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The Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) Inpatient Provision Consultation closed on 31 May 2022. While more detailed work on the outcomes of this consultation is underway, we are expecting NHS Grampian and NHS Forth Valley to enter into contractual agreements with a Mother and Baby Unit in line with the other territorial Health Boards.

The Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board and Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network Scotland will provide support to Boards in setting up these arrangements. We are in the process of meeting with MBU host Boards and NHS Forth Valley and NHS Grampian to discuss how to best ensure access for women and their infants.

Until these arrangements are in place, women residing within any Health Board area in Scotland are still able to access the specialist regional provision in a Mother and Baby Unit if clinically appropriate. Admission is based on clinical need rather than geography.

Since it was established in April 2020, there have been 88 successful claims to the Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) Family Fund. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian do not hold comprehensive information about a claimant’s home Board. Since April 2020:

? 32 families made a claim to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde MBU, with an average amount claimed of £303.

? 56 families made a claim to the NHS Lothian MBU, with an average claim of £250.

One of the key pillars of the National Strategy for Economic Transformation is to strengthen Scotland’s position in new markets and industries to generate well-paid jobs and support a just transition to net zero. The Strategy sets out a range of actions to deliver on this vision. We are now developing sectoral and regional Just Transition Plans, which will identify relevant green industrial opportunities. Our first Just Transition Plan will be the Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan, which is intended for publication in draft form in autumn 2022.

Work is also underway to strengthen our supply chains in the renewables energy sector. We're aware, for example, that Scotland’s developing hydrogen economy will require a strong domestic supply chain.

That's why the Scottish Government has announced a Hydrogen Supply Chain Event at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre on 22 September to help build on and explore the opportunities that exist within this emerging sector.

For Offshore Wind, applicants to the ScotWind leasing round were required to submit a Supply Chain Development Statement (SCDS) that sets out the level and location of supply chain impact throughout the lifetime of projects. These commitments amount to billions of pounds of investment to the Scottish supply chain. Initial projections show an average spend of £1.5bn in Scotland per project.

ScotRail’s Safety and Security team has been developing options relating to the current ban on consumption of alcohol on trains. I understand that the ScotRail Trains Ltd Board will consider these options shortly and will take account of the range of stakeholder views, including those of Trade Unions and any further representations that are made. I will then consider any recommendation ScotRail provides, giving due cognisance to staff and passenger safety.

Over the course of the last five years, the force has created separate Divisions for specialist officers such as CID. As a national police force, these specialist officers are not bound by traditional geographical borders. Therefore, to provide an accurate breakdown of resource placement in Scotland my officials have requested this information from the British Transport Police and I will write to the member in due course.

Developing specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health teams across every Health Board has been a priority since the start of the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board. Since 2019 we have invested over £5.5 million to establish specialist community perinatal mental health teams in every area of Scotland. This is in addition to investment in other specialist services such as infant mental health services and maternal and neonatal psychological interventions (MNPI).

To support Health Board areas to use this funding to develop local services, the Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network Scotland have developed a number of supporting resources. These include service development guides, care pathways and role descriptors.

We have also recruited a Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Service Development Advisor to work closely with Boards to support them in their implementation of specialist services.

Finalising the establishment of specialist perinatal mental health provision across all Health Boards in Scotland is a priority for the final year of the Programme Board. Every NHS Board area has an Executive Lead driving forward the programme of work and both strategic and implementation groups are also in place.

There is currently specialist perinatal mental health provision in every mainland Health Board. We are working intensively with Boards to build their provision to the levels outlined in Delivering Effective Services . As of May 2022, there were 12 Health Boards with specialist community perinatal mental health teams, eight of which were fully established. These are: Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Forth Valley, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Tayside.

We are working closely with other Boards to ensure that services will be fully established by March 2023. This includes island Boards where regional working as well as Board level provision is a key priority area.

The Scottish Government recognises that seal predation is one of a number of pressures affecting wild Atlantic salmon in rivers, which is why it commissioned work in partnership with Crown Estate Scotland to review measures that have been adopted globally and which could assist in developing non-lethal strategies to address seal predation on salmon in Scottish rivers.

The report ( Review of non-lethal seal control options to limit seal predation on salmonids in rivers and at finfish farms | Marine Scotland Data Publications ) which was published in March 2021 recognises that there is no single effective solution to address the problem given the nature of rivers and predation, but that there are a range of measures that have been shown to have some success or have the potential to reduce predation. The Scottish Government therefore continues to work with the sector, stakeholders and the scientific community to explore practical ways to address interactions between salmon and seals in rivers, building on the recommendation of the report.

Furthermore, the Sea Mammal Research Unit, at the University of St Andrews has provided significant advice and support to the River Dee in recent years in relation to quantifying seal presence in the river and exploring possible solutions for minimising interactions.

Dr Church, the independent chair of the review, has advised that he intends to launch another round of stakeholder engagement for stakeholders by the end of July, running through to August or early September, during which he will be both seeking responses to specific questions and open to any further representations stakeholder may wish to make. This is in addition to the engagement already undertaken through the Call for Evidence for the review.

The number of vacant posts in each NHS Board can be found on the NHS Education for Scotland (NES) website: NHSScotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence

To ensure all Health Boards including NHS Fife have sufficient capacity planning guidance has been issued to support the production of new Three Year Workforce Plans, supported by local systems’ workforce data.

As part of this all Health Boards must consider local population health needs and projected service demand, using that information to assess current staffing capacity and any relevant staffing gaps.

At national level, we will use this intelligence to inform new staffing projections for health and social care, which will be published in the coming year as part of the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care.