Chamber and committees

Guidance on COVID-19 testing in hospital settings has been published by Health Protection Scotland and is available here:

https://hps.scot.nhs.uk/web-resources-container/covid-19-guidance
-for-secondary-care/ .

Testing is currently underway to test individuals aged over 70 for COVID-19 on admission to hospital. This is in recognition that older people may present with atypical and non-specific symptoms. Those with a negative test result should then be tested every 4 days until they are discharged.

The Scottish Government published guidance on 26 May to those providing transport services including Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle operators on how they should assess risks and implement appropriate measures to ensure the safety of themselves, their staff and passengers during the Covid-19 crisis.

The decision whether or not to install protective barriers or safety screens is for licensing authorities, operators and the firm or individual operating the vehicle to make based on their own assessment of risk. Before considering installing a safety screen, operators should contact the relevant licensing authority to check that they will permit the installation and ensure that the screen and installation will meet their requirements.

The Scottish Government recognises the need to tackle on-street harassment, of which catcalling is one form. We recognise that such harassment is overwhelmingly experienced by women and girls.

Following the provisions of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill we aim to develop a standalone offence on misogynistic harassment and a Working Group will be established to take this forward. It will look at how criminal law deals with misogyny, including whether there are gaps in legislation that could be filled with a specific offence on misogynistic harassment. We are also taking forward work through the implementation of our Equally Safe strategy to tackle the underlying attitudes and inequalities that create the conditions for all forms of gender based violence, including sexual harassment.

We welcome the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) Open Budget Survey report as a contribution to understanding how the Scottish Budget process might be improved.

The 2017-18 Budget to which the SHRC report refers preceded the work of the Budget Process Review Group which reported in 2017 and resulted in changes to the budget process which have been implemented from 2018 onwards.

These changes include:

• publishing our first Medium-Term Financial Strategy in May 2018;
• publishing our first Fiscal Framework Outturn Report in September 2018;
• implementing a revised written agreement between Scottish Government and the Parliament’s Finance Committee in May 2018; and
• implementing a new Budget process in agreement with the Parliament, with initial changes for Draft Budget 2018-19 and further changes for Scottish Budget 2019-20.

I refer the member to my answer to question S5W-29253 on 9 June 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

I refer the member to my answer to question S5W-29253 on 9 June 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

I refer the member to my answer to question S5W-29253 on 9 June 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

I refer the member to my answer to question S5W-29253 on 9 June 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

We welcome the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) Open Budget Survey report as a contribution to understanding how the Scottish Budget process might be improved.

We are strongly committed to the principles of open government and accordingly we participate actively in the Open Government Partnership.

The current Open Government Partnership Scottish Action Plan includes Commitment 1 on Fiscal Transparency which is designed to begin to address the issues that have been raised in the SHRC report. The Action Plan is available at https://www.gov.scot/policies/improving-public-services/open-government-partnership/ . Because of the impact of COVID-19 the delivery of the Scottish Action Plan has been delayed until December 2020, but significant progress has been made.

Information is not gathered centrally about infections and deaths from COVID-19 in different layouts of hospital wards. Information is gathered by ward speciality.

Publically available data on total cases by NHS Board and deaths is published daily by The Scottish Government here .