this year.

Following the publication of the Rail Services Decarbonisation Plan, Transport Scotland is working in partnership with developers of hydrogen fuel cell trains to accelerate fleet development within the wider Scottish Government objectives for Hydrogen powered Transport.

We have committed £3.5 million to deliver phase 2 of the zero emission train project which has already begun at Bo’ness. This will see a hydrogen fuel cell train converted in Scotland and develop a local supply chain to support longer term zero emission fleets introduction.

We recognise that globally, as well as here in Scotland, the aviation industry faces one of the longest recovery periods given the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on route networks. Which is why we have proposed to extend the 100% non-domestic rates relief for the aviation sector for another year (2021-22).

We will continue to work with the aviation industry to identify appropriate support packages to mitigate the impacts of Covid on international travel.

We are investing significantly in communities that face disadvantage. For example, last year more than £1.96 billion was spent in targeting support at low-income households, including over £672 million to support low income families with children.

We have committed to establishing a new Place Based Investment Programme which will be backed with £275 million capital over the next five years, supporting community regeneration, place, town centres, and 20 minute neighbourhoods ambitions right across Scotland. These plans include the continued delivery of the Regeneration Capital Grant Fund to which we recently announced a further £25 million worth of investment in 2021-22, including support for two new community regeneration projects in Greenock town centre.

We are also supporting investment through the £500 million Glasgow city region growth deal, in which Inverclyde Council is a full partner.

The Energy Efficient Scotland: Area Based Schemes have made over £7.3 million available to Inverclyde Council across the Parliamentary term. This funding has allowed over 900 homes in fuel poor areas to benefit from energy efficiency upgrades.

In addition, we have made more than £26 million available to Inverclyde Council through the attainment Scotland fund, of which £6 million is available this year.

In 2021-22, Inverclyde Council will receive a total funding package of £188.6 million to support local services, which includes an extra £4.3 million to support vital day to day services, equivalent to an increase of 2.4% compared to 2020-21. The day to day service funding includes £1.2 million to compensate the council should they choose to freeze council tax levels, helping to protect households. Inverclyde Council will also receive their share of the £259 million in 2021-22 to support COVID-19 pressures, which they will be able to spend as they see fit for the maximum benefit of their community.

SIMD data is a helpful tool that supports us to target resources across the public sector, and we will continue to work in partnership with local government and others to support work to reduce inequality and the regeneration of towns and cities.

We already know that the university sector in Scotland has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation remains dynamic, evolving as time goes on and the Scottish Funding Council will continue to monitor the position in order to present up-to-date sector information to Scottish Government, universities and the wider public. The most recent analysis (January 2021) suggests that the position is improving, with a forecast operating deficit for universities for Academic Year 2020-21 of round £50m compared to initial analysis in May 2020 of a forecasting operating deficit of between £384m and £651m.

Throughout the pandemic we have worked closely with our universities and their representative body, Universities Scotland, other stakeholders including trade and student unions and through the Further and Higher Education Covid-19 Ministerial Leadership Group, to build an understanding of both the immediate and longer term impact across teaching, research, staff and student issues. We have sought to act quickly and decisively to ensure universities are supported. The result of this is that our Higher institutions will receive over £100 million in additional financial support directly related to Covid from the Scottish Government across the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years.

We have also engaged regularly with the Scottish Funding Council and via the review commissioned by the Minster for Further Education, Higher Education and Science, will continue to explore future funding models and options for our university sector that will ensure they are viable and sustainable in the long-term. The outputs of the review will form an important part of the Government’s thinking on the future strategy for tertiary education and university research in Scotland as we look to our Universities to be at the heart of recovery, and seek to emerge from this crisis even stronger.