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The Scottish Government is aware of the reported comments by the Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales.

Any expedited process for hearing appeals is a matter for the judiciary, who are independent of Scottish Ministers. This process would also only be able to consider those cases which have been referred back to the courts and would not be able to address, for example, any cases where consideration by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has been delayed by difficulties in obtaining timely information from the Post Office, or where no person has approached the Commission for their case to be reassessed.

Given that the UK Government has introduced legislation for England & Wales the Scottish Government plan to ensure, insofar as possible, equal treatment for Scottish sub-postmasters. Any Scottish solution will need to be compatible with both the proposed UK Government legislation and the UK compensation scheme in which the Scottish Government has no locus.

NHS Inform has a dedicated long COVID microsite for people with ongoing symptoms after Covid-19, accessible at Long-term effects of COVID-19 | NHS inform . The information was updated in November 2023 following a user research exercise conducted with people living with long COVID to understand their experiences of accessing the information and identify areas for further development of the content.

More broadly, current COVID-19 specific guidance is still in place for the public and wider guidance for individuals and non-clinical workplaces, promoting a risk-based approach to building resilience to respiratory infections, including COVID-19. Any change in guidance will be driven by the data and evidence gathered, as well as expert advice.

Section 8.1 of the ‘COVID-19 rapid guideline: managing the long-term effects of COVID-19’ developed jointly by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) recommends to “provide access to multidisciplinary services, if available, [. . .] for assessing physical and mental health symptoms and carrying out further tests and investigations. Services should be led by a doctor with relevant skills and experience and appropriate specialist support, taking into account the variety of presenting symptoms.”

The rationale section of the guideline relating to this recommendation notes that “1 model would not fit all areas” and “in areas where multidisciplinary services are not available, services may be provided through integrated and coordinated primary care, community, rehabilitation and mental health services.”

The Bank Refund Guarantee for the two new vessels for the Little Minch routes was signed on 3 February 2023. The name of the financial institution that provided the guarantee is commercially confidential.

Patient related experience and patient outcome measures will be recorded through NHS Boards’ use of the C-19 YRS digital screening tool. The provision of heath data through this tool will assist in understanding the provision and effectiveness of long COVID services. Where possible, the data will be disaggregated by age, gender, ethnicity, and deprivation quintile. This will support understanding of any inequitable variation in service provision, experience and outcomes which may need to be addressed through service changes.

The Strategic Network has contracted the University of Leeds to support the initial evaluation of long COVID services in Scotland, using data from the C19-YRS tool. The outputs of the evaluation are expected following the end of the financial year.

The Scottish Government is working collaboratively with the UK Government to establish a monitoring and evaluation framework to cover the Investment Zones in Scotland.

The information and metrics included within the framework will be determined by the detailed proposals provided by the Regional Economic Partnerships in Glasgow City and North East Region. The proposals are currently in progress, but will focus on the overall policy goals including innovation and fair work, and will link to the outcomes set out in the Investment Zones Technical Document , published on 8 December 2023.

As noted in S6W-26045 on 18 March 2024, the SQUIRe regime is one of the toughest performance regimes in the UK. It is an operational matter for ScotRail to investigate and rectify areas where performance has not met the standards expected by the Scottish Government. By doing so the overall scoring for ScotRail should improve.

The scoring shows that the SQUIRe regime is operating as expected by highlighting areas where ScotRail is not performing as expected and where improvement is required.

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 .

Transport Scotland officials discuss all aspects of the SQUIRe regime with ScotRail including performance and on-going issues.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in Wales and Northern Ireland, have noted the petition PE1997: Introduce mandatory braille labelling for food products sold in Scotland and the interest in Scotland around progressing this issue under the UK Food Compositional Standards and Labelling Common Framework. Defra have indicated that the UK Government has no immediate plans to initiate a public consultation on policy proposals for the introduction of mandatory braille labelling on food products, citing several factors that need to be explored before policy development can be considered on a UK-wide basis. This includes how viable braille labelling would be on a wide range of packaging, as well as the relative effectiveness and associated costs alongside using alternative different digital technologies. FSS intend to initiate stakeholder engagement in this respect during the 2024-25 business year and will keep the other UK lead departments updated at Common Framework discussions.

The Scottish Government has welcomed the recommendation from the UK National Screening Committee (NSC) that the 4 UK Nations should move towards implementing a programme of targeted lung screening for those between 55-74 with a history of smoking.

The Scottish Expert Advisory Group (SEAG) was established to assess the specific challenges and opportunities for a Scottish programme. The SEAG met for the first time in August 2023. Further meetings are scheduled in the coming months as part of work to develop a business case.

The complexity of the challenge means a national screening programme is likely to take years rather than months to implement. Until the business case is complete, we cannot provide timings for implementation or specifics relating to implementation and annual running costs.

Lung cancer remains a national priority, which is why the Scottish Government has a dedicated chapter in our £114.5 million National Cancer Plan, and last December we redesigned lung cancer diagnostic services to help ensure patients receive faster access to treatment.