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The Scottish Government is supportive of the work of Versus Arthritis including the six-point support package. In support of this the Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport is due to meet with representatives of Versus Arthritis soon to discuss the initiative.

We are working in collaboration with the organisation to ensure that patients on waiting lists receive good communication and relevant support while they await treatment. This work will be ongoing with essential collaboration with patients, carers and providers including the National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain NACCP.

From the moment it was announced that COP26 would be coming to Glasgow, the Scottish Government have been fully committed to playing our role in ensuring a safe and secure event. The Government of the United Kingdom hold the presidency of COP26 and are therefore responsible for working alongside the United Nations to organise the main summit and its attached "Green Zone". A joint COP26 delivery framework has been agreed between the Government of the United Kingdom and the Scottish Government, which includes Glasgow City Council and Scottish Agencies. This outlines the plans, organisation, structure, systems and methodology that will be used to manage delivery of COP26 including appropriate mitigation of impact on business as usual. As the Scottish Government have devolved powers around Safety and Resilience, our colleagues and organisations such Police Scotland, and Transport Scotland, who are responsible for the COP26 transport plan, have been engaged through the COP26 planning process. With a separate Legal landscape in Scotland, we are responsible for ensuring the correct legislative mechanisms are put in place that will allow the event to happen.

The Scottish Government is proactively leading a Scottish response to COP26, ensuring that our communities, businesses and organisations have the opportunities to engage and benefit from COP26 coming to Glasgow. Part of our offering will be to host a Scotland Zone, showcasing the talents, skills and innovative approach that Scotland is taking to addressing the climate emergency.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. We are however developing a meaningful equality and diversity objective for Chairs of NHS Boards that directly support the work of staff equality networks, ensuring they have a voice and influence to drive change, with clear and defined lines of accountability. While this is in development we are actively encouraging Health Boards to develop staff led equality networks across a range of protected characteristics, which includes disability.

We are also working with service-led disability organisations to support graduates with disabilities enter the NHS workforce and the development of a user-focussed workplace adjustment policy.

The Scottish Government continues to work under the interim Subsidy Control regime introduced by the UK Government on 1 January 2021 and provisions held within the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Alongside this, consideration has to be given to any further UK Subsidy Control obligations such as World Trade Organisation membership and commitments arising from international treaties and Fair Trade Agreements to which the United Kingdom is a party.

The UK Government introduced a Bill on Subsidy Control to Parliament on 30 June 2021 with a view to implementation of a permanent Subsidy Control regime.

Officials will continue to diligently work through the UK Government’s proposals to understand the impact on subsidies, including on ferry services.

This information is not currently available. Weekly updated data on the proportion of the NHS workforce reported absent for all COVID-19 related reasons in total is available at:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/

The Scottish Government’s Primary care Directorate meets weekly with the Scottish General Practitioners Committee of the BMA to discuss a range of issues including Covid related issues such as long Covid.

NHS Boards are developing pathways according to local services and the needs of their respective populations, to support people with long COVID. We continue to invest in and expand multidisciplinary teams in primary care consisting of health and care professionals that play a key role in the provision of rehabilitation services.

Since the publication of the rehabilitation framework in August 2020, we have established a National Advisory Board to oversee its implementation.

The rehabilitation programme is currently undertaking a significant scoping exercise through a self-assessment process to understand the current status of rehabilitation services in Scotland, from the perspective of the staff working in them.

The self-assessment tool has been circulated to all NHS Boards, Health & Social Care Partnerships, third sector organisations, and Leisure Trusts as part of Local Authorities.

The outputs from the self-assessment tool along with demand and capacity data will help us shape priorities, understand challenges and opportunities and inform funding decisions.

The most recent long COVID statistics published by the Office for National Statistics on 1 July 2021 state that, over the four-week period ending 6 June 2021, an estimated 962,000 people living in private households in the UK reported experiencing long COVID (symptoms persisting more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) episode that are not explained by something else). Of those people, an estimated 81,000 lived in Scotland. Detailed estimates by age are available for the UK at Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) .This detail is not available for Scotland.

We do not currently have for Scotland a breakdown of people experiencing symptoms of long COVID by age, or according to whether or not they were originally hospitalised due to the virus. We are working with the EAVE II project, on which the University of Edinburgh and Public Health Scotland collaborate. Funded by the Medical Research Council, this project used pseudonymised GP and other patient data to track the COVID-19 pandemic as it unfolded across Scotland. This dataset is now being used in a separate project funded by the Chief Scientist Office to investigate long COVID, and will generate analysis of people assessed as having long COVID. Early results will be available later in 2021.

Yes, the Scottish Ferry Services Plan (2013-2022) which will be replaced by the Islands Connectivity Plan at the end of 2022.

Scottish Ferry Services: Ferries Plan (2013-2022) (transport.gov.scot)

Education Scotland’s scrutiny programme includes inspection of special schools and units within mainstream schools which provide specialist provision, including for those with autism. During all school inspections, HM Inspectors of Education evaluate the quality of provision for children, including those with additional support needs. Units within mainstream schools, standalone special schools and independent special schools are inspected by HM Inspectors of Education with specialist knowledge and experience.

HM Inspectors also focus on how well a school is performing, the impact it is having on improving outcomes for children and young people and the capacity for continuous improvement. This includes consideration of the outcomes for those learners requiring additional support. HM Inspectors take into account the context and nature of the school, its children and young people and their needs.

HM Inspectors use a set of standards to evaluate and report on quality and improvement in Scottish education. When inspecting schools HM Inspectors of Education use a selection of quality indicators from the quality framework ‘How good is our school?’ (4th edition) (2015). During inspection, HM Inspectors of Education focus on children’s and young people’s learning experiences within and beyond the classroom; their achievements, and how the school is ensuring these are of the highest possible quality. This includes those children and young people with additional support needs. HM Inspectors of Education observe learning first hand and discuss learning with learners and staff. This includes specialist support staff who provide individual or group support to learners requiring additional support for learning.

HM Inspectors of Education also seek the views of a wide range of stakeholders, including parents, staff, learners, and partners, through online questionnaires and focus group discussions. There are opportunities for stakeholders to comment on the quality of support provided. Questionnaires are adapted and distributed in different forms to enable all learners to access and complete these. In addition, HM Inspectors also engage in direct conversation with learners to discuss their views and experiences.

HM Inspectors of Education publish a report of their findings in the format of a letter for parents and a more detailed document outlining the findings in a Summarised Inspection Findings document. Both these documents and the inspection questionnaire summaries are published on Education Scotland’s website.

The mental health and wellbeing of children and young people is an absolute priority for the Scottish Government. We are committed to improving support for children and young people’s mental health, in order to ensure early intervention and prevention of suicide.

We know that schools play a key role in supporting children and young people’s mental health. The Mental Health in Schools Working Group recently developed a new mental health professional learning resource for all school staff to assist in responding to and supporting children and young people’s mental health in schools. Education Scotland has also provided tools and guidance for school staff to further strengthen support to children and young people.

We want to make sure anyone who needs support can get access to appropriate services. The provision of Educational Psychologists, school counselling services and school staff are a key part of the support being offered across schools in Scotland. We continue to support our local authority partners with £16 million in funding to ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services.