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The Scottish Government has recently announced a suite of measures to continue to support NHS dentistry, including a vital funding package of up to £5M for improved ventilation in dental premises, and an extension of free PPE for the dental sector, which from this month has increased by up to 50%. This builds on the continued phased remobilisation of NHS dental services, ensuring that as many patients can be seen within the current set of infection, protection and control measures required for the safe operation of dental treatment.

NHS dental services are largely provided by independent dental contractors. Information on appointments is held by each individual dental practice.

The removal of all dental charges for NHS dental treatment is a Scottish Government manifesto commitment and more detail will be published in due course. These changes will take place in the lifetime of this parliament and the processes are currently underway.

I am pleased to announce our second update to the Covid-19 Vaccines Deployment Plan will be published later today.

The Plan reflects on our progress since March 2021 and explains how our COVID-19 vaccination programme is designed to be inclusive and that no-one is left behind, in order to protect individuals and the wider population of Scotland. The Plan also looks ahead to operationalising recent advice from the JCVI on vaccination of those under 18 years old, and the potential COVID-19 booster vaccination programme this autumn.

We continue to monitor the vaccination programme and will keep under review if and when a further update to the COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment Plan is required.

The UK government`s Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is responsible for the delivery of driving tests in Scotland. However, Transport Scotland meets regularly with the DVSA to explore ways in the delivery of driving tests could be expedited to ensure that waiting times to access a driving test are minimised as much as possible across Scotland. During our recent engagement, the DVSA confirmed that they have increased the number of practical tests being delivered each day and are also recruiting additional driving test examiners to further increase the number of tests that they can deliver including at weekends. Following the recent changes to indoor physical distancing rules in Scotland, announced by the First Minister on 13 July, Transport Scotland has worked with the DVSA to ensure that the number of driving theory tests being delivered in Scotland will be increased in line with the revised rules. As a result, an additional 4,500 driving theory tests will be available to book in Scotland between 19 July to 3 September.

Eligible Scottish domiciled (home) students studying towards a degree in Paramedic Science (BSc) at Scottish universities will be eligible for a new paramedic bursary and the additional allowances which will fully replicate the funding and administrative arrangements to the bursary offered to nursing and midwifery students. This Bursary will be offered to all eligible students in time for the beginning of the 2021-22 Academic Year.

I want to thank our health and care staff for their magnificent work to date. The last few months have been enormously challenging, with the expansion of our vaccination programme and the on-going demands of continuing to provide vital services to those requiring care.

While we have made great strides forward in dealing with the challenges that the pandemic has brought, the spread and impact of Covid continues to urge the need for caution in protecting the capacity of the NHS. Case numbers have continued to increase slowly over the last few weeks and our vaccination and Test and Trace resources have had to flex in response to emerging issues. All of this is taking place while our NHS continues to recover and so I want to continue with a measured and consistent approach to remobilising and renewing the vital services that we all rely upon. Additionally, we continue to be mindful of the impact on health and care staff, many of whom have been on the frontline of the Covid response for a considerable period.

It is clear that we need to continue to balance the capacity of the NHS to deal with Covid as well as the demands of emergency, urgent and planned care. With this in mind, I have decided that the NHS will remain on an emergency footing until at least 30 September 2021.

The Scottish Government is committed to implementing a new centre of excellence for rural and remote medicine and social care, and will work with a wide range of stakeholders to develop more detailed plans for this centre and associated timescales for delivery.

Prior to the start of the Covid-19 Pandemic, there were six Health Boards in Scotland who had been escalated to Stage 3 or above within the NHS Boards Performance Escalation Framework. This is the stage at which Boards are considered to require a higher level of support and oversight, from Scottish Government and/or other senior external support.

Boards can be escalated for a number of different reasons and can have more than one status, reflecting their individual positions. Reasons for escalation include:

• Financial position and financial management
• Operational Delivery/Performance
• Governance, leadership and culture
• Quality and safety

The six escalated Boards escalated were as follows:

• NHS Ayrshire and Arran
• NHS Borders
• NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
• NHS Lothian
• NHS Highland
• NHS Tayside

Following a recent review of escalated Boards by the Health and Social Care Management Board, and despite the challenges of responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the majority of Boards were found to have demonstrated sufficient improvement in relation to the issues which had led to their escalation to justify a reduction in their escalation status. The following table shows the changes which have now been made.

A number of research projects are currently underway across the UK, which will provide valuable data and evidence to inform the development of a national approach to integrating self sampling safely and reliably into the cervical screening programme.

Scotland is playing an active part in this work, with a pilot in NHS Dumfries and Galloway where self-sampling kits are being sent to screening participants who have never attended for cervical screening or who have not attended their most recent appointment.

The Scottish Government convened a working group in February, which is developing a work programme to ensure that the evidence on self-sampling can be gathered and evaluated, and to understand what changes will be needed to the current programme to allow widespread roll-out in the future.

While it continues to gather and evaluate the evidence on this matter, the National Screening Committee (UK NSC) has not yet recommended that self-sampling should be incorporated into the cervical screening programme.

The Scottish Government, alongside our partners in the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) programme, has played a key role in extending the reach of fibre broadband across Scotland. Independent broadband analysis site, thinkbroadband (the same site the UK Government quotes in its own figures), states that 94.6% of premises across Scotland are now able to access superfast broadband speeds of 30Mbps and above – up from just 59.3% in 2014, when DSSB deployment began.

Unfortunately, the Scottish Government does not hold the information you have requested. As telecoms regulator, Ofcom produces figures for numbers of properties in Scotland able to access superfast broadband - of 30 Megabits per second (30Mbps) and above - by year.

Unfortunately, the figures provided do not break down between residential and business properties and, on a directly comparable basis, only go as far back as 2017:

Please find information in the following tables.