Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-10034

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to ensure that universities and colleges in (a) the north east and (b) Scotland have the resources and courses available to provide "transition training" for oil and gas industry workers.

In recognition of the particular challenges the North East has faced as result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the downturn in oil and gas, we have allocated £14.3m to the North East Economic Recovery and Skills Fund, which offers over 3,000 training opportunities in addition to supporting hundreds of local businesses at a critical time for the local economy. We have worked closely with local partners to develop proposals aligned to the City Region economic priorities of diversification and net zero transition, including local authorities, Skills Development Scotland, Opportunity North East, Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Funding Council and local universities.

This programme aligns with existing nationwide upskilling and reskilling programmes of support for colleges and universities as we work towards a just transition, including the Young Person’s Guarantee, the National Transition Training Fund, the Flexible Workforce Development Fund and the Green Jobs Workforce Academy.

In 2022-23, we are also progressing key actions from the Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan (CESAP) focused on inspiring and empowering young people; supporting upskilling to meet emerging green jobs requirements; aligning work-based learning, Further and Higher Education provision to meet the needs of the net zero transition; facilitating behaviour change and helping employers capitalise on opportunities, and driving change in the skills system. The CESAP is being driven forward by an Implementation Steering Group comprised of central and local government and its agencies, education and skills providers, industry and independent experts.

Question reference: S6W-10029

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much it plans to invest in renewables capital expenditure in the north east region, and what it is doing to encourage, facilitate and remove obstacles to private investment in renewables capital expenditure in the north east region.

The Scottish Government is providing support to encourage investment in renewables in the north east through a number of funds and programmes. These include, but are not limited to, the £500 million Just Transition Fund for North East and Moray which opened on 31 May. Bids to the first year’s allocation of £20 million are currently being assessed. The Just Transition Fund complements other Scottish Government commitments to the sector in the North East – such as our £125m City Region Deal investment, including £90m for the Net Zero Technology Centre and the £75m Energy Transition Fund (ETF).The ETF will protect existing jobs and create new jobs in the North East, and across Scotland by opening up opportunities through energy transition and harnessing private sector funding. As an example, our investment of £26.3m in the Energy Transition Zone is helping to unlock a further £64m in private investment for the first phase. The Net Zero Technology Transition Programme delivered by the Net Zero Technology Centre has also leveraged match funding of £17m from industry for phases 1&2 as a direct result of our £17m investment in the programme.

The draft Hydrogen Action Plan committed £100 million hydrogen funding for 2022-2026 through the Emerging Energy Technologies Fund (EETF). This is a Scotland-wide fund to support Hydrogen, CCUS and the development of negative emissions technologies. In June 2022, we launched the first tranche of the EETF via the £10 million Hydrogen Innovation Scheme. The remaining £90 million hydrogen investment programme is expected to launch in Autumn 2022 and will focus on supporting rapid renewable hydrogen production from Scotland’s abundant renewable energy resources.

Scotland’s natural resources, which include strong and consistent wind resource, along with our established expertise in offshore oil and gas, skilled offshore workforce, excellent port structure and strong innovation hub, make Scotland one of the best places in the world to develop offshore wind and reap the supply chain benefits from private sector investment. The recent ScotWind leasing round demonstrates this, by delivering around £700 million in option fee revenues to the public purse, plus the ScotWind projects committed to investment of up to £25 billion across the Scottish supply chain across the 17 Scotwind offshore wind projects as set out in their Supply Chain Development Statements

Question reference: S6W-10049

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the reported increasing number of cases of COVID-19, what consideration it has given to making additional support available for people who are clinically vulnerable with neurological conditions.

Whilst prevalence of COVID remains high this is not translating into severe illness and deaths in the same way as earlier in the pandemic due largely to vaccination. So we would encourage everyone who is eligible to take up their boosters as soon as these are offered to ‘top up’ their immune response. The autumn booster vaccination will be offered to people aged over 50 and those at highest risk aged 5 and over – this will include people with a chronic neurological disease.

