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We are committed to ensuring that every school-aged child has access to a device to support their learning by the end of this parliament in 2026.

The Scottish Government remains committed to developing and delivering a new Palliative and End of Life Care Strategy. We have established a Strategy Steering Group to oversee the development and delivery which has now met six times. We have also established a number of working groups to gather evidence to inform the strategy and progress areas in parallel with the development of the wider strategy.

The Scottish Government is committed to implementing the recommendations of the Pathways report.

In this financial year we have:

• Continued to provide funding to Women’s Enterprise Scotland, Investing Women and Business Women Scotland to allow existing programmes to continue ahead of a shift to competitive funding in future years;
• Renewed funding to Scotland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, with a further round of the Scottish Ecosystem Fund, widened to offer support to projects that address the Pathways review’s key themes; and
• As the first phase of work to develop Pre-Start and Pop-Up business supports we have launched the £1.5 million Pathways Pre-Start Fund allocating funding to projects that offer pre-start support and advice to individuals or groups, with emphasis on widening access to primary carers and under-represented groups.

The Scottish Government will work with our agencies and delivery partners to further develop proposals for the report’s core recommendations on pre-start centres and pop-up business supports, incorporating the knowledge gained from the Ecosystem and Pathways Pre-Start funds with the intention to allow broader services to commence in 2024.

Electrification is commissioned at the completion of works and last schemes to be commissioned were Shotts Line Electrification (74km) and Stirling-Dunblane-Alloa Electrification (110km). Work on the development, design and construction of further electrification has continued throughout the 5 year period and a further 23 km will be commissioned this year on the Glasgow - Barrhead line. Work is also under way on the East Kilbride route.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21629 on 2 October 2023. 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 latest available information on convictions is for the financial year 2020-21 and is provided in the following table.

Number of people convicted under section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, where main crime, 2011-12 to 2020-21.

Under the Mental Health (Safety and Security) (Scotland) Regulations 2005 there is no requirement for CCTV in The State Hospital to capture or record audio.

The Scottish Government does not currently have any plans to require that CCTV captures or records audio. Should there become a clear need for this requirement that cannot be addressed through other methods we will consider whether it would be appropriate to introduce this.

Since September 2020, Scottish Ministers have had a significant number of meetings with electric vehicle manufacturers, including Alexander Dennis Ltd, Wrightbus, Switch, Volvo, Hydrogen Vehicle Systems, Tesla, Hitachi, and Alstom, as well as the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 does not apply to Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21433 on 2 October 2023. 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