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No assessment has been made of whether and how the conveyancing system may affect house prices.

Conveyancing is the legal process that transfers ownership of a property from one person to another including the completion of the missives.

The Scottish Government is aware of reports of unusually large numbers of emaciated and dead seabirds that were found along the North Sea costs in autumn 2021 and have been working to establish the potential causes. We have a number of dead seabird, fish, plankton and water samples undergoing analysis with the aim of identifying potential causes for the mortality event. The Scottish Government has been working closely with the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the Sea Mammal Research Unit and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science and the findings of these investigations will be published in due course.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all school-aged children and young people in Scotland have access to a digital device by the end of this parliament in 2026.

The Scottish Government has been working with other organisations across the UK, including UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the Sea Mammal Research Unit and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science to investigate the unusually large numbers of emaciated and dead seabirds that were found along the North Sea coasts in autumn 2021.

Due to the long life spans of many seabird species, the full impacts of the increased mortality in 2021 may not be evident for a number of years. However, long term monitoring of populations and individual survival at some seabird colonies may provide an indication of the impacts of the recent mortality event, although these data will only become available from the autumn of 2022.

The Scottish Government is working to deliver the Care Experience Grant which will provide young care experienced people age 16-25 with, additional financial support and security as they move into adulthood; and support their financial wellbeing. This £200 annual grant will benefit around 50,000 young people. Officials are currently engaging with stakeholders and potential partners to identity the best delivery mechanism for the Grant.

In 2021-22 the Scottish Government distributed over £12 million to support the provision of free welfare and debt advice. This vital funding ensures that people who are struggling the most can access the support they need in a way that works for them – be it face to face, online or over the phone. Care leavers and individuals with care experience can access this advice.

Additionally, eligible care leavers can request aftercare from the local authority who had responsibility for providing their care. Aftercare support can include: financial support to meet essential accommodation and maintenance costs, such as travel and other necessary living expenses; information or advice.

As at 28 February 2022 a total of 32 staff earning over £100,000 per annum were employed in Core Scottish Government at a total salary cost of £3,680,537.

We provided £0.5 million to Care and Repair in September 2021 and in response to levels of demand, have provided a further £0.5 million in February 2022. This £1 million funding will enable Care and Repair to support eligible older and disabled households with making the necessary changes. We continue to work closely with Care and Repair to understand how best to support them and their clients.

The latest available data from the Scottish Health Service Costs book shows that for 2019-20 the percentage of NHS expenditure spent on mental health services was 8.49%.

We are working with partners to deliver the 2021-22 Programme for Government commitment to ensure that at least 10% of frontline NHS spend goes towards mental health and 1% goes on child and adolescent services by the end of this Parliament.

I refer the member to the answer given in S6W-05977.

We know since the initial introduction of the Distance Aware initiative, uptake has been good and we have therefore ordered more badges and lanyards and considered additional ways to distribute.

As such we will offer Local Authorities badges and lanyards to distribute on a flexible basis, based on local need. It will be for Local Authorities to decide on distribution channels, but could include testing centres and council buildings, as well as any local community facilities, hubs or stores in rural communities.

In rural, remote and island locations, lateral flow device (LFD) tests can be ordered online or collected from test sites, pharmacies and dispensing GPs. Beyond this, local partners are responsible for choosing where to establish additional LFD community collect points.

In NHS Highland, NHS Orkney, NHS Shetland and NHS Western Isles examples of community collect sites have included vaccination centres, libraries and transport hubs including airports, mainland ferry terminals, bus and railway stations. Partners maintain an up-to-date list of their community collect sites on their websites, which can be found via gov.scot.

We have committed to a significant programme of investment an expansion in universal school meal provision, this programme will see universal free school lunches being made available for all children in primary and special schools during school term-time during the course of this parliamentary term.

As a part of this workstream, we have also committed to piloting approaches to the provision of free school meals in secondary schools during the course of this parliamentary term. We will provide updates on the progress of delivery around our work to establish pilots of universal free school meal provision in secondary schools as this progresses.