There are additional treatment options for selected groups of people with COVID-19 who are thought to be at greater risk; this includes, but is not limited to, individuals with rare neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease and myasthenia gravis. More information, including background on the eligibility criteria and access arrangements, can be found on NHS Inform.

There are people who do still have a higher risk from Covid-19, such as those who are immunosuppressed. We are asking these people to act on the advice of their own GP or specialist clinician who knows their individual circumstances best. It’s important that everyone in society remembers there are people who are less able to mount a full immune response to the virus because of a heath condition or treatment they’re on. And there are measures we are still advising people to take to protect those people, and themselves. We have published guidance online to help people who are immunosuppressed to make decisions based on their own risk: Guidance for immunosuppressed people - Coronavirus (COVID-19): advice for people who were on the Highest Risk List - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Many people in this group are eligible for booster vaccinations and antiviral or monoclonal antibody treatments if they fall ill with Covid-19.

We continue to monitor the outcome of research into new medicines and treatments which may be of future benefit to patients in Scotland. The UKHSA is also completing in testing against variants for a number of drugs, details of which can be found here: COVID-19 therapeutic agents: technical briefings - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) . These tests will give experts information about the likelihood of treatment effectiveness.

We continue to engage with a number of charities and organisations who work with, and provide support to, people with neurological conditions.

Question reference: S6W-10046

Asked by: Richard Leonard, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many people have been diagnosed with long COVID in each NHS board area.

This is a matter for the NHS Boards. The information requested is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government recognises that accurate data on the number of people diagnosed with long COVID is needed to forecast and plan for the need for healthcare services arising from long COVID. Public Health Scotland will lead on surveillance of long COVID. It is currently anticipated that this surveillance will be undertaken via the EAVE II study, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh ( About EAVE II | The University of Edinburgh ). Funded by the Medical Research Council, the EAVE II study has used a pseudonymised patient dataset to track the COVID-19 pandemic across Scotland. In a separate project funded by the Chief Scientist Office, the EAVE II dataset will be used to create a tool to identify people at greatest risk of developing long COVID. The findings will in due course provide information about the number of people diagnosed with long COVID, including a breakdown by NHS Board.

Question reference: S6W-10050

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the number of people who are clinically vulnerable and are (a) continuing to shield and (b) restricting their activities due to COVID-19.

The Public Health Scotland COVID-19 Shielding Programme impact and experience survey which was published in March 2022 reported that 81% of respondents still make decisions that are mainly influenced by fear of COVID-19 infection, and 36% still try to minimise all physical contact with other households. While this data relates to a survey completed between 25 October 2021 and
‎ 7 November 2021, we know there are still people who continue to limit activities and contacts with other households.

The advice for people to shield was paused on the 1 August 2020. Since 19 July 2021 the Chief Medical Officer has advised people on the Highest Risk List to follow the same guidance and take the same precautionary measures as the rest of the population, unless advised otherwise by their GP or clinician who will understand their health condition and individual circumstances best.

The Highest Risk List (previously Shielding List) ended on 31 May 2022. The decision to end the list was based on evidence of the impact of vaccinations and treatments, which lowered the risk from COVID-19 for everyone in Scotland (including those who were on the Highest Risk List). The evidence to support the decision was published in our Evidence Review , which was also shared with GPs, clinicians and other healthcare partners in order to assist with discussions with patients about their risks.

We know there are a number of people who remain at higher risk of COVID-19, for example, people who are immunosuppressed because of a medical condition or treatment. We have published guidance for these people, giving information about access to support and steps they can take to safely participate in activities they enjoyed before the pandemic.

The Chief Medical Officer also wrote to everyone on the Highest Risk List to make them aware of their risks following vaccination. This included letting people know if they were no longer considered highest risk based on what we know now about COVID-19 as well as the treatments available.

