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The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-04072 on 22 November 2021. 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 .

In developing proposals for the regulation of short-term lets, the Scottish Government has conducted three public consultations. Our most recent consultation closed on 13 August 2021, and we received 1,026 responses.

We carefully considered suggestions for changes to the legislation from working group members, and stakeholders responding to our third consultation, including the Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers. The changes set out in the consultation report align with the policy objectives of ensuring all short-term lets comply with basic safety requirements, without undermining protections for guests, neighbours and local communities. These include significant and pragmatic changes in response to concerns from the tourism sector, such as the removal of overprovision and stronger guidance on fees.

The Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010 prohibits the display of tobacco related products inside retailer premises. No advertising of branded tobacco products is permitted either inside or outside a premise but stores are allowed to have generic, unbranded signs stating they sell tobacco on in-store gantries, and outside of buildings, however the latter is actively discouraged.

Any concerns around the compliance of a particular premises with Scottish law should be directed to the local authority. The Scottish Government provide funding of £1.34 million annually to councils for the enforcement of the legislation around the sale and purchase of tobacco and NVP’s. Local authority trading standards services treat the enforcement of legislation as a high priority issue.

We know that it will take time and a series of targeted actions to build back capacity and redesign patient pathways to bring treatment times back within targets for orthopaedic patients.

As part of the NHS Recovery Plan , which is backed by an overall investment of £1 billion, the Scottish Government is investing over £400 million to deliver 10 National Treatment Centres (NTCs) which will create protected elective capacity for an additional 40,000 surgeries and procedures across 12 specialties per year. The first of these opened at the Golden Jubilee in November 2020 and next three NTCs are due to open in NHS Fife, NHS Forth Valley and NHS Highland in 2022. These centres will be crucial to increasing orthopaedic capacity, which will in turn reduce the length of time patients are waiting for treatment.

Services are also embracing new ways of working, including virtual clinics and Active Clinical Referral Triage, which will support shorter time to diagnosis and treatment and continue to ensure patients receive the appropriate advice and support.

At the heart of our licensing scheme is a set of mandatory standards which will help to protect the safety of guests and neighbours in short-term lets across Scotland. Provided an operator continues to comply with their licence conditions, which will often just be the mandatory safety conditions, their licence would normally be renewed. As the licensing scheme requires licence holders to comply with mandatory safety conditions, and they cannot continue to operate if they do not, it is reasonable to assume that lenders will have regard to this as part of their due diligence, alongside other considerations such as turnover and profitability.

The 2022-23 Scottish Budget delivers record funding of £18 billion for the health portfolio to support our vital health and care services, including those services that are supporting the needs of people living with long COVID, chronic fatigue syndromes and chronic pain.

We have published ‘Scotland's long COVID service’, which sets out our approach and 16 commitments to improve care and support for people with long COVID in Scotland.

In addition, our £10million ‘long COVID Support Fund’ will provide NHS Boards with additional resource to respond in a flexible and tailored manner to the needs of people with long COVID.

In light of the final National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome ME/CFS being published, we are pleased to confirm that a formal stakeholder consultation project will begin in early 2022. The main focus of this is to work collaboratively with key stakeholders towards implementing the recommendations within these guidelines, in Scotland.

We are continuing to work with Health Boards to ensure the remobilisation of appropriate pain management support as quickly and as safely as possible. As part of this we providing funding to enhance the capacity of pain management care through the Chronic Pain Winter Support Fund. We will shortly announce the outcome of this funding call. The projects we fund will boost the support available for people with chronic pain at the national and local level to help them maintain their health and wellbeing over the months ahead.

Funding provided by the Scottish Government (Chief Scientist Office) for research falls into three broad areas of activity, i.e. research studies, capacity building and supporting infrastructure.

The specific amounts provided by condition are set out below although it should be noted that research studies (funded by non-commercial and third sector organisations) would also have benefited from the provision of service support costs and other generic resources which are not routinely recorded by condition.

Research Grants

The Chief Scientist Office supports response mode grant committees and a small catalytic grants scheme (2016-19). The committees which comprise independent experts as well as public representatives consider applications across broad research remits to address health and care challenges in Scotland. Applications are subject to independent expert peer-review with funding recommendations made by the committees. It should be noted that (1) funding rounds were significantly impacted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic which saw a significant research response and (2) for 2021 to date only one of the two funding rounds has been completed.