Chamber and committees

Scottish Government Officials are in contact with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about the current Energy Charter Treaty negotiations with a view to identifying any impact on Scotland .

The Scottish Government’s annual report on our Vision for Trade recognised the widespread concerns about Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) in free trade agreements (FTAs). We have consistently called on the UK Government to ensure that any ISDS mechanism does not prevent Scotland and the rest of the UK from regulating on health, social, environmental and economic matters.

Any ISDS system must be transparent, based on judicial procedures, and permit meaningful representations by all parties with a potential stake in the matter. Provisions in this area have the potential to impact Scotland significantly, limit the ability of the Scottish Parliament to regulate in devolved areas and constrain action to achieve our net-zero goal.

The annual report on Scotland’s Vision for Trade can be accessed here: Scotland's Vision for Trade: annual report - March 2022 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Since the contract award in 2015, the First Minister announced the preferred bidder status of Ferguson Marine on 31 August 2015, met with Jim McColl on 31 May 2017 and attended the launch of 801 on 21 November 2017.

Individual health boards are responsible for allocating staff, in recognition that they best understand local priorities and needs. The Scottish Government understands that many NHS staff have been unavoidably redeployed since 2020 to support the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but that as the pandemic subsides, staff will begin to revert to their pre-Covid duties.

The Scottish Government welcomes this, but remains committed to working closely with Health boards to support recovery of sexual health and blood borne virus services, including those focused on Hepatitis C, through on-going engagement with the Scottish Health Protection Network and development of the next iteration of the sexual health and Blood Borne Viruses Framework.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of measuring post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infections, or long COVID, in Scotland. This is needed to help forecast and plan the provision of healthcare services for people experiencing long COVID.

Currently the best source of data about people with long COVID in Scotland is the monthly Office for National Statistics (ONS) reporting on ‘Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK’. The ONS survey sample is weighted to represent people aged two years and over living in private households in the UK. This contrasts with the ZOE COVID Symptoms Study, whose participants are self-selecting and are not necessarily representative of the whole population.

The most recent ONS monthly report, published on 6 May 2022, covers the four-week period ending 3 April 2022 ( Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) ). It showed that in Scotland:

• An estimated 151,000 people (2.88%) of the private residential population, who had (or suspected they had) COVID-19, self-reported experiencing long COVID of any duration .
• An estimated 105,000 people (2.00%) of the private residential population, who had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously , self-reported experiencing long COVID.
• An estimated 64,000 people (1.22%) of the private residential population, who had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 months previously , self-reported experiencing long COVID.

It is estimated that self-reported long COVID symptoms were adversely affecting the day-to-day activities of 107,000 people in private households in Scotland with long COVID of any duration, with an estimated 36,000 of these individuals reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been limited a lot.

Going forward, Public Health Scotland will lead on surveillance of long COVID. It is currently anticipated that this will be undertaken via the EAVE II study, described below.

The Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office has funded nine research projects designed to improve our understanding of the longer term effects of long COVID. Three projects focus on measuring the prevalence and symptoms of long COVID. All started in early 2021 and will run for two years.

LTE2015.pdf (scot.nhs.uk) ‘Developing and validating a risk prediction model for long COVID-19’. Undertaken by the University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with Public Health Scotland, this research uses the EAVE II study, originally funded by the Medical Research Council ( An Introduction to EAVE II | The University of Edinburgh ). EAVE II used a pseudonymised patient dataset to track the COVID-19 pandemic as it unfolded across Scotland. This dataset will now be used to create a tool to identify people at greatest risk of developing long COVID. In the course of developing that tool, the research will generate data about the number of people in Scotland diagnosed with long COVID and their use of health services.

lte2006.pdf (scot.nhs.uk) ‘Defining and understanding the longer-term effects of COVID-19: a mixed methods study exploring the frequency, nature, and impact of ‘long COVID’ in the Scottish population’. Undertaken by the university of Glasgow, this study will identify how many people continue to be unwell, their symptoms, and how it affects their lives. Scottish adults who had a positive COVID-19 test, and a negative test comparison group, will be sent an SMS message inviting them to take part in the study. If they agree, they will answer questions about their health before and after COVID-19, and any effect on their lives, with the questions repeated at regular intervals.

