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We know that inflation is having the biggest impact on those with the lowest incomes. We are doing what we can within our devolved powers and this year we have allocated almost £3 billion to support people who are struggling.

Our Best Start Foods provides pregnant women and families with children under the age of three who receive certain benefits, with a minimum of £4.50 a week to purchase healthy foods. Eligible foods include fruit and vegetables as well as milk, first infant formula milk, eggs and pulses. Between launching Best Start Foods on 12 August 2019 and 28 February 2022, more than 111,000 applications were authorised providing support of over £27.3 million to those families who need it most. In 2022-23 we expect 40,000 people will receive £12 million of support through Best Start Foods. In 2023-24 we will remove the income thresholds for all qualifying benefits which will mean an additional 20,000 people will be able to access Best Start Foods. At the same time, we will move to a cash payment instead of pre-payment cards – giving parents greater flexibility and choice in how they use this financial support.

We have maintained funding levels for community food networks so that they can continue to support people struggling to access healthier food options. These networks provide a broad range of activities including: cooking classes, benefit checks, grow your own groups, cafés and food pantries.

The Scottish Government is also providing local authorities with funding to make free school lunches available to all children in primaries 1 to 5, and in special schools, during school term-time. Our new regulations governing the nutritional standards for food and drink in schools came into effect in April 2021. This guarantees all children and young people have access to their five portions of fruit and vegetables per day on every day when they attend at school.

Any decision on whether or not to introduce a new national screening programme in Scotland is guided by the recommendations of the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent expert advisory group which advises all four nations of the United Kingdom on screening policy. In 2017, the UK NSC recommended against the introduction of a Group B Streptococcus (GBS) screening programme. If a recommendation is made by the UK NSC to introduce GBS screening then the Scottish Screening Committee, in consultation with medical experts in this field, will advise Scottish Ministers on the most appropriate course of action for Scotland.

The GBS3 clinical trial , run by the Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit, is looking to gather evidence on whether a universal screening programme would be both clinically and cost effective. The UK NSC will review the evidence for screening once findings from the GBS3 clinical trial are published and the Scottish Screening Committee will give careful consideration to any recommendation the NSC makes. All NHS Boards have been made aware of the opportunity to participate in the GBS3 trial.

We expect NHS Boards to follow the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidance in the diagnosis, management and treatment of Group B Streptococcus infection in pregnant women and their babies. NICE guideline NG195, Neonatal infection: antibiotics for prevention and treatment , published on 20 April 2021 and developed in partnership with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), is the most recent clinical guidance available.

All pregnant women in Scotland are provided with a copy of Ready, Steady, Baby! ( RSB!), a guide to pregnancy, labour and birth and early parenthood up to 8 weeks. RSB! is also available via the NHS Inform website and includes information on GBS . The RCOG Group B Streptococcus in pregnancy and newborn babies leaflet is also provided to women.

Litigation is ongoing and external costs will be published on a regular basis. We will publish initial data on spending in September, and on a quarterly basis thereafter, until the conclusion of the litigation.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. It is the statutory responsibility of local authorities to manage their school estate.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. It is the statutory responsibility of local authorities to manage their school estate.

The Scottish Government has had no specific discussions with Police Scotland about this issue.

The Government produces quarterly statistics, available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, which show how many parliamentary questions were cleared after the substantive date and those still outstanding at the time of audit.

Further to the answer to question S6W-02451 which provided information on the number of samples collected within the cervical screening programme from January 2019 to August 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 The following table provides information for each of the months that followed from September 2021 to June 2022.

Official statistics from our national skills agency, Skills Development Scotland show that there were 26 Modern Apprentice (MA) Starts, in the 16-19 age grouping, who were recorded as having a hearing impairment and were recorded as being school pupils prior to commencing their apprenticeship. This data covers MA starts from 1 September 2020 to 31 March 2022 and further apprenticeship data will be available when the Quarter 1 2022-23 report is published, which is expected in August 2022. These figures are on the basis of self-declaration and therefore may be higher than this.