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Our emergency planning portal; ready.scot, was updated in June 2022 to include a new ‘Learn’ section to support the public, community groups and Voluntary Sector partners, by raising awareness of emergency resilience structures and processes, and to strengthen understanding of how they might participate in an effective and joined-up response to an emergency. Between March and April 2023 a series of four online community resilience workshops took place, joined by approximately 240 participants. We will continue to work with the sector, and in particular Local Authorities who have the lead role on engaging with local communities, to understand their training needs and to provide any additional resources required.

The Scottish Government is unable to provide a detailed explanation of the selection process. As a Parliamentary Commissioner, the selection of the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland will be a matter for the Scottish Parliament.

Part 2 of Schedule 1 of the Bill states that the Commissioner will be “appointed by His Majesty on recommendation of the Scottish Parliament”. This process is covered by Rule 3.11 of the Parliament’s Standing Orders. Selection will be carried out by a “selection panel” comprising the Presiding Officer, the convener of the relevant Committee and between 4 and 7 other cross-party MSPs selected by the Presiding Officer. Any member of the selection panel may propose that Parliament nominates the person recommended by the panel.

The Scottish Government’s Storm Arwen Review provided a detailed review of such a situation, and our two follow-up reports made clear that the organisations who are responsible for emergency planning and response in Scotland had formally incorporated those recommendations into their workplans.

The Scottish Government is committed to doing everything in its power to reduce smoking prevalence in Scotland, lowering smoking rates in our communities to 5% or less by 2034.

We are taking part in a UK-wide consultation on creating a smoke-free generation and tackling youth vaping, which includes the proposal on raising the age of sale for tobacco products by one year each year for those born on or after 1 January 2009.

Any decision to allow members of the Government a free vote would be a decision taken by Cabinet collectively, following analysis of the consultation responses and once a decision on next steps is taken.

The Scottish Government’s forthcoming Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Action Plan will set out priority areas for action over the next three years. Ensuring that people have access to the information and services they need to make informed choices and take care of their sexual health are key outcomes of the plan.

A national sexually transmitted infection (STI) awareness campaign led by Public Health Scotland launched in July with targeted work for groups who have seen the highest rates of STIs, particularly gonorrhoea.

The Scottish Government is also investing in a national roll-out of an online STI testing service.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

There have been no drones detected at HMP & YOI Grampian in each of the last three years.

The Scottish Prison Service recognises the negative impact of drones being used to introduce illicit items (including drugs and weapons) into the prison estate and are currently considering a technological solution to support the identification of drones within SPS airspace.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on all NHS services to an extent, including abortion services.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving access to abortion services and the Women’s Health Plan includes a range of measures which aim to achieve this. Several abortion-related actions within the Women’s Health Plan have been progressed, including:

• making telemedicine consultations a permanent option for patients,
• continuing to allow women under 12 weeks’ gestation to take mifepristone and misoprostol at home where that is clinically appropriate and also now allowing women to take mifepristone at home at later gestations in certain circumstances,
• ensuring patients are offered the progestogen-only pill with their abortion medications, and
• working with stakeholders and Gillian Mackay MSP to introduce the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill into the Scottish Parliament.

The Scottish Government commissioned NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) to develop a specification to deliver a national service for abortions between 20 to 24 weeks gestation within Scotland. NSS has been discussing its specification with NHS Boards and is also exploring other delivery options for the service. We anticipate that the long-term action within the Plan to review the provision of abortion services in Scotland will be considered as part of the forthcoming review of abortion law.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-18928 on 21 June 2023. 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 .

Payment reform will be implemented on 1 November 2023. Therefore, it is not possible at this stage to make an assessment on the impact of payment reform on the recruitment of dentists in Dumfries and Galloway and the level of deregistration of adult patients from NHS dental services.

The main purpose of payment reform is to improve access to NHS dental services and thereby reducing the number of deregistrations. This will be done by replacing the existing care and treatment fees with a new set priced at levels that we believe will incentivise dentists to provide a full range of NHS care and treatment.

During the first trimester, all mainland NHS Boards within Scotland are able to offer surgical abortions, although access to surgical abortion is limited in some Health Board areas.

Currently no Health Board in Scotland is able to provide second trimester surgical abortions; if a patient is unable to access a medical abortion locally in the second trimester (over 20 weeks’ gestation), their Health Board will refer them to a service in England for treatment.