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On 22 November Child Disability Payment was launched across Scotland. This has followed an initial pilot, whereby families of children and young people with a disability living in Dundee City, Perth & Kinross and Western Isles council areas, could apply for the benefit.

We have received positive anecdotal feedback throughout the pilot. Both parents and support workers have said that the application process has been easier and less daunting, and that the support offered by Social Security Scotland has been helpful and caring.

The first high level statistics covering the first 5 weeks of the pilot were published on 18 October 2021 and are available at gov.scot . The next set of Child Disability Payment statistics are due to be published in January 2022. This will cover the period from 26 July to 21 November 2021, and will provide us with the data that will allow us to carry out a more detailed evaluation.

We have also been inviting clients, staff and stakeholders to take part in research to share feedback and help us learn from their experience of the service during the pilot phase. This will be published in Spring 2022. Research will continue beyond national launch as we continue to look for ways to improve and enhance the service for the people of Scotland.

As set out in Evaluating the Devolution of Disability Benefits , we will begin a thematic evaluation of the policy changes that are being implemented with the roll-out of the disability benefits, including use of supporting information, client consultations and supporting information.

During 2021-22 the main focus will be to define the size, scope and research questions, and assessing the potential methods and data sources available. In addition, we have commissioned the evaluation of Child Winter Heating Assistance to report in Summer 2022.

Test and Protect’s contact tracing service can only identify close contacts based on the information provided by people who have tested positive, and we are grateful to everyone that reports all their contacts when engaging with the contact tracing system. We continue to ask people to engage with the service by phone or by completing the online tracing form, to provide as much information as possible about their close contacts during the infectious period. This ensures that the right public health advice can be offered to close contacts to cut off chains of virus transmission in the community.

We have introduced a range of measures, including increased use of digital and SMS communications and shortened call scripts for index case interviews, to ensure the contact tracing system continues to trace the contacts of people with Coronavirus and ensure they are given the right public health advice as quickly as possible, even when case numbers rise substantially. All decisions in relation to operational delivery of the contact tracing system have made in line with public health advice, including the continued prioritisation of higher risk cases. A combination of these changes is likely to have affected the average number of close contacts reported per case.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-04202 on 25 November 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 .

Decisions on local staffing requirements and recruitment are the responsibility of individual NHS Boards. However, Scottish Government officials are continually engaging with NHS Boards to identify particular areas of concern.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde are delivering a number of campaigns to fill vacancies and to recruit additional staffing. The Board are recruiting 222 Band 3 Health Care Support Workers (HCSW) to their Health and Social Care Partnerships and are targeting the recruitment of a further 200 HCSWs into Acute settings, as well as 20 Band 5 and 20 Band 6 Critical Care nurses. The Board have also recruited over 577 newly qualified nurses who have been commencing throughout October and November with some planning to commence in early 2022.

As a result of local and national efforts to recruit staff in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s staffing levels are up 4.7% or by 1,608.3 whole-time equivalent, since March 2020.

Source: NHS Education for Scotland Official NHS Workforce publication, data at June 2021.

We published an updated evidence paper on the Covid-19 status certification scheme on Friday 19 November 2021.

Public Heath Scotland publish a weekly COVID-19 statistical report every Wednesday which includes this information. As at 15 November 2021 the COVID Status app had been downloaded over 1.5 million. It is important to note a single user may choose to download the App on multiple devices so this total figure does not represent unique individuals.

As we do not track individual’s use of their certificates, it is not possible to indicate how many people have used their certificate.

For part’s (b) and (c), the Deputy First Minister wrote to the Covid-19 Recovery Committee setting out the information requested in detail. This can be accessed on the Scottish Parliament website here .

Each Health Board operates their own escalation policy for the management of inpatient capacity that includes well established processes with locally agreed trigger points for maintaining a safe service and ensuring patient safety. At present, we are only aware of NHS Lanarkshire operating at the highest level of their local escalation - “Black”.

Health Boards across the country are operating under significant pressure due to the direct and indirect consequences of the pandemic, which has been the biggest challenge the NHS has faced in its 73 year existence.

The Scottish Government is in daily contact with all Health Boards to monitor the pressures in the system and continues to support improvement work to minimise delays for patients no matter where they are in the system.

No meeting took place between the First Minister or Scottish Government officials and former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney during COP26.

We continue to engage on a four nations basis for example to agree the clinical standards that underpin the certification scheme including the types of vaccination that are considered valid, type of testing, period of validity of the results and to reach agreements on international travel certification.

The full contract notices are published on Public Contracts Scotland. See https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/show/search_view.aspx?ID=NOV432052 and https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/show/search_view.aspx?ID=NOV432062 . I also refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03620 on 17 November 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 .