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Section 40 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 amends section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 to include a new offence of arriving in the United Kingdom without a valid entry clearance. The new offence comes in force on
‎ 28 June 2022.

There are no plans to introduce Lord Advocate’s guidelines in relation to the new offence.

Where the circumstances of alleged offending are reported to the Procurator Fiscal, prosecutors will decide on appropriate prosecutorial action, if any, on the basis of both the principles in the published Scottish Prosecution Code and, where relevant, the published Lord Advocate’s instructions for non-prosecution of victims of human trafficking.

Since the start of the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board we have invested over £18m in improvements to services and support for parents, infants and families across Scotland. This includes £5.5m for development of specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health services.

Funding levels for each Board have been primarily based on the gaps identified in Delivering Effective Services Report – Perinatal Mental Health Network Scotland and further shaped through discussions with each Board to ensure funding meets local need. As the we progress the programme of work, allocations are transitioning to an NRAC share which is the Scottish Resource Allocation formula used to distribute funding to NHS Boards.

Initial development funding was provided to two Health Boards in the North of Scotland in 2019-20. Funding was then rolled out to all mainland Boards in 2020/21 and all Boards received an allocation in 2021-22.

Following conclusion of the current Programme Board in March 2023, £8m per annum has been earmarked as recurring funding to Health Boards to support the sustainability of perinatal and infant mental health services across Scotland. This includes £5m specifically for specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health services.

Please see the following tables for a breakdown of funding allocated per Board for specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health services for the last 3 financial years.

The information requested relating to non-Mother and Baby Unit adult mental health inpatient admissions during the pregnancy or the postnatal period is not held centrally. However, the Scottish Government Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board is looking at this question as part of the work following the Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) Inpatient Provision Consultation which closed on 31 May 2022.

A national Perinatal Mental Health Dataset for specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health services (as well as Mother and Baby Units and Maternity/Neonatal Psychological Interventions services) has recently been launched by the Perinatal Mental Health Managed Clinical Network. It is currently being rolled out across Health Boards. The dataset builds upon a previous Clinical Audit System which reported on a limited number of clinical indicators for Mother and Baby Units. The Perinatal Mental Health Dataset will include a range of indicators of clinical activity, recorded by local specialist teams. It will be used to support local service development and quality improvement. The dataset will act as a tool to support Health Boards with local improvement in service planning and delivery, enabling them to understand and respond to local need.

The Transition & Recovery Plan, published in October 2020 and backed by an additional £120m of funding, is transforming services, with a renewed focus on prevention and early intervention. A key commitment in the Transition and Recovery plan is to support the collaborative development, implementation and assessment of quality standards for mental health services. To help ensure that services deliver and measure Psychological Therapies in a more standardised way across Scotland, a new national standard for Psychological Services and Therapies is currently under development with a publication date of Summer 2022.

As part of our investment in Mental Health and Wellbeing in Primary Care Services we will ensure that local planning groups, and in particular local primary care mental health services, are fully aware of the resources and services available for perinatal mental health and are supplied with clear guidance on how to support women and families in accessing these services. This will include support to access wider mental health support hubs, groups and helplines.

COSLA leaders and Ministers have now agreed the funding package to support the development of Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES) for the 2022-23 financial year. This funding package will be treated as a redetermination of the General Revenue Grant and paid in the last 2 weeks of March 2023. This funding could be used to cover internal resourcing and/or procurement of external technical services. Scottish Government officials have already communicated the agreement of the funding to local authorities and will also provide further guarantees and details via COSLA's official channels in due course .

The exact number of unpaid carers living in Scotland is not known. Therefore, the number of unpaid carers in Scotland is estimated from national survey data. The preferred survey used to estimate the number of unpaid carers is the Scottish Health Survey , as it samples both adults and children and allows for detailed breakdowns.

The latest estimates from the 2020 Scottish Health Survey telephone survey , which ran with a reduced number of questions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, suggest that there were around 839,000 (between 738,000 and 939,000) adult unpaid carers (aged 18+) living in Scotland in 2020.

This report cannot be compared to previous years due to differences in methodology from the main Scottish Health Survey series.

Data from the 2021 Scottish Health Survey will be published in Autumn 2022.

Our universities are autonomous institutions and the alliances they forge across global academic networks are a matter for them and their governing bodies.

We expect all our universities to understand and manage the reputational, ethical and security risks associated with international partnerships. This includes conducting appropriate due diligence before entering into new international partnerships and monitoring existing partnerships. Guidance to support universities has been published by Universities UK.

Responsibility for the delivery of social care, including the setting and collecting of charges related to social care and support, lies at a local level.

The Scottish Government collects and publishes national data through the Local Financial Returns (LFRs). These are a series of detailed returns that collect final, audited financial data for local authorities in Scotland. The data is published as part of the annual Scottish Local Government Finance Statistics (SLGFS) publication.

The figures provided in the following table relate to all income received relating to customer and client receipts in relation to Social Work services, including Children & Families and Adult Social Care, for the last five years for which data is available.

In line with the Programme for Government, we are helping manufacturing businesses to make the transition to net zero and realise the opportunities of a low carbon economy

The recently launched Low Carbon Manufacturing Challenge Fund will provide research and development funding for projects that result in increased product circularity, reduced waste during the manufacturing process and reduced carbon. Innovative proposals will be supported with £3 million funding this year and a total of £26 million over five years.

We are also supporting supply chains through our supply chain development programme which has an initial focus on net zero and is providing significant public sector procurement to build resilient supply chains.

In accordance with waiting times guidance, cancellations resulting from hospital operational circumstances should not result in any detriment to the patient. The Scottish Government expects that NHS Boards will offer a rescheduled appointment as soon as possible to any patient within NHS Scotland who has had their operation cancelled.