LTE2008.pdf (scot.nhs.uk) ‘COVID-19: Tracking Persistent Symptoms in Scotland (TraPSS)’ – undertaken by the University of the West of Scotland. This project aims to improve our understanding of long COVID in the Scottish population, and particularly in people whose original symptoms were relatively mild. The current evidence describing the types of symptoms other studies have reported will be reviewed, and people will be surveyed at different stages of recovery to find out what kinds of persistent symptoms they have.

The Scottish Government gives full consideration to ensuring all human rights obligations are stringently assessed and observed for all Police Scotland requests for overseas deployments, including to Colombia. For our part, the Scottish Government condemns human rights abuses wherever they occur and has always been clear that Scottish public authorities, including Police Scotland, should act to promote human rights and to challenge poor practice in the context of any engagement with overseas partners

Police Scotland complete an Overseas Security and Justice Assistance assessment prior to any approach to the Scottish Government to ensure that all activity is consistent with all domestic and international human rights obligations. All Police Scotland engagement with Colombia has been undertaken with the full support of the British Embassy in Bogota, and the UN International Organization for Migration (UN IOM). Safeguards have been built in to the arrangements for the deployment so that appropriate action can be taken should any human rights concerns be identified by Police Scotland officers. These are as follows:

• All interventions by Police Scotland incorporate measures to reduce the risk of human rights violations.
• Training on Human Rights is incorporated into all courses and interventions.
• Police Scotland retains and provides for reduction, suspension or stopping assistance, if they identify any human rights concerns.
• Police Scotland staff are specifically briefed to raise participants’ awareness that good practice respects human rights at every opportunity.

The Scottish Government supports Police Scotland’s international activity which involves reaching out to all parts of the world, including Colombia. This activity supports the prevention of crime at source and ensures the sharing of best practice in policing in order to help the stabilisation of communities beyond our borders. All Police Scotland activity is underpinned by a human rights-based approach which has a strong focus on community engagement. Central to that is an emphasis on de-escalating conflict and ensuring that the right to protest can be freely and peacefully exercised.

Ministers and Civil Servants travel for a range of reasons including ensuring that the people of Scotland are effectively represented and ensuring that Scotland’s voice is heard on important issues.

The purpose of the trip to Catalonia was to further engage with Catalonian Government on agriculture, food and drink and climate change following engagement at COP26 and moreover attend Seafood Expo Global event. The Seafood Expo is a major seafood event where many key Scottish seafood companies exhibit as well as international companies and organisations.

Total costs (Flights and hotels for Minister, Private Office and Food and Drink officials) was: £3165.49. This can be split into circa £1340 in flights and £1850 in accommodation.

Incidental and meals expenses maybe claimed by officials in line with travel and subsistence policy and Ministerial expenses will be published in due course.

The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022 requires licensing authorities to consult with such persons as they consider appropriate in preparing and reviewing their temporary exemptions policy statement. This is a discretionary power to exempt premises from the requirement to have a short-term let licence for a specific period.

The Licensing Order also provides licensing authorities with powers to include additional licence conditions. We expect licensing authorities to include additional conditions on the licence documentation provided to the host or operator; and to publish their additional conditions on their website, together with the criteria and circumstances they will use to determine when these apply.

While there is no requirement to consult on additional licence conditions, licensing authorities may choose to do so as they consider appropriate. It is our understanding that a number of licensing authorities are planning to consult, or have already undertaken consultation, about their policies for short-term let licensing.

Attrition rates vary each year across all degree programmes, it is therefore not possible to predict attrition rates for future cohorts. However, we have observed that course completion rates for pre-registration nursing programmes have been steadily improving year-on-year, and we anticipate that this trend will continue.

As postgraduate medical students do not form part of the controlled medical school intake the Scottish Government is unable to respond.

Universities are independent, autonomous institutions responsible for their own selection procedures and offers, with intake numbers and the breakdown of these a decision for each individual medical schools.