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The final report of the Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment was submitted to me on 5 June 2023. It will be published on the Scottish Government website shortly. Scottish Government will now take the time to consider its recommendations carefully and in the context of wider reform and will respond in due course.

Scottish Ministers' stated objective since purchasing Glasgow Prestwick Airport in 2013 has been to return the business to the private sector when the time and circumstances are right for the business and for the Scottish Government as shareholder.

That means we must be confident that any sale would not only represent value for the taxpayer but would put the business on a firm footing going forward and secure wider economic benefit to build on the foundations we have put in place.

Any purchase offer from a private operator will be evaluated against these objectives and will only proceed if they are met.

This is a matter for ScotRail. The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

Responding to incidents is an operational matter for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. The Scottish Government does not hold information on average response times.

This is a question for the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland. She advises me that that transfers are divided between transfers for the monetary full market value of the property and transfers for discounted/non-monetary/other considerations. Separating transfers due to inheritance would require manual inspection of the deeds for each transaction. Figures are current on 13 June 2023.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service decision to temporarily remove these appliances was made following detailed modelling using historic incident data and a robust assessment of the risks present in the communities those fire stations cover. Withdrawal of the second or third appliances from these stations has been assessed as being the least impactful in terms of response times. SFRS will continue to respond to every incident with the appropriate level of resources including specialist resources where required.

Capricorn Energy announced in February the intention to carry out a strategic review of its wider operations, which has culminated in the company citing a strong case for its rationalisation activities across the business.

Whilst Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE) was offered to the company to support those individuals affected by the company’s decision to reduce their workforce, the company advised that this support was not required.

This is ultimately a matter for the company and no specific analysis has been undertaken by the Scottish Government in this instance but we know that some of the benefits of headquarters include quality jobs with higher wages, beneficial supply chain impacts and knowledge exchange, as well as contributing to a healthy labour market in senior management roles.

Scottish Government and our agencies continue to promote Scotland’s strength and capabilities to attract and retain those overseas owned businesses and organisations Headquartered in Scotland, as well as supporting existing Scottish domiciled businesses, making Scotland an attractive location for companies to innovate, grow and invest for the future.

I am pleased to inform the Parliament that the Scottish Government is continuing to deliver on its commitment to give people the information they need to make an informed choice about their future, and is today publishing Creating a Modern Constitution for an Independent Scotland.

The fourth paper in the Building a New Scotland series sets out the proposals for developing a written constitution for an independent Scotland, providing the opportunity to replace the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament with the sovereignty of the people in Scotland.

The paper sets out how the people of Scotland would have the direct opportunity to shape and build a better country. It contains this Government’s proposals for how an independent Scotland could put in place an ambitious written constitution, that would enshrine and protect rights. A written constitution for Scotland, designed by the people who live here, could also protect key features of Scotland’s democracy, such as the Scottish Parliament and the courts, and provide constitutional recognition of the NHS in Scotland, giving people the right to access a system of health care, available free at the point of need.

The Scottish Government intends to seek agreement of the Parliamentary Bureau to a debate on this paper in the next week.

The next paper in the Building a New Scotland series will give more detail on citizenship in an independent Scotland and will be published in the summer.

Building a New Scotland: Creating a Modern Constitution for an Independent Scotland is available to view on the Scottish Government website from today at www.gov.scot/newscotland .

Following initial discussions, a small number of NHS boards have approached the Pharmacy Service Improvement Team in Practitioner Services Directorate within Public Health Scotland over the past 2 years to obtain data from the Prescribing Information Store (PIS) of the Corporate Data Warehouse, in conjunction with prescriptions images held, and asked for assistance/analysis to support them to increase their levels of CHI capture for OST prescriptions.

Based on various discussions, analysis and findings, the following conclusions were made on the scenarios and conditions that lead to poor CHI capture:-

• EMIS Prescribing System – it was noted that the CHI number prints correctly on GP10(SS) stationery, however, on Nurse prescriptions, GP10N(SS) stationery, the CHI number is printed with spaces, e.g. 0 2 0 2 2 0 x x x x and, therefore, the CHI number is not in the correct format to be captured successfully.
  
• Prescribing locations:-
• In primary care, there are a number of GP10(SS) printed prescriptions from GP Practices with no electronic support/barcode and the CHI number may not be captured via ICR as a result of the other scenarios detailed below.
• In specialist addiction clinics, there is a wide variation across NHS Boards on how these services have been set up locally and the prescription stationery they use to prescribe, e.g. some specialist clinics operate out of primary care and use GP10(SS)/GP10N(SS) stationery and others use hospital locations and use Hospital Based Addict Prescription pads (HBPA) or printed stationery (HBPA(SS)). It was noted that a significant number of printed HBPA prescriptions also had the CHI number in the incorrect format with spaces and the CHI number was not being captured. However, this has recently been addressed in NHS Ayrshire & Arran.

There are other scenarios that result in poor to no CHI capture when prescriptions are scanned via intelligent character recognition (ICR) for remuneration to community pharmacies and these include:

• The quality of printed output, e.g., low toner/ink and the CHI number is not captured.
• Misaligned or obscured CHI number - if this is not printed in the correct position of the prescription form or is obscured by handwriting.
• The Pharmacy Practice stamp in the CHI area is obscuring part of the CHI number.
• Handwritten CHI numbers – there is a very poor ICR capture rate of handwritten CHI numbers.
• No CHI number printed or incomplete CHI number, where only a DOB has been provided.

Scottish Government and Public Health Scotland are actively considering options to resolve the issues outlined, which focus on updating current systems to improve the consistent formatting of prescriptions, consequently improving the automated capture of information.

The capital budget allocations to SFRS for each year since its establishment are as follows (in £ millions):