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Contract negotiations with Dr Veronikis are a matter for NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) and, are subject to commercial confidentiality. NSS met with Dr Veronikis most recently on 21 June and the Government hopes that negotiations will be positively concluded imminently.

Under this government (since 2007), the number of Psychiatric Consultants across all Specialities in NHS Scotland has increased by 21.6% to 548.8 whole time equivalent posts as of March 2022.

In 2020-21 and 2021-22, the Scottish Government has invested in increasing the number of trainee places on Core and Specialist Psychiatry training programmes. The number of posts advertised for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry specialist training increased from 6 in 2020 to 10 in 2022.

The Scottish Government are working with NHS Education for Scotland and the Royal College of Psychiatry to better understand the challenges associated with recruitment and retention in Psychiatry and encourage medical students to consider a long-term career as a psychiatrist. This work includes the ‘Choose Psychiatry’ campaign, undergraduate taster sessions, and improved psychiatric placements at Foundation level.

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Training

Recruitment information regarding this trainee group has been recorded since 2013. The following figures refer to successfully recruited candidates and represent the cohort trained each year.

Recruitment to Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Specialist Training - Year 4)

Scottish Government Strategies are published and can be found at Publications - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

Information about strategies produced by local authorities is not held by Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government has no plans to update the published Resource Planning Assumptions at this time.

The spending review sets out the financial framework to support delivery of our commitments. It sets out high-level multi-year spending plans for the Scottish Government and does not replace the annual budget process.

Annual budgets will continue to be set through the annual parliamentary budget Bill process and the annual budget will be based on the latest fiscal information.

The replacement (planned and unplanned) of train services with bus replacement services remains an operational matter for ScotRail. Planned buses replace train services that have been impacted as a result of planned works on Scotland’s railway i.e. planned engineering works. ScotRail advise that 515 buses were booked during April 2022. This figure is particularly high with bus replacement services planned every day in April as a result of the Anderston works.

Unplanned buses replace train services that have been impacted as a result of driver shortages, trespassing onto the tracks, fleet issues, signalling issues, points failures and other track faults. ScotRail advise they were supplied with a total of 143 bus replacement services to cover unplanned train service disruption during April 2022.

The breakdown for each day during April 2022 for unplanned and planned bus replacement is as follows:-

We know that the cost-of-living crisis is having a huge impact on individuals and families across the country, and we continue to have conversations across the range of challenges faced. We are using our regular engagement with the UK Government to ask that more sustainable support is provided to those in greatest need, given that most of the levers currently remain reserved. Just last week my colleague Ms Forbes raised cost-of-living with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and urged the UK Government to do more to address the root cause of increasing fuel costs. We will continue to press the UK Government to use all of the powers and fiscal headroom at their disposal to address the cost-of-living crisis.

Scotland’s biotechnology sector is developing at a remarkable rate. In fact, last year the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre reported that we were on track to meet the targets in the 2019 National Plan for Industrial Biotechnology ahead of 2025.

As such, the final refresh of the National Plan, launched on 6 June 2022, increased the 2025 targets even further to: over 220 active companies, increasing associated turnover to £1.2 billion and over 4,000 direct employees in Industrial Biotechnology in Scotland.

The sector, and its strength, is also recognised in our National Strategy for Economic Transformation as a current and future key industry for Scotland, that will contribute to us delivering our Net Zero targets by 2045.

The Programme for Government 2016 included a commitment to provide a Baby Box for every baby born and living in Scotland containing essential items designed to provide practical help for parents.

Registration opened on 15 June 2017, and delivery of boxes nationwide began on 15 August 2017 for all babies born and resident in Scotland.

Please find breakdown of Baby Boxes delivered annually since the scheme began:

2017 – 22,001 boxes

2018 – 48,524 boxes

2019 – 47,202 boxes

2020 – 42,636 boxes

2021 – 42,452 boxes

2022 – 17,973 boxes (please note that data is up to the 10th of June)

All valid paper returns from Scotland’s Census 2022 will be scanned in full and digital images created. In addition, digital data from responses for all scanned census returns, including online or paper, will be produced and retained.

High quality scanned image files for all paper census returns will be retained by National Records of Scotland (NRS) and stored in a permanent archive for historical research purposes in future.

Census information is kept secure and confidential for 100 years.