Seòmar agus comataidhean

Between 1 May 2021 and 30 June 2021, Marine Scotland have inspected 11 Wrasse fishing vessel catches and found no infringements of the license derogation conditions.

We are working closely with Local Authorities, the Health and Safety Executive and Police Scotland to ensure we are taking a joined up approach to enforcement of regulations and wider workplace health measures. We have committed to £2.9m in funding to support Covid related work carried out by Local Authority Environmental Health and Trading Standards Officers to year end 2021-22. We continue to engage with the Local Authorities to understand how this funding is being used to ensure they have the capacity to support businesses including hospitality to comply with the regulations and guidance. Local authorities are responsible for prioritising enforcement work within their area, and they are doing so using a risk based and 4 Es approach (Engage, Explain, Encourage and Enforce).

To date we have spent £478,975.94 on the Protect Scotland - Proximity Tracing App and the Federated Server. The costs are broken down in the following table:

The total number of downloads of the app are shown in the table attached in reply to S6W-00767 on 30 June 2021. The functionality to count the number of active daily app users has been improved since launch and currently indicates that there are around 980,000 active users each day.

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

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.

National Records of Scotland (NRS) has had to reschedule the publication of its statistics on the causes of deaths registered in 2020, including deaths by suicide.

These were originally scheduled for publication in June 2021. However, due to action to clear a backlog of toxicology analyses and an increase in the number of deaths requiring investigation in 2020, there was a delay in receipt of relevant data from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS).

NRS has now received this data from COPFS and plans to publish these statistics on 17 August 2021. Further information is available on the NRS website: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/future-publications

We recognise the importance of more frequent sharing of data on deaths by suspected suicide to further support responsive local suicide prevention planning.

We are working closely with Public Health Scotland who will roll out processes for timely data sharing over the summer. These processes involve extracting anonymised information on deaths by suspected suicide from Police Scotland records and providing this information on a regular basis to local partners. The frequency of this information sharing is yet to be determined. As this data will be provisional and not subject to the standard verification processes for suicide data, there are presently no plans to publish this.

As announced in March, the recommendations from the Review will be taken forward by an Implementation Group. On the 18 June we announced that the Group will be Co-Chaired by Dennis Robertson and a clinical lead who will be confirmed shortly.

We also announced we are providing £5 million of funding to respond to the recommendations from the Review in this financial year. The majority of this funding will be provided to NHS Boards to support them in responding to the increase in eating disorder presentations due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This is Recommendation 1 from the Review. This funding is being provided from the £120 million Mental Health Recovery and Renewal Fund.

In addition, in response to Review recommendation 6 (Self-help Resources) and Recommendation 13 (Families and Carers), we are also providing funding to Beat, the UK’s Eating Disorder Charity, to provide a wide range of support options such as support to families and carers of those with an eating disorder; support for children, young people and adults who are currently waiting to be seen by services; and peer support services. We will shortly announce further details of this package of support.

a) The app records the number of people that have “chosen to leave” (see the “Users that chose to leave” column in the table attached in reply to S6W-00767 on 30 June 2021).

b) Due to the anonymous nature of the app there is no way to know the number of people that have deleted the app.

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

For completeness, information on both the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 and the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No.2) Act 2020 is included within the scope of this answer.

General advice on the first Act for stakeholders was published in April 2020.This was subsequently superseded on 12 June 2020 with guidance covering both Acts.That guidance remains on the Scottish Government website . It provides central and local government and public bodies in Scotland an overview of the key measures within the Acts, and is easily available to health and social care partnerships. Explanatory notes were also published for both Acts, which are also accessible on legislation.gov.uk .

Guidance and resources were also supplied on specific areas covered within the Acts. On 31 March 2021, Coronavirus (COVID-19) Supplementary National Child Protection Guidance was issued to a number of senior staff at key agencies involved with child protection, including Integrated Joint Board (IJB) Chief Officers and Chief Executives of NHS Boards. The Guidance was updated and reissued on 16 April, 1 June, 31 August and 22 December 2020. It remains under review and will be updated as necessary.

Guidance on the social care staff support fund was published on 24 June 2020 on the Scottish Government website. It was updated on 15 April 2021. The guidance provides information for social care workers and employers about the Social Care Staff Support Fund.

In terms of resources, following detailed review of the financial position £1.7 billion of additional funding has been provided in 2020-21 to support the Health and Social Care Sector in the response to the pandemic. Allocations during 2020-21 have been made of £561 million for Integration Authorities to support additional COVID costs including funding for sustainability payments to meet forecast costs for 2020-21, in addition to wider social care support, for example for reducing delayed discharges, for loss of income and for other staff costs. The Scottish Government is very clear that we will meet any increasing need for social care as a result of the pandemic, and we will continue to work with Integration Authorities, COSLA and Health Boards to ensure they have the resources required. All of this is over and above the normal funding provided to Integration Authorities.