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As the Deputy First Minister made clear in parliament, given the inflationary pressure on our budget it is currently difficult to identify at this stage where underspends will emerge.

Full details of all 2023-24 funding assumptions, including the Scotland Reserve, will be detailed in the Scottish Budget document when it is laid before parliament in December.

A full breakdown of the implications of the Emergency Budget Review (EBR) measures on the Scottish Budget was included within the guide to the Autumn Budget Revision (ABR) provided to the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

Of the initial £560 million line items included within the Deputy First Minister’s letter to the Committee in September, £369 million is included within the ABR as either a return of budget or a funding change. The balancing figure of £191 million are reductions to previously unfunded pressures which have emerged since the Scottish Budget was published and savings which will come through the SBR exercise.

The new commitments detailed in the EBR document published earlier this month are also reflected in the ABR position. The additional savings outlined will be processed, where necessary as part of the Spring Budget Revision.

(a) CalMac Ferries carry out bi-annual timetable consultations with nominated ferry groups ahead of each timetable period (summer/winter). During this community consultation the groups are expected to liaise with their respective communities and submit the consensus view from that community.

(b) On Serco NorthLink Ferries (SNF) services, island communities can influence changes to both the passenger and freight vessel timetables through regular stakeholder engagement with SNF and Transport Scotland, such as the Shetland and Orkney External Transport Forums, or they can contact SNF directly with any proposals.

The National Audiology Review Group continues its independent review of services having most recently convened on 25 October. The Cabinet Secretary will shortly be meeting with the Review’s Chair for an update on their progress and their developing recommendations.

The review is pursuing four workstreams encompassing the lived experience, governance, quality assurance and education and will fully report in the new year.

The Scottish Government believes that the independent contractor model of general practice is the model preferred by most GPs and is committed to maintaining it to ensure general practice remains an attractive profession (the BMA’s “The future of general practice” survey 2015 found that 82% of GPs supported maintaining the status quo).

It is for Health Boards to decide who to contract with to provide primary medical services, making use of such resources as the Health and Care Experience Survey which provides an indication of satisfaction rates across a range of local services, including GP practices, in Scotland as they do so.

As I stated in Parliament in May, community hospitals form an integral part of local health-care delivery systems, providing care closer to people’s homes which is personalised, holistic and patient-centred.

In April 2020, following the emergence of the COVID Pandemic all areas developed surge plans. As part of this surge planning Dumfries and Galloway command and control took the decision to temporarily close 4 cottage hospital in-patients facilities to allow for surge. It also allowed the partnership to support more people at home, which we knew was the safest place for their care. Additionally, the partnership opened 18 intermediate care beds in Mountainhall Treatment Centre.

Following the pandemic it is essential that services continue to evolve and develop new ways of working that can keep people safe at home, or in a homely setting for as long as possible. However, decisions regarding the future of local services are best done at a local level, in consultation with the local population who use them.

Scotland is making excellent progress in the winter vaccination programme, when compared to the other UK nations. The latest published figures show that, as at 6 th November, Scotland has provided 87.8% of older adult care home residents and 55.7% of those aged 50 and over with a winter COVID-19 vaccine.

While differences in the way statistics are collected means that the figures are not always directly comparable, England has reported an uptake of 58.0% among older adult care home residents, and 53.5% among those aged 50 and over as at 6 th November.

Scotland’s winter vaccination programme also compares favourably to that of Wales, where, according to the latest data, 80.4% of older adult care home residents and 53.0% of those aged 50 and over have taken up the offer of a winter COVID-19 vaccination.

As in all previous phases of the pandemic, Scottish Government officials continue to meet with and communicate with their UK Government and other Four Nations counterparts almost daily, on a range of different areas of work related to COVID-19 vaccination.

Regular topics of discussions include security and supply, communications and marketing approaches, data collection and analysis, COVID-19 policy and planning, the progress of our respective winter COVID-19 vaccination programmes across the Four Nations and to share learning and best practice.

Information on cases of sepsis is only held centrally for people admitted to hospital.

Public Health Scotland publish this information in their Annual Statistical Report on Acute Hospital Activity and NHS Beds Information . This includes data on hospital stays with a diagnosis of sepsis by NHS Board of residence and local authority area at tables 5 and 6.

Notwithstanding NHS Lanarkshire’s staffing levels are at a record high, with 33% growth under the SNP government compared to 22.1% across NHSScotland, we are providing continued assistance by investing in domestic labour supply, international recruitment, training, and retention.

That is why we have a £600 million package of measures that will get us through the winter, which includes hiring up to 750 nurses, midwives and allied health professionals from overseas and 250 additional support staff across acute, primary care and mental health.

Over the last 10 years we have doubled the number of funded places for Nursing and Midwifery to a target intake in 2022-23 of 4,837. Scotland already trains more doctors per head than elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and we’re working to increase Scotland’s medical undergraduate intake by 500 by the end of the parliament.