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Skills Development Scotland deliver careers services to all 358 publicly funded secondary schools in Scotland.

Applications for warrants of entry are dealt with by the courts. The information requested is not held centrally. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service have established a working group to review the process for dealing with utility warrants, including the data recorded, with a view to improving the information currently available.

We are taking all the action we can to help students overcome the issues they face through the cost of living crisis, including food insecurity.

No one should have to compromise on food or other essentials. We are supporting students directly by providing £16.8m in hardship funding for the current academic year to support Higher Education students experiencing financial hardship, in addition to tuition fees and a range of living cost support.

We have also provided £135m in student support for Further Education students attending college in the current academic year. Colleges can use these funds flexibly to meet demand across Further Education student bursaries, childcare and hardship funding.

The Scottish Government recently provided an additional £2.4 million funding for groups that can get vital support to people quickly – and with an emphasis on cash grants so that people can access food with dignity and choice.

We encourage anyone who is struggling financially to get advice through their local authority, a local advice service, or Social Security Scotland as well as visiting our cost of living website - www.gov.scot/news/accessing-help-for-cost-of-living

The following details the number of people employed by the requested organisations in each period asked for:

Yes, the felling of trees is regulated through the issuing of Felling Permissions, under the Forestry and Land Management (Scotland) Act 2018. Permission must be granted before felling, thinning or deforesting an area of woodland; the sale and transfer of land has no impact on this requirement. The potential effects on flood risk would be taken into account when assessing applications to fell trees.

We are jointly funding a £250,000 endometriosis research project with Wellbeing of Women and the recipient of the grant will be announced in March. The funding for the research will cover a period of 3 years, from financial year 2022/23, after which the findings will be published.

Additionally, in January 2023 our Chief Scientist Office announced funding for the ENDOCAN project, led by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, that will investigate whether a large scale, UK-wide trial to determine whether a cannabinoid can reduce endometriosis-associated pain. Funding of £299,509 has been committed to this 30 month project.

The Endometriosis Advisory Group (EAG) was established to support the action in the Women’s Health Plan to strengthen collaborative working between regional specialist endometriosis centres, territorial and special NHS boards and primary care providers, to drive improvement in patient pathways and achieve equitable access to care and treatment.

The EAG first met in April 2022 and have since been involved in communications on an ad hoc basis to assist in the understanding of the systems currently in place for endometriosis, from education to current practice and pathways.

As per previous years, in order to lessen the burden on NHS teams over the winter period from November 2022 to the end of February 2023 we commenced a light touch process to help monitor and prioritise communications. After this period of time we will reinstate communication and meetings with the EAG.

The EAG offer their expert advice and knowledge to help inform and guide policy processes and as such there is no formal findings or report which the EAG has produced.

As noted in my answer to question S6W-14449, work on the two-year report on the activities of the National Performing Companies was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

I will consider whether this work should be restarted given the National Performing Companies all publish their own annual reports on their individual websites including information relating to their community and education programmes, financial figures and key artistic achievements.

We welcome the 2023 Lancet Series on breastfeeding and will consider its recommendations in due course.

Scottish Government is committed to supporting breastfeeding as the normal nutrition for babies. We have invested over £7m of additional funding over the past four years to NHS Boards and partners, to improve breastfeeding experiences.

Globally, it is recognised that breastmilk and breastfeeding provide clear health benefits to both mother and baby, over infant milk formula.

We believe that every child should get the best nutritional start in life, and that families should be able to make fully informed choices on how they feed their baby.

MV Hebrides is 99 metres in length, 15.8 metres wide and her operational draught, which is the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the vessel’s hull, is 3.3 metres.

Further information is available on CalMac’s website by following the link: https://www.calmac.co.uk/fleet/mv-hebrides