Seòmar agus comataidhean

The updated Climate Change Plan (CCPu) introduced a chapter on Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs), and accompanied this with a commitment to review progress for developing NETs. Policies in this chapter place a focus on developing the evidence base for NETs to be deployed at the end of the decade, and assessing the feasibility of various technologies.

We are making progress on developing our evidence base. As we made clear to the committee in our response in March 2021, should a need arise for a ‘Plan B’, there is flexibility to adjust sector pathways and reassign any abatement to other sectors.

We will continue to review our progress and evidence as we work towards the next full Climate Change Plan, a draft of which we will make available to Parliament by November 2023 at the latest.

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.

Full schedules cannot be supplied due to the commercially sensitive information that is included.

I can confirm however that the Living Safely This Winter campaign ran from 13 December 2021 to 31 January 2022 and was active across the following channels on TV and radio:

Broadcast TV: STV; Channel 4 Scotland; ITV Breakfast Scotland.

Video on Demand (VOD): STV Player; All 4; ITV Hub; Sky VOD; Virgin VOD; Sky Adsmart which incorporates 63 channels such as Sky Sports, Sky Movies, Sky Atlantic, Channel 5 and Comedy Central.

Radio: Clyde 1&2; Forth 1&2; Moray Firth Radio; Northsound 1&2; Radio Borders; Tay 2; Tay FM; West Sound; Central FM; Kingdom FM; Heart FM; Smooth FM; Capital FM; Argyll FM; Caithness FM; Radio Skye; Heartland FM; Isles FM; Lochbroom/Two Lochs Radio; Nevis; Oban; Shetland Islands Broadcasting Company; Awaz; Panjab Radio.

The campaign also incorporated digital and out of home poster advertising to reach an all adult audience across Scotland.

Recovery certificates contained within the NHS Scotland Covid Status App adhere to the standard set by the European Commission, through the EU Digital Covid Certificate scheme which Scotland is a member of. This recognised standard does not allow for unsupervised self-reported LFD tests to be used to create a recovery certificate.

This question relates to operational matters that are the responsibility of the Scottish Court and Tribunals Service (SCTS) corporate body. The question has been passed to the Chief Executive of the SCTS who will reply in writing within 20 days.

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 are aware that there will be situations where those looking to travel will have tested positive for COVID-19 using an LFD test since 11 January 2022, when confirmatory PCR testing was no longer required. Further information is available from NHS Inform .

Travellers can use the text message and/or email from private PCR test results more than 10 days before travel as proof of recovery if an NHS PCR was not taken.

There are also some countries where a private supervised LFD test is acceptable and can be used instead of a PCR.

Different nations have different requirements for entry. That is why we encourage everyone to continue to check the entry requirements of the countries they intend to visit.

Where agricultural expertise is required in Ministerial appointees to Government agencies, the sponsor team for the agency may choose to integrate that into criteria for the role. The sponsor team should work with the public body and the Board Chair on this, to represent Ministers' aims and requirements for the roles.

Government agencies will of course also ensure that they engage with their relevant stakeholders, including agricultural representatives, as appropriate.

The amount self-funders pay for their care home costs is a contractual matter between the individual and their care home provider. This agreement is protected by consumer protection laws.

Guidance on Social Care is on the Scottish Government website: Social care support - Social care - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Further guidance on free personal and nursing care can be found here - Care Support and Rights.dot (scot.nhs.uk)

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07049 on 17 March 2022. 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