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The routine childhood immunisation programmes have continued in Scotland throughout the COVID-19 pandemic for children of all ages.

Uptake for vaccines given to children aged under one year has remained consistently high in Scotland. Statistics on childhood immunisations are published quarterly by Public Health Scotland, which show that around 96% of children had received each routine immunisation by the time they were 12 months of age in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Uptake of the rotavirus vaccination by 12 months of age increased during the pandemic, from 93.2% in 2019 to 94.2% in 2021. Uptake of the first dose of MMR by the age of 24 months also increased, rising from 94% in 2019 to 94.4% in 2021.

The continued high uptake of childhood immunisations is a testament to the hard work and commitment of the NHS and the recognition of the benefits of vaccination.

There are no jobs related to the National Care Service which are being recruited by Scotland Excel at this time.

From 18 April, we are no longer asking the general public to test themselves regularly if they are asymptomatic. This change is possible because of the progress we have made in our ability to protect Scotland’s population from the most severe harms of COVID-19 through our widespread vaccination coverage and access to new Covid treatments.

Covid testing in hospital settings for emergency admissions and elective patients will continue to be available, helping to protect vulnerable individuals in high risk settings and ensuring patients receive the most effective treatment.

Health and social care workers should continue to test themselves regularly to reduce the risk of spread of infection in higher risk settings; as should care home and hospital visitors. All ongoing testing in higher risk settings will be kept under regular clinical review.

All children in Scotland are offered child health reviews at 13-15 months, 27-30 months and 4-5 years. These reviews are typically carried out by a Health Visitor. They allow monitoring and promotion of a child’s health and collect data on child development. The latest Early Child Development Statistics cover 2019/20 and are available here - https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/early-child-development/early-child-development-scotland-201920/ .

The 2019/20 statistics show that the proportion of review records containing meaningful information for every developmental domain was lower for children from certain minority ethnic groups. However, the differences between ethnic groups, in the proportion of records with meaningful information in 2019/20, are the smallest observed to date (since 2013/14).

We remain committed to improving outcomes for all children and that is why we have commissioned an evaluation into the Universal Health Visiting Pathway. Findings from the evaluation will support Health Visitors in continuing to support all young families across Scotland.

In addition, to address gaps in Scotland’s equality evidence base, we launched the Equality Data Improvement Programme (EDIP) in April 2021. The EDIP is aligned with our wider Mainstreaming Equality and Human Rights Strategy.

The benefits of a Deposit Return Scheme to businesses are not only a function of container numbers. As well as reimbursement to retailers through the handling fee, the benefit to businesses includes: savings from waste uplift costs for hospitality return points, reduced operational costs for private waste management companies (relating to uplifts from hospitality customers, albeit offset by reduced income from these activities), avoided compliance costs for producers, and income to the reverse vending machine service industry, as well as potential advertising revenue.

The economic model underpinning the figures in the amended final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment takes account of a number of factors, and costs and benefits do not necessarily increase in proportion to the change in input. In this case, the addition of 0.5bn containers increases costs through greater potential for fraudulently redeemed containers, but also increases the benefits both from more income from sale of materials and from unredeemed deposits.

The economic model underpinning the figures in the amended final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment takes account of a number of factors and costs and benefits do not necessarily increase in proportion to the change in input.

The modelled cost increase reflects the likelihood that there will be additional capacity within the system for return points to handle additional containers and the possibility of an increase in the frequency of collection rather than requiring additional reverse vending machines (RVMs). This would lead to additional running costs and staff time but not costs for additional RVMs. The scheme administrator is responsible for setting a suitable logistics schedule with retailers at an agreed frequency for the collection of materials, aligned with the capacity of the RVM and individual store requirements.

In calculating the impact of our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) on local authorities, the economic model in the final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) uses compositional data on the tonnage (‘dirty’ weights) that Local Authorities actually manage, both recycled and in the residual waste stream, rather than the number of containers placed on the market. This aligns with the (weight-related) costs local authorities actually incur.

Hence the benefit to local authorities set out in table 3 of the amended final BRIA does not change in the sensitivity analysis presented in Annex F. The amended final BRIA can be reviewed here: A Deposit Return Scheme for Scotland: Final Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) (www.gov.scot) .

When calculating this increase, it has been assumed that the additional return points are manual return points, which have a lower cost than those with reverse vending machines.

Zero Waste Scotland carried out an intensive data-gathering process to arrive at the figure of 17,000 which remains our best and final estimate of the number of return points, prior to implementation. Although we modelled the figure of 37,000 to provide a sensitivity analysis for the economic case for our Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), we are confident that we have identified all the larger retail sites, and if these additional return points did exist, they would overwhelmingly be manual return points. Circularity Scotland Ltd, the scheme administrator for our DRS who provided the figure of 37,000, agrees with this assessment.

The cost to the regulator is estimated based on the number of businesses to be regulated; it is therefore unaffected by any increase in the number of containers.