Chamber and committees

Transport Scotland continues to work collaboratively with ScotRail to increase the number of cycle spaces on board passenger services on Scotland’s Railway.

Details of when the planned increase in cycle capacity on ScotRail trains will take place, broken down by route and train class is available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 62443).

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-00061 on‎ 26 May 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 Scottish Government is committed to the introduction of a bursary for student paramedics. It is presently working with the Student Awards Agency Scotland to examine the impact on operational and system functionality to support an introduction at the earliest opportunity.

Weddings, civil partnerships and funerals are recognised as life events within Scottish Government guidance. Weddings, civil partnerships and funerals are of particular importance to people and society and are protected under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Wedding receptions and funeral wakes mark the social and personal importance of these protected life events. Additionally, there are very practical reasons why funerals cannot be postponed for any length of time. Therefore, these events have been given particular exemptions within the Levels Table compared to the general guidance on other life events.

There are no specific exemptions at this time for birthday parties amongst adults, or gatherings to mark a wedding anniversary or other life event, which remain subject to the general restrictions on people gathering.

Therefore, other events such as birthday parties for adults, wedding anniversary celebrations and celebrations after a religious life event should only take place in line with the general rules for meeting others indoors and outdoors.

The full guidance on protection levels and what individuals can and cannot do at each level can be viewed here: Coronavirus (COVID-19) protection levels: what you can do - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

To date, we have required travellers to use the NHS tests, which can be booked through the UK Government’s booking portal for international travel.

The purpose of these tests is to identify any positive cases as quickly as possible so that contact tracing and genomic sequencing can be carried out and minimise the chances of delays and the risk of community transmission of the virus.

A robust and fast flow of data from laboratories to Public Health Scotland is therefore essential, and we have had concerns that private sector tests would not be able to meet these requirements.

However, we fully understand how difficult the restrictions on international travel are, both for the sector and for individuals who are keen to travel to see family, as well as for other important reasons. We are therefore exploring options to allow private sector testing to be used for people arriving in Scotland, provided we can ensure the swift and accurate flow of data to Public Health Scotland.

The cost for training a student in dentistry is comprised of a number of components, including costs for university training, clinical outreach, and vocational training. The university costs for Scottish-domiciled undergraduates are approximately £32,641 for Year 1 (pre-clinical) students and £42,989 for students in Years 2-5 (clinical). For students in Year 5 there are also additional clinical outreach costs of approximately £31,467. The costs for the one-year vocational training that dentists must undertake after graduation is approximately £61,201 per dentist.

Answer: As detailed in the SNP manifesto, the new administration is committed to publishing a refreshed Energy Strategy to map out Scotland’s energy transition.

The Scottish Government’s Rail Decarbonisation Action Plan, published in July 2020, sets out how domestic passenger services in Scotland will be decarbonised by 2035.

Public control of ScotRail will facilitate the integration of rolling stock and train service plans with infrastructure works and thus improve the efficient whole system delivery of the Rail Decarbonisation Action Plan.

The need for enhanced infection prevention and control measures to reduce the transmission of coronavirus in a dental setting has had a serious impact on the level of clinical training that students have been able to undertake during the 2020-21 academic year. Due to this, schools have had to make the difficult decision to require dental students to repeat a year in order to prioritise student learning and patient safety.

We recognise that this is disappointing and that it is a significant ask of students, which is why we are providing an enhanced bursary, of up to £6,750, during the 2021-22 academic year. Students will have the opportunity to apply for a bursary to the value of their normal student loan award which they will not have to repay. Students with particular circumstances will continue to be eligible for other sources of bursary support such as the Dental Student Support Grant (DSSG) and SAAS bursaries.

Early medical abortion at home and the changes adopted in March 2020 to enable women to take the first abortion drug, mifepristone, at home where this was felt to be clinically appropriate for them and where the patient wished to do so has been an important measure to ensure abortion services continued to be delivered throughout the pandemic, without delays. The ‘Pills by Post’ service is an English service, which is not provided in Scotland. While many NHS Boards in Scotland are following similar arrangements, medication is in most cases delivered or collected from a clinic, rather than being sent by post.

The Scottish Government launched a public consultation on the future arrangements for early medical abortion at home on 30 September 2020, which closed on 5 January 2021. Responses to the consultation have been published on the Scottish Government’s Citizen Space website. The future arrangements for early medical abortion at home are being considered in light of the findings from the consultation and other available evidence and the Scottish Government plans to confirm our approach this summer.