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The Scottish Government places great importance on leisure facilities and believes everyone should have access to these services.

We are fully aware of the issues facing many sports facilities, particularly swimming pools, and the specific issue of energy costs has been raised with us.

Maree Todd MSP, Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport has met with Community Leisure UK on a number of occasions to discuss the challenges and will also raise the issues facing public leisure facilities when she meets with COSLA shortly.

sport scotland, our nation agency for sport, continues to hold regular and ongoing discussions with its partners, including local authorities, COSLA, and Scottish Swimming (the sport’s governing body), to discuss the challenges facing the sporting sector.

sport scotland are supporting Scottish Swimming to deliver a Scottish Swimming Facilities Project. Scottish Swimming recently appointed a contractor to undertake the detailed piece of work to understand accurately the current pool provision, life cycle and predict the landscape in the short, medium, and long term. Conclusions are expected by July 2023.

In addition COSLA are member of the Active Scotland Delivery Group which considers how Scotland can become a more active nation and how we can collaboratively address the challenges we face.

As a result of the difficult decisions which had to be taken through the Emergency Budget review, recruitment of the 1,000 additional roles to support community mental health resilience, ensuring every GP Practice has access to a mental health and wellbeing service has not yet commenced. We have already prioritised significant investment to build mental health capacity in primary care through Action 15 of the Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027 and the Primary Care Improvement Fund.

We remain committed to improving mental health service provision in primary care settings. We are therefore working closely with stakeholders, including the Mental Health in Primary Care National Oversight Group, to develop plans to best use the resource available across the system in 2023-24, and in future years to improve support, assessment and treatment in primary care settings.

Social Security Scotland’s Local Delivery service has teams based in every Scottish Local Authority, and in many cases are co-located with existing services to make sure that they bring support to places that people currently go. This localised approach to support also means that visibility of the service is tailored to meet the demands and demographics of each Local Authority area.

Through analysis of their data, Social Security Scotland are able to identify areas with low take-up or high rates of unsuccessful applications. This evidence can then be used to target engagement with local stakeholders to raise awareness of Scottish benefits and effectively support people to take up their entitlements.

The number of General Practices located in the most and least deprived areas in Scotland is shown in the following table, based on data published by Public Health Scotland relating to 1 January 2023.

The Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Act 2022 introduced a range of changes to specific legislative areas, many of which originated in temporary Scottish and UK Covid legislation.

These reforms include permanent public health protection powers, similar to those which already exist in England and Wales, increased protection for private rented tenants facing evictions, and a temporary extension of some changes in the justice system to help manage the backlog of court cases arising from the pandemic.

The Act is now permanent legislation including those provisions relating to the private rented sector which means extension to these powers are no longer required.

The provisions in the Act relating to the private rented sector, saw pre eviction protocols relating to rent arrears made permanent, ensuring that tenants who reside in the sector have all the information they need about their rights and also ensuring that Tribunals are able to continue taking circumstances of both parties into account when deciding whether to grant an eviction order or not.

The Scottish Government took the decision last year to freeze ScotRail fares as part of a suite of measures to tackle the ongoing cost of living crisis. More broadly the Scottish Government has committed to pilot the removal of ScotRail peak fares on all ScotRail routes from October this year.

This initiative will operate over a six-month period, following which the Scottish Government will carefully consider its impact and the long-term sustainability of such a proposition.

The Scottish Government is considering future fare options whilst taking account of the extremely challenging fiscal climate facing both rail passengers and funders and I expect to provide an update on this in due course.

Golden Jubilee Phase 1 opened its doors to patients in December 2020, NTC Fife treated its first patient on 20 March, NTC Highland opened on 17 April of this year, NTC Forth Valley is due to open in summer 2023 with Golden Jubilee Phase 2 due to open in winter 2023.

The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost, due to the significant number of meetings which take place between Energy Saving Trust and the Scottish Government. Energy officials alone meet with EST a number of times a week, both ad hoc and scheduled, to discuss the programme of work they deliver on the government's behalf. A significant number of meetings have also taken place within the specified timeframe between transport and water policy officials and EST.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has been running the monthly COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) for almost three years. Since 2021 this survey has included long COVID questions and has provided high-level estimates for Scotland of the number of people with long COVID by duration.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is now reviewing its approach to COVID-19 surveillance, and survey data collection has been paused since mid-March. The then Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Humza Yousaf MSP, wrote to the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 8 March to express his concern about the delay in deciding the future of the survey, which will result in a gap in the provision of data on long COVID in the first quarter of the 2023-24 financial year. We are in touch with UKHSA to clarify the details of the updated scope, design and implementation plans for CIS, which will inform our planning for local surveillance.

Our Chief Scientist Office has funded the Early Pandemic Evaluation and Enhanced Surveillance of COVID-19 (EAVE II) long COVID study. EAVE II forms part of our Scottish Respiratory Surveillance Programme. This is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and Public Health Scotland to identify adults at greatest risk of developing long COVID. The study was able to identify cases of long COVID in Scotland using routinely collected clinical data from almost the entire adult Scottish population. The clinical data derived from electronic health records, comprising GP records (coded, free text and sick note data), hospital data, GP Out-of-Hours data, outpatient data, NHS 24 data, medication data and mortality data. The University has drawn on this work to publish an initial report on the estimated prevalence of long COVID among adults in Scotland, titled ‘ Identifying Long Covid Using Electronic Health Records: A National Observational Cohort Study in Scotland ’ . Please note that these findings are preliminary and have not yet been peer-reviewed.

The study team acknowledge that their estimated prevalence findings are lower than estimates derived from surveys such as the COVID-19 Infection Survey and Scottish Health Survey, in which participants self-report having long COVID, rather than long COVID being diagnosed by a medical professional. They also acknowledge that their findings are likely to underestimate total cases because not everyone with long COVID will attend their GP, and not all cases or symptoms will be recorded. However, the report still makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of long COVID prevalence and distribution in Scotland.

We are working closely with Public Health Scotland to develop an approach and methodology for the longer-term surveillance of long COVID, which will in turn inform the planning of health service provision for people with long COVID.

The Scottish Government Super Sponsor Scheme has been overwhelmingly popular, with local authorities, the third sector and local communities responding in partnership.

As of 11 April, there have been a total of 24,216 arrivals in the UK with a Scottish Sponsor, of which 19,565 are sponsored by the Scottish Government. Total arrivals in the UK with a Scottish Sponsor (which includes those sponsored by the Scottish Government (Super Sponsor Scheme) and by Individual Sponsors) represent 20.1% of all arrivals in the UK, and it is the most per head of any UK nation.

Our priority over the coming months is on supporting displaced people from Ukraine already in the UK with a Scottish sponsor and who choose to remain here longer-term. With a shortage of affordable housing across Scotland, a cost of living crisis and significant pressures on both local and national Government finances, the scale of the challenge is significant.

Following the pause of the scheme in July 2022, this was reviewed by the Ukraine Programme Board in late October and again in February. Parliament was informed of our decision for the scheme to remain closed to new applications as the criteria required to re-open the scheme could not be met at that time. We will review the reopening of the Scheme again in June 2023.