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We are aware of the specific issue in which Norway decided to allow fully vaccinated visitors from the UK but only if their record of vaccination had a QR code. On 3 September 2021 we introduced QR codes to vaccination status records. People from Scotland, who are fully vaccinated, are now able to travel to Norway without requiring to quarantine for 10 days. People can either download or request a paper copy of their vaccination status from NHS Inform or call the Freephone Helpline 0808 196 8565.

Information on how many dementia specialist appointments have been held in each year since 2007 is not collected or held centrally. National-level information on the number of referrals into old age psychiatry does not include dementia-specific referrals.

When the Gourock to Dunoon passenger service was brought into the Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Services network, the Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands did commit to look at fares on the passenger service and we remain committed to doing this. However, this is not to prejudge what the outcome of any such review would be.

We are considering Gourock – Dunoon fares in the context of ongoing work to seek to establish a compliant method to deliver RET on the Pentland Firth routes, where there is also a mix of commercial and subsidised operators. This is challenging but we are making progress.

We need to continue this work to fully understand the legal constraints and options for reducing fares where there is more than one operator, prior to any further decisions on RET. Scottish Government resources were pivoted to deal with Covid-19, however work on this issue has now resumed.

The file including consultancy requirements for the independent review has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre under BIB number 62666.

The contract between Transport Scotland and the appointed consultant, Ernst & Young, is valued at £156 000 exclusive of VAT.

A collaborative approach including stakeholder engagement was undertaken by Jacobs in taking forward the work to consider the roles and responsibilities of the bodies within Scotland as part of its review of transport governance structures. Transport Scotland published a report in July 2019: national-transport-strategy-transport-governance-working-group-report.pdf .

Stakeholders engaged in this process included: the National Transport Strategy (NTS2) Roles and Responsibilities Working Group; the Society of Chief Officers in Transportation in Scotland (SCOTS); Regional Transport Partnership (RTP) leads; Transport Scotland and Scottish Government modal policy leads; and public transport operators.

In July 2019, the Scottish Government launched a consultation on the draft National Transport Strategy for Scotland including two questions relating to transport governance regarding democracy, decision-making and delivery. Trade unions had the opportunity to provide a response to the consultation and one trade union, ASLEF, did so and 1, 221 responses to the consultation were received in total.

As I noted in my statement to Parliament on 24 June, a single NHS Board first discovered in December 2020 that a small number of women who had subtotal hysterectomies had been wrongly excluded from the cervical screening programme and subsequently developed cervical cancer. All affected individuals or their families were directly contacted on 15 April 2021 by their NHS Board.

An Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA) was published on 10 December 2020 in our 2020 consultation report on proposals for a licensing scheme and planning control areas for short-term lets in Scotland. The ICIA can be found at: Short-term lets – licensing scheme and planning control areas: consultation analysis - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The following table shows how many school-aged children are in each local authority (as at September 2020) and how many devices have been distributed by councils using the £25m digital inclusion funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21. Local authorities across Scotland have a range of approaches to provision of technology in schools, including some councils who have undertaken to provide cohorts of their school population with devices using their own budgets. We do not hold information centrally on those local digital inclusion schemes, therefore, the table below only shows devices distributed through the funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21.

On Friday 3 September 2021 a QR code was included as part of the vaccination status letter. People travelling abroad can request their vaccination status online via NHS Inform or call the Freephone Helpline.

Jackie Ballie MSP (Scottish Labour- Dumbarton): To ask the Scottish Government how much has been spent on fuel for ministerial cars in each of the last five years.

The following table provides a breakdown of fuel expenditure for the Government Car Service since 2016.