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Prior to the start of the Covid-19 Pandemic, there were six Health Boards in Scotland who had been escalated to Stage 3 or above within the NHS Boards Performance Escalation Framework. This is the stage at which Boards are considered to require a higher level of support and oversight, from Scottish Government and/or other senior external support.

Boards can be escalated for a number of different reasons and can have more than one status, reflecting their individual positions. Reasons for escalation include:

• Financial position and financial management
• Operational Delivery/Performance
• Governance, leadership and culture
• Quality and safety

The six escalated Boards escalated were as follows:

• NHS Ayrshire and Arran
• NHS Borders
• NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
• NHS Lothian
• NHS Highland
• NHS Tayside

Following a recent review of escalated Boards by the Health and Social Care Management Board, and despite the challenges of responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the majority of Boards were found to have demonstrated sufficient improvement in relation to the issues which had led to their escalation to justify a reduction in their escalation status. The following table shows the changes which have now been made.

A number of research projects are currently underway across the UK, which will provide valuable data and evidence to inform the development of a national approach to integrating self sampling safely and reliably into the cervical screening programme.

Scotland is playing an active part in this work, with a pilot in NHS Dumfries and Galloway where self-sampling kits are being sent to screening participants who have never attended for cervical screening or who have not attended their most recent appointment.

The Scottish Government convened a working group in February, which is developing a work programme to ensure that the evidence on self-sampling can be gathered and evaluated, and to understand what changes will be needed to the current programme to allow widespread roll-out in the future.

While it continues to gather and evaluate the evidence on this matter, the National Screening Committee (UK NSC) has not yet recommended that self-sampling should be incorporated into the cervical screening programme.

The Scottish Government, alongside our partners in the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) programme, has played a key role in extending the reach of fibre broadband across Scotland. Independent broadband analysis site, thinkbroadband (the same site the UK Government quotes in its own figures), states that 94.6% of premises across Scotland are now able to access superfast broadband speeds of 30Mbps and above – up from just 59.3% in 2014, when DSSB deployment began.

Unfortunately, the Scottish Government does not hold the information you have requested. As telecoms regulator, Ofcom produces figures for numbers of properties in Scotland able to access superfast broadband - of 30 Megabits per second (30Mbps) and above - by year.

Unfortunately, the figures provided do not break down between residential and business properties and, on a directly comparable basis, only go as far back as 2017:

Please find information in the following tables.

Please find information in the following tables.

Please find information in the following tables.

Scotland has accounted for about 80% of woodland planting in the UK in recent years. Forest Research publishes National Statistics on the area of new woodland creation, which can be found on its website: Forestry Statistics and Forestry Facts & Figures - Forest Research

The following table shows the amount of woodland creation in the UK between 2016 – 2020, and the percentage share that was created in Scotland.

The Scottish Government publishes data on spending for agriculture, fisheries and forestry in the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland (GERS) report. Average annual spend for the last four years in agriculture, fisheries and forestry was £908 million, which is on average £167 per person in Scotland.

Using a slightly different methodology, the HMT Country and Regional Analysis 2020 Report provides a comparison between Scotland, England and Wales. A summary of the data for agriculture, fisheries and forestry has been provided in the following table with additional information on spending per capita provided by Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government does not routinely publish comparisons for the individual categories for agriculture, fisheries and forestry and there is no comparative information held in the HMT report either.

Table 1: Total spend for ‘Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’ in Scotland, England and Wales and spend per capita

The Scottish Government publishes data on spending for environmental protection in the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland (GERS) report. Average annual spend for the last four years on Environmental Protection was £1,258 million per year, which is on average £231 per person in Scotland.

Using a slightly different methodology, the HMT Country and Regional Analysis 2020 Report provides a comparison between Scotland, England and Wales. A summary of the data for agriculture, fisheries and forestry has been provided in the following table with additional information on spending per capita provided by Scottish Government.

A summary of the data on environmental protection has been provided below with additional information on spending per capita provided by Scottish Government.

Table 1: Total spend on Environmental Protection in Scotland, England and Wales and spend per person

I want to thank our health and care system for their magnificent work over this winter. It has been an enormously challenging period where they have had to manage a resurgence in cases, the emergence of new variants and the on-going demands of providing vital services to those requiring care.

The last few months have highlighted the nature of this pandemic and the continued requirement that NHS Scotland and its partners are able to be agile in their response to the new and emergent challenges we face.

We now have our Strategic Framework in place to help signal our direction of travel as a society and how we can support people and the communities in which they live, back toward the normality of life that we all wish for. That is, however, a journey that will take a number of months and, all the while, we must be mindful of the challenges that may still lie ahead. That may mean the need for further action to be taken on either a local, regional or national basis to support our health system. I am also committed to supporting and protecting the staff who have worked so hard, and for such a long time, in response to this unprecedented pandemic.

With this in mind, I have decided that NHS Scotland will remain on an emergency footing until at least 30 June 2021. It will, of course, be a matter for any incoming Health Secretary and their Government to review this when they take office following the election.