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The Emergency Budget Review (EBR) sets out in-year redistribution of funding within the Health and Social Care Portfolio. Future years funding will be set out in each year’s Scottish Budget, with the 2023-24 Budget to be published on 15 December 2022.

Ministers remain fully committed to utilising every lever within their devolved competence to support and grow domestic supply chain which is why we are working to realise our ambitions for the offshore wind supply chain in Scotland through The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council.

Our Collaborative Framework will help forge effective partnerships to deliver on supply chain potential. New ScotWind leaseholders have joined existing Scottish offshore wind developers in signing up to a Collaborative Framework Charter, agreeing to work jointly together to build a pipeline of supply chain work greater than the sum of its individual parts. 24 organisations, including representatives of all 17 ScotWind projects with signed lease option agreements, have agreed to work together in the development and delivery of this Collaborative Framework.

The National Audiology Review Group continues its independent review of services having most recently convened on 25 October. The Cabinet Secretary will shortly be meeting with the Review’s Chair for an update on their progress and their developing recommendations.

The review is pursuing four workstreams encompassing the lived experience, governance, quality assurance and education and will fully report in the new year.

The Scottish Government £50m Ukraine Longer Term Resettlement Fund was launched on 22 September 2022, and to date has received 21 enquiries from a mix of Council's and Registered Social Landlords. In terms of full applications submitted, four proposals have now come forward to the Fund, with others expected to follow in due course.

There is no formal closing date for the Fund, we are prioritising applications which deliver completed homes by 31 March 2023. Projects with homes completed in 2023/24 will be considered by exception.

In terms of the local authority areas where Scottish Government has received full proposals from, these are as follows:

Aberdeen City Council has been awarded up to £6.150m for up to 500 void properties on 28 October 2022.

North Ayrshire Council has been awarded up to £0.486m for up to 30 void properties on 6 October 2022.

Glasgow City Council - two applications from housing associations based within the Glasgow City Council area have also been received (with due diligence work currently progressing).

This does not include a pilot project, where we awarded £5m to North Lanarkshire Council for the refurbishment of up to 200 homes on 6 July 2022.

Despite the area of telecommunications being wholly reserved to the UK Parliament, the Scottish Government has asked BT and EE to do all it can to resolve the matter on Uig as quickly as possible, given the vital importance of reliable digital connectivity for island communities.

The R100 contracts will deliver a significant number of full fibre connections which will provide future proofed, resilient connectivity for decades to come. The R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme is also available to those who are unable to access a superfast connection currently, and who are not in commercial or R100 contract build plans, offering up to £5,000 to secure a superfast broadband connection.

CMAL will only accept the vessels if they are fit for purpose. The vessel will not be able to enter service until it has received all clearances required by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and Class society approval from Lloyds Register.

Marine litter is a global problem, and we know that more needs to be done. The Scottish Government thanks the Marine Conservation Society and their volunteers for their considerable efforts in gathering this data and also removing beach litter during the Great British Beach Clean in September. Their citizen science is vital in helping us prioritise future policy and legislation development.

We published our refreshed Marine Litter Strategy in September which contains an action plan to reduce the most common forms of litter and support the removal of debris that is already there. The Strategy covers a wide range of litter sources from large items such as fishing gear, to microplastics in the form of nurdles.

Our new actions build on multiple measures introduced to reduce plastic waste and pollution, such as: our bans on single-use plastic products including cotton buds, straws, cutlery, plates, drinks stirrers, balloon sticks, and food and drink containers made of expanded polystyrene; and on planned work such as a deposit return scheme for drinks containers, to be introduced next year.

The report of analysis of responses to the consultation draft National Planning Framework 4 was published on 8 November 2022 and is available from the Scottish Government’s website: https://www.gov.scot/publications/draft-fourth-national-planning-framework-analysis-responses-consultation-exercise-analysis-report/ .

The Scottish Government does not hold data on the number of appointments offered per full time equivalent GP.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) will publish data on activity levels in General Practice on 6 December 2022. This will include activity by encounter type. Encounters are recorded each time a member of the practice team enters information into the GP electronic health record. These include face to face consultations, telephone consultations, e-consultations, medicines management and administration.

The data will be published as experimental statistics, reflecting the developing nature of the data in relation to quality and ability to meet user needs.

PHS will also publish the GP In Hours General Practice Workforce Survey on 29 November 2022, which will provide estimates of GP workforce numbers.

While GP sessions have sometimes been defined for the purposes of various payments, there is no overall contractual definition of GP sessions.

GP contract regulations require practices to ensure provision of services from Monday- Friday, 08:00 - 18.30. It is up to the practice partners to agree how that is covered by GPs and the number and length of sessions.