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The Gender Equality Taskforce in Education & Learning developed a set of ambitions in order to help inform its work, including the development of monitoring and evaluation frameworks. Since then, discussion and work has been ongoing to refine the workplan, to ensure that it is able to enact the type of long term, complex, systemic change that is needed. I am committed to continuing and accelerating such work to ensure that girls and young women have a gender equal experience of education and learning.

In collaboration with the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), and other key justice organisations, we are taking action to tackle the rising prison population.

Prison will always be necessary for those who pose a risk of harm or threaten the delivery of justice. Equally, the Scottish Government is committed to shifting the balance between the use of custody and justice in the community. The budget for 2024-25 includes an additional £14m in support for community justice services and ongoing work to further enable a shift away from the use of custody, bringing the total to £148m. This will support work to strengthen alternatives to remand and the provision of community sentences and interventions, which we know can be more effective in reducing reoffending and assisting with rehabilitation than short-term custodial sentences, leading to fewer victims and safer communities.

To date we have taken action such as the extension of the presumption against short sentences from three months or less to twelve months or less, to enable a further shift away from short custodial sentences, and introduced the use of electronic monitoring on bail. We have established a Prison Population Leadership Group, engaging a range of Justice partners, to further consider the challenges and mitigations associated with the rising prison population.

SPS is taking forward action to respond to the pressures caused by the rising prison population and remains committed to prioritising the health and wellbeing of staff and those living in prison. It is keeping its current population management strategy under review in order to accommodate the rising prisoner numbers. It is also taking forward a range of proposals to optimise the current prison estate which has already seen the transfer of male prisoners into accommodation previously housing women at HMP Edinburgh and the transfer of robustly risk assessed adult male prisoners to HMP&YOI Polmont.

Scotland now has the highest number of designated Bathing Water sites ever, with the vast majority classified as good or excellent and 98% overall achieving the bathing water quality standards. Under the Bathing Water (Scotland) Regulations 2008, Scottish Ministers are required to designate an area of surface water (coastal or inland) as a bathing water where they expect a large number of people to bathe, having regard to past trends and infrastructure and facilities provided, or other measures taken to promote bathing.

The Scottish Government is not currently planning on revising the bathing water site designation process and continues to work with Environmental Standards Scotland in line with the Summary Report on Designation of Bathing Water Sites published by Environmental Standards Scotland published on 4 December 2023.

The Scottish Government does not hold or compile figures relating to the occupations of people who have taken up reskilling courses provided through programmes receiving our funding support.

Examples of such supported programmes, which have provided reskilling to a range of workers over recent years, include the National Energy Skills Accelerator's Pilot Energy Skills Project and the Offshore Recertification training scheme delivered by the Energy Transition Zone as part of a local and regional partnership for the North East Economic Recovery and Skills Fund.

The Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) was replaced with the more comprehensive Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) data collection as part of the development of the National Improvement Framework for Scottish education. This was partly in response to advice from the OECD following its 2015 review of Scottish education which said that said the sample approach of the SSLN did not give national agencies enough evidence - “The light sampling of literacy and numeracy at the national level has not provided sufficient evidence for other stakeholders to use in their own evaluative activities or for national agencies to identify with confidence the areas of strength in the years of the Broad General Education across the four capacities of CfE."

The SSLN did not provide any detailed information for local authorities and schools about the progress of individual children. The ACEL data provides the attainment levels of every child in Scotland at key stages in primary and secondary school, and provides detailed data at all levels of the system, allowing schools and local authorities to better target improvement activity. Moving to ACEL data also empowers teachers, placing primacy on their professional judgement as the key indicator of children’s progress prior to national qualifications.

NHS 24 do not send ambulances to patients. If NHS 24 receive a call from a patient that is deemed to be an emergency, it is passed to a SAS call handler within the Ambulance Control Centres (ACC).

The Scottish Government continues to work closely with the Scottish Ambulance Service and Health Boards to ensure a continuous focus on responding to the most critically unwell patients as quickly as possible.

We continue to invest in supporting the Service and patients, including a record number of additional staff (1388) since 2020. Our £50m funding investment this year is being used, in part, to recruit a further 317 additional frontline staff across the country.

We have also set out a number of principles that health boards should aim to achieve in order to safely reduce handover times at the front door of hospitals. This is an important piece of work that will reduce the pressure on hospital and ambulance services.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25250 on‎ 16 February 2024. 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 .

This is operational matter for ScotRail and British Transport Police (BTP). The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government is aware of the BMA Scotland’s views that anaesthesia associates (AA) and physician associates (PA) should be regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) rather than the General Medical Council (GMC).

The Scottish Government is satisfied with the suitability of the GMC as the regulator. AAs and PAs are educated in curricula aligned to the medical model and work complementary to and under the supervision of doctors, a common regulator ensures consistent standards, providing doctors with better assurance when delegating clinical tasks. It also ensures a consistent approach across professional groups in relation to adverse events, particularly where fitness to practise concerns arise.

Furthermore, the Department of Health and Social Care published a UK-wide consultation in 2017 which clearly demonstrated a majority preference for the GMC as the regulator (59% in comparison to 20% for the HCPC).

With regard to the BMA Scotland’s concerns that GMC regulation will confuse patients as to a practitioner’s professional status, current guidance issued to Health Boards by the Scottish Government stipulates that patients should always be told when they are being treated by an AA or PA, rather than a doctor. Once regulated, the roles will also become subject to the principles in Good Medical Practice to always be open and honest about their role and ensure that they are working within the limits of their qualifications and experience.

Ministers are carefully considering the outline business case for the Small Vessel Replacement Programme, which includes the procurement route and a full financial assessment of the programme.

This is an important, complex issue and an update will be provided to Parliament once a decision on investment has been taken. This is expected shortly.