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The monitoring of new and potentially dangerous variants is absolutely critical as we move into a new phase of the pandemic. For this reason, the Scottish Government is working with Public Health Scotland (PHS) to develop a comprehensive Respiratory Surveillance Plan and implement programmes to detect respiratory pathogens at a population level. In addition, a Variants and Mutations Plan is being developed that sets out an approach to manage new variants detected through surveillance programmes. PHS intends to publish these plans in Spring 2022.

Surveillance is a critical part of our approach to monitoring and managing the spread and prevalence of Covid-19 and other respiratory viruses. It helps us to determine the right public health strategies and timing to manage transmission in the community. The Surveillance Plan will set out existing and new and emerging surveillance programme that will be used to support early identification of future variants, including community surveillance in primary and secondary care, whole genome sequencing and wastewater surveillance.

In addition, Public Health Scotland will continue to participate in the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS), GISAID and the UKHSA Variant Technical Group. These surveillance and horizon scanning activities have been used during the COVID-19 pandemic to rapidly share intelligence internationally and provide early warnings of new variants and track their spread globally.

Vaccinations have played an important role in the fight against COVID-19. The COVID-19 Vaccination Programme will continue to be monitored in Scotland, with data accessible on the vaccinations tab of the Public Health Scotland COVID-19 Daily Dashboard, and in line with the Coronavirus (Covid-19) Scotland’s Strategic Framework update published in February 2022.

The Scottish Government continue to work closely with colleagues in Public Health Scotland, NHS National Services Scotland, UK Government and the other devolved administrations, to ensure we have a consistent approach to vaccination reporting.

We will continue the use of existing and new and emerging testing and surveillance procedures to support early identification of future variants, including whole genome sequencing, wastewater surveillance.

The Scottish Government is grateful for the dedication and professionalism of the workforce across the entirety of the Test and Protect system for all they have done to manage the impacts of the pandemic.

As stated in the Test and Protect Transition Plan published on 15 March, the Test and Protect system will now move to a transition phase following which there will be a need to ensure the workforce reflects that required to provide a proportionate system for the future.

The Scottish Government and employers across Test and Protect are working tirelessly to ensure a fair and consistent approach which has all of the workforce at the forefront. The Scottish Government is actively working with employers to ensure every member of staff is supported to access available redeployment opportunities or to be signposted towards alternative opportunities in the broader public or private sectors. Employers are also utilising wider support available through partner agencies to maximise the individualised support given to staff who wish to seek employment opportunities elsewhere.

Over the course of this parliament, we are working to increase overall residential rehabilitation capacity by 50%, which is an increase from 425 beds to 650 beds. We aim to increase the number of publicly funded residential rehabilitation placements by more than 300 per cent so that, by 2026, at least 1,000 people every year are publicly funded for their rehab placement.

In addition to a £13.5 million uplift to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADP), we have provided £18 million so far over the next five years to support the development of several new residential rehab projects through the Residential Rehabilitation Rapid Capacity Programme. We recognise that there are structural differences around funding and availability of residential services in different parts of the country, but we are working to address this by exploring options around regional and national commissioning of residential rehabilitation placements.

While it is the role and responsibility of local ADPs to assess and allocate placements we are committed to increasing transparency and accountability for these services. This is why we have tasked Public Health Scotland with producing a quarterly report on funded placements. The next report will be published April 2022 and will cover the period of October to December 2021.

We recently published a suite of reports on the current pathways into, through and out of residential rehabilitation. We will be working closely with ADPs to aid the development of clear pathways into residential rehabilitation, which will facilitate an increase to publicly funded placements across the country.

The £150 cost of living payments are administered by local authorities. Councils have indicated that they are using the discretion we allowed to make payments as a credit to council tax accounts in the majority of circumstances to ensure delivery before the end of April 2022.

Where the support is delivered as a direct payment, local authorities have flexibility over how this is done. Our guidance does require councils to take reasonable steps to ensure recipients are not disadvantaged by the mechanism selected, including ensuring the recipient does not have to pay an administration fee to a third party in order to receive the payment.

Our guidance to local authorities is clear that the £150 cost of living payment should not be applied to historic council tax debt or arrears. Households who have difficulty in meeting their council tax liability should contact their council to establish if they are eligible for a council tax reduction. This scheme currently reduces the council tax liabilities of over 470,000 households according to their circumstances and ability to pay and applications can be backdated by up to six months.

The £150 cost of living payments are administered by local authorities who have discretion over whether to make them as a credit to council tax accounts or as direct payments in order to ensure delivery by the end of April 2022.

Local authorities have indicated that payments will be included as a credit in council tax bills for 2022-23 in the majority of circumstances. This is the most readily available means of delivering this support to eligible households as fast as possible. Some councils also indicated that payments to eligible low income households exempt from council tax, such as those in temporary accommodation or refuges, would be made as direct payments. In these circumstances, they have discretion over the method used which may include, for example, PayPoint cash vouchers, cheques or BACS transfers to bank accounts.

Since the Drug Deaths Taskforce was established in July 2019, there have been 20 meetings of the core Taskforce, with the next meeting taking place on 13 April. There have also been a significant number of working groups, sub-group and deep dive sessions.

The remit of the Taskforce is to provide evidence based advice, and a link to the remit and the terms of reference can be located here - Taskforce Mission and Terms of Reference | Drug Deaths Taskforce

The key outcomes of the Taskforce meetings are the recommendations which they make to Government and other partners. The recommendations the Taskforce has made to date can be found here - DDTF - Recommendations | Drug Deaths Taskforce . The Taskforce will be producing their final recommendations by July 2022.

An update on the progress towards each recommendation was recently provided to the joint committee of the Criminal Justice, Health Social Care and Sport and Social Justice and Social Security Committees on 2 February 2022, this evidence can be found here - CJS6225 | Scottish Parliament Website . Further updates will be made to Parliament in due course.

In January 2021, the First Minister announced an additional investment of £250 million to tackle drug deaths, £100 million of which was allocated to develop residential rehabilitation services and associated aftercare over the next five years. Alongside this, the Scottish Government provided Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) with a £13.5 million uplift per year, over the next five years, £5 million of which has been allocated to support additional residential rehabilitation capacity across Scotland. However, this uplift did not start until the 2021-2022 financial year.

The distribution from the ADP uplift within the Highlands and Islands region in 2021-22, from the £5 million allocated for residential rehabilitation, is as follows:

Argyll and Bute: £95,095

Highland: £234,516

Shetland: £24,422

Orkney: £25,066

Western Isles: £33,425.

This brings the total amount of funding allocated so far to ADPs within the Highlands and Islands region to £412,524.