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According to the most recent year for which there is complete data, April 2021 to March 2022, a total of 792 studies were active and open to recruitment across these portfolio areas. Details for each portfolio area are indexed in the following table.

Table 1. NRS studies active between April 2021 to March 2022.

Table 1 presents the latest published number of patients covered by the Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) that were waiting within an inpatient or day case setting in Scotland at 30 June 2022, and the number waiting over two years (104 weeks), 2 years and six months (130 weeks), and 3 years (156 weeks) for an Orthopaedics procedure.

Table 1 - Number of patients waiting for an inpatient or day case admission for Orthopaedics by length of wait in NHSScotland, at 30 June 2022

The Emergency Budget Review (EBR) sets out in-year redistribution of funding within the Health and Social Care Portfolio. Future years funding will be set out in each year’s Scottish Budget, with the 2023-24 Budget to be published on 15 December 2022.

Ministers remain fully committed to utilising every lever within their devolved competence to support and grow domestic supply chain which is why we are working to realise our ambitions for the offshore wind supply chain in Scotland through The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council.

Our Collaborative Framework will help forge effective partnerships to deliver on supply chain potential. New ScotWind leaseholders have joined existing Scottish offshore wind developers in signing up to a Collaborative Framework Charter, agreeing to work jointly together to build a pipeline of supply chain work greater than the sum of its individual parts. 24 organisations, including representatives of all 17 ScotWind projects with signed lease option agreements, have agreed to work together in the development and delivery of this Collaborative Framework.

The oil and gas sector continues to play an important role in our economy, and a bright future lies ahead for a revitalised North Sea in supporting a net zero energy system. Our highly skilled oil and gas workforce have long been at the forefront of energy innovation and we are committed to a just transition that supports them to capitalise on the employment opportunities of net zero energy. The draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan will outline a co-ordinated vision for Scotland’s future energy system, ensuring a cohesive and joined up framework for action, and will be published for consultation in the coming months.

Our £75m Energy Transition Fund, £100m Green Jobs Fund and £500m Just Transition Fund are supporting the North East and Moray to become a centre of excellence for the transition to a net zero economy, with our investment supporting transformation across the region.

The requested information on how many whole time equivalent radiographers who were fully qualified to undertake MRI scans working in the NHS in the financial year (a) 2018-19, (b) 2019-20, (c) 2020-21, (d) 2021-22 and 2022-23 to date, broken down by NHS board is not centrally available.

Information on how many whole time equivalent Radiographers (Diagnosis and Therapy) working in the NHS since 2012, broken down by NHS Board can be found in the following link: NHSScotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence

The Alexander Thomson Hotel is used by Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership (GHSCP) to provide temporary accommodation to people experiencing homelessness, in line with their statutory duties. We are aware that this has at times included asylum seeking families with children, who have not accessed Home Office asylum accommodation, and that concerns have been raised about the suitability of bed and breakfast accommodation for families and the length of time families were accommodated at the hotel.

GHSCP has responded to these concerns and has now secured temporary furnished accommodation for families who had been accommodated in the hotel for an unsuitable period of time. They have also undertaken a review of practice in relation to access to accommodation in circumstances where asylum seeking families with children present to homeless services. The Home Office has a duty to provide accommodation to people who would otherwise be destitute while awaiting a decision on their application, and this duty takes precedence over local authority provision of temporary accommodation.

Asylum is reserved to the UK Parliament and handled by the Home Office. This includes the provision of asylum accommodation. As far as the Scottish Government is aware, the Home Office has not used the Alexander Thomson Hotel to provide asylum accommodation. The Scottish Government has not, therefore, engaged with the Home Office regarding the standard of accommodation at this hotel for people seeking asylum, but has raised significant concerns with the Home Office about its use of hotels to accommodate people seeking asylum and will continue to do so.

GHSCP has committed to ending the use of bed and breakfast accommodation in the city overall through the implementation of their Temporary Accommodation Strategy. However, while they continue to use this type of accommodation in emergency situations, they will prioritise dispersed temporary furnished accommodation for families with children and will minimise the time families spend in unsuitable accommodation.

The Scottish Government has also taken action to ensure temporary accommodation in Scotland is high quality, is only used for short periods and meets all the household’s needs. In May 2020 we extended the Unsuitable Accommodation Order to all homeless households so that no homeless household should be placed in unsuitable accommodation, such as hotels or bed and breakfast accommodation, for more than seven days. In October 2021 we established the Temporary Accommodation Standards working group to produce a standards framework for temporary accommodation and to consider how this can be regulated and legally enforced. This will ensure that temporary accommodation used by local authorities to fulfil their duty to accommodate homeless households is safe, warm and of good quality, and that there is a consistency in the standard of temporary accommodation across all local authorities in Scotland.

Decisions to prioritise one population group over another for vaccination are not taken lightly, nor are they straightforward. That is why our prioritisation decisions have been, and will continue to be, guided by the independent expert advice provided by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and senior Clinicians.

NHS Scotland will never ask someone to pay for the flu or COVID-19 vaccines if they are eligible. If they are not eligible for a free flu vaccine then they may be able to get vaccinated for a small fee at their local pharmacy. Please note it is not possible for anyone to pay for the COVID-19 vaccination, and there are currently no plans to implement this as an option.

Estimates of marine carbon sequestration rates have large uncertainties and are difficult to calculate. There are few direct in-situ measurements of carbon sequestration by any marine habitat. Estimates of sequestration rate primarily depend on modelling which uses parameters derived from laboratory experiments and theoretical relationships, many of which are not fully tested.

The current estimate of carbon sequestered by Scotland’s marine environment is 6,485,000 tonnes CO ₂ -eq/year. (Details are set out in the table in response to S6W-12149).

There are currently no estimates of emissions from Scotland’s marine carbon stores, research suggests blue-carbon habitat degradation can result in emissions.

Since 2016, Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office has provided a total of approximately £3.8 million to £4.3 million each year for all NRS Networks and Specialty Groups. Figures for individual Networks and Specialty Groups are indexed by financial year in the table provided.

Table 1. CSO allocations to NRS Networks and Specialty Groups since 2016-17.