People who remain at higher risk from COVID-19 may be eligible for new treatments such as antivirals or antibody treatments as well as additional booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Before we ended the Highest Risk List, we ensured we had a robust identification process in place in order to continue to quickly and accurately people who should be prioritised for vaccination, for treatments and, if the threat level increases, for additional protective advice. We are therefore able to respond very quickly if the situation around COVID-19 changes, in order to protect people who remain at highest risk.

Public Health Scotland will continue to identify people at highest risk with the help of the NHS. If needed, we could again write to people at highest risk and reopen the text messaging service used before.

In line with our Staying Safe and Protecting Others guidance , we continue to strongly encourage people and businesses to take sensible precautions to protect themselves and others. This includes choosing to wear face coverings where and when appropriate, alongside following advice on hand hygiene and ventilation. The Distance Aware scheme is also available to anyone who wants to signal to others they would like more space around them.

We continue to engage with a number of charities and organisations who work with, and provide support to, people who were on the Highest Risk List, and people who remain at higher risk from COVID-19.

We know many people need more time to consider their risk of COVID-19 in order to gradually resume the activities they enjoyed before the pandemic.

Question reference: S6W-10023

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the May 2022 publication from Robert Gordon University, Making the Switch: The future shape of the offshore energy workforce in the North-East of Scotland.

The Scottish Government welcomed the findings in the Review which was funded through our £14.3m North East Economic Recovery and Skills Fund (NEERSF). The Review clearly demonstrates that, with the right investment, the North East of Scotland could support 9,000 more offshore energy jobs by 2030 than it currently does.

The just transition to a net zero economy is one of our greatest economic opportunities. Scotland has the potential to be a net zero global energy hub, that leaves no one behind by supporting existing oil & gas roles into the renewables and low carbon roles of the future.

Question reference: S6W-09962

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 25 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether an analysis of deprivation was carried out but not published for the cancer survival statistics published on 5 July 2022.

Question reference: S6W-10092

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 29 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how it will support the Scottish Children’s Reporter in ensuring that all autistic young people undergoing referral are adequately supported, and what its position is on whether a disaggregation of Scottish Children's Reporter Administration data by individual disability, as opposed to "Disability" as a whole, would provide an important tool for identifying relevant needs.

The Scottish Government fully supports the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) in its efforts to meet the needs of children and young people with additional support needs. Every child’s individual needs are considered by SCRA, based on information provided by other agencies and professionals. SCRA has, for a number of years, worked on support and assistance for neurodiverse children and families. They are creating sensory spaces in their hearings centres, the first of which opened in March this year, and have updated information material and internal guidance to staff in conjunction with the charity Reach for Autism. They are currently working on plans to develop a network of local neurodiversity champions to further promote and address the specific needs of children and families in Children’s Hearings.

The new SCRA digital case management system, now in its second full year of operation, is capable of recording specific data relating to protected characteristics and SCRA are considering how this can be used to the greatest effect.

Question reference: S6W-10107

Asked by: Paul McLennan, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 29 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the timeline for the roll-out of the national allowance for foster and kinship carers, as per its committed actions to deliver The Promise by 2030.

Question reference: S6W-10104

Asked by: Joe FitzPatrick, MSP for Dundee City West, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 29 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 24 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many young people in Dundee have been offered workplace opportunities through the Young Person’s Guarantee since its launch.

Data on outcomes is currently published at national level. From our latest publication ( May 2022 ), 5,224 (31%) of the 16,859 people that started receiving support under No One Left Behind between April 2019 and December 2021 entered employment. Of those entering employment, 2,722 (52%) were supported by a subsidy to do so (this includes ERIs) and 832 (16%) started a Modern Apprenticeship.

Data on people receiving employability support delivered under the No One Left Behind strategic approach are currently published as experimental statistics which means they are still going through a process of development. Scottish Government analysts are working closely with Local Government partners to further develop these data, ensuring alignment with the Shared Measurement Framework, and will continue to review the content of what data and breakdowns are released in the future as part of the process to move towards official statistics status.

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