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General practice has continued to provide services to patients throughout the pandemic. However, due to the pressures of the pandemic some routine disease management has needed to be paused but only in those instances where it is safe to do so.

General practices are following Public Health Scotland’s advice to reserve face to face appointments in primary care settings for those consultations where the GP decides it is clinically necessary. This is not just to prevent the general transmission of the coronavirus but to protect general practices as medical spaces for patients who have a clinical reason for face to face attendance.

Public Health Scotland's advice is not tied to the levels Scottish local authorities are in. General practices will remain open regardless but will continue to manage face to face appointments consistent with this advice. At present all patients are still able to get an appointment by telephone or video call.

How to treat ear wax is a clinical decision for GPs; ear syringing is no longer the preferred procedure and many GPs did not routinely provide it before the pandemic led to GPs reducing face to face appointments where possible.

To support the update of electric vehicles across Scotland, Scottish Government provides funding support for public electric vehicle charging through the Energy Savings Trust. This is designed to help businesses and organisations install electric vehicle charging infrastructure on their premises. A number of hotels and other hospitality business have taken advantage of this funding.

To date, grants to install over 1100 chargers under the business charge point fund have been provided. Scottish Government is focussed on strengthening the public electric vehicle charging network in Scotland in 21-22 and remains committed to expanding access to electric vehicle charging infrastructure across Scotland.

Chargepoints on the ChargePlace Scotland (CPS) network are installed and owned by the respective hosts. As set out in the grant award terms and conditions, it is the hosts’ responsibility to ensure that the charge points are maintained and in a serviceable condition.

The CPS service centre, commonly referred to as the ‘back-office’ and currently operated by BP Pulse, proactively monitors the network for faults and also receives information directly from drivers to the customer services team. The initial action is to attempt to remedy the issue remotely.

If that isn’t possible, the back office will notify the charge point owner and log the fault with the charge point supplier who will send an engineer to investigate and resolve the issue on-site.

Similarly, when a fault is reported to them by drivers, a fault ticket is logged with the respective owner and engineer if it cannot be remedied remotely by the back-office.

The CPS back-office aim to log all faults with owners and suppliers within 48 hours. There is no target timescale for resolving the fault as that is a contractual agreement between the owner and the charge point supplier and therefore outside of CPS’ direct control. However, the CPS back-office actively monitors those charge points awaiting a fix, and will prompt hosts and suppliers for progress updates on a regular basis as appropriate.

There are a number of private network operator who also provide chargepoints in Scotland. Scottish Ministers have no role in monitoring these.

Reflecting on the success of the vaccination programme, our revised strategic intent is to work “to suppress the virus to a level consistent with alleviating its harms while we recover and rebuild for a better future.” Deciding when to remove COVID-19 restrictions will be informed by conditions based on clinical advice. These conditions will ensure that the virus remains sufficiently under control in Scotland and that enough people are protected by two doses of the vaccination. At present, our current analysis of the state of the epidemic indicates that the lifting of Level 0 restrictions should not happen until at least all adults over 40 years of age have been protected by two doses of the vaccine. We expect this to happen by 9 August. However, in order to maintain the progress we have made in returning to more normality, it will be important that people continue to stick to a set of baseline measures to stop the virus resurging and to protect those who do not have protection from vaccination.

I want us to get to a position where we do not have to think about Covid in our day-to-day lives in any respect. However, if we want to continue our progression towards that time, we might all have to accept baseline protective measures for a longer period, and we will work with stakeholders on what these should be.

But ultimately, we are dealing with an unpredictable virus, and we have to respond to what the data is telling us at the time.

In the academic year 2019-20, the latest for which we have complete data, there were around 60,000 students from outside the Common travel area enrolling at a Scottish University, with around half this number (30,000) beginning a new course and the other half returning for a further year. The Scottish Government does not hold information about how many of these students were resident in Scotland prior to enrolment. We estimate a similar number could be studying in Scotland in the academic year 2021-22.

Test and Protect will change as the population becomes more protected by vaccination, but will still play a role in mitigating clusters and outbreaks where they arise, slowing infection spread and protecting populations at risk.

Contact tracing and testing of close contacts will continue as we move forward through the pandemic, including beyond Level 0.

We are following the clinical trials on daily contact testing closely, and will review Scottish Government policy in light of the evidence as it emerges. Any change to Scotland’s self-isolation policy continues to be informed by clinical and scientific advice, and would be subject to MHRA approval of lateral flow tests for ‘test to release’ purposes.

We will continue to consider the appropriateness of existing public health guidance on self-isolation in light of the emerging evidence regarding the efficacy of the vaccine in preventing infection and onwards transmission of Covid-19.

The Scottish Government’s position is that cruises may dock at Scottish ports when all of Scotland is in level 1. If the evidence supports the planned lifting of restrictions at the next review point, domestic cruising will be allowed from 19 July. Further information on this can be found in the Guidance: Coronavirus (COVID-19): travel and transport - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The number of Senior Civil Servants working in core Scottish Government and its Agencies who have requested approval under the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) rules in the last 5 years is provided in the following table:

The board has met on nine occasions between March 2020 - May 2021. The next meeting of the board will take place on the 5 th of August 2021 followed by two further meetings before the end of the year.

The Scottish Government does not process business appointment applications from former Ministers. These are considered by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) which publishes details of its advice in relation to appointments it is aware have been taken up, or announced, on its website: Advisory Committee on Business Appointments - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) .