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The following table shows the number of directly employed staff on Fixed-Term appointment contracts at 30 June 2021, broken down by Directorate. These are our most recently published data.

For Bands A-C (junior to middle management grades) the Scottish Government does not use external recruitment agencies to fill temporary or permanent posts where the worker is employed by SG directly. At senor civil service level recruitment agencies are sometimes used to identify potential candidates for such roles.

The table provides this information for temporary and permanent employed roles in the senior civil service from 2018 onwards broken down by recruitment agency.

Under Section 2(3) of the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000, a proposal for a new National Park must identify the area to be designated and the proposed functions of the new National Park Authority. We are aware that several areas may be interested in National Park status, so a fair and transparent bidding and evaluation process will be put in place to identify the area or areas which will be put forward to obtain National Park status and allow the statutory process to begin. We will shortly provide further information on this initial bidding and evaluation process, but given the complex and important nature of the work, we do not think it will be completed by Spring 2022.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency is developing guidance for businesses to help them meet their obligations under The Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020. This will include an online toolkit and example scenarios to support producers and retailers to develop takeback services for online sales.

Stakeholder mapping carried out in June 2021 on behalf of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency identified approximately 4,400 retailers selling drinks on the Scottish market. Of these, 2.6% were identified as selling exclusively online. Analysis was not carried out to determine what proportion of retailers operate both online and bricks-and-mortar retail.

Capital and resource funding for SEPA’s programme to plan, track, and deliver the regulator function for Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), including development and delivery of a digital producer registration service, is agreed between SEPA and the Scottish Government as part of the annual Budget process.

Once DRS goes live, the annual registration fee paid by producers with a turnover of greater than £85,000 per year will cover the cost of ongoing maintenance of the registration service and regulation of the scheme.

In December 2019 we published "Neurological Care and Support - a National Framework for Action". Over 5 years we will invest £4.5 million to implement the Framework’s 17 commitments.

Some of these commitments aim to improve access to new medicines for people living with progressive forms of MS, such as our commitment to support the neurological research agenda by promoting the work of the Chief Scientist Office, third sector organisations’ research and Scottish neurological research networks; and encouraging opportunities for people with neurological conditions to become involved in research trials.

In September 2020, the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) accepted siponimod (Mayzent®) for routine use in NHS Scotland. Mayzent® is the first oral Disease Modifying Therapy (DMT) for active secondary progressive MS. The SMC Horizon Scanning Team have also identified several DMT’s in development for the treatment of progressive forms of MS which are predicted to enter the UK market within the next 5 years.

By 15 October 2021, 40,768 ventilation inspections were undertaken by local authorities across learning, teaching and play spaces.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-04001 on 8 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

It is the statutory responsibility of local authorities to manage and maintain the school estate across Scotland. The Scottish Government asked local authorities to detail any ventilation mitigations or remedial action arising throughout the CO2 monitoring exercise. Areas of potentially poor ventilation should be identified by reference to the Scottish Government’s Reducing Risks in Schools Guidance, which makes clear at what level of CO2 concentration remedial action should be considered.

To date, local authorities have reported only limited instances of remedial action being required in their learning estates.