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To enable the building to be commissioned, the hospital will be fully equipped to treat orthopaedic patients around 3 months prior to the opening date.

Whilst Scottish Ministers set the strategic policy for the NHS in Scotland, responsibility for service delivery rests locally with Health Boards. Scottish Ministers expect satisfactory specialist and condition-specific support and care to be delivered for the benefit of all patients.

The requisite education and training to support people with neurological conditions, including MS, is provided to NHS Western Isles specialist nursing staff, in collaboration with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Neurology Service.

The Board's Lead Nurse for Specialist Nursing provides leadership and management to its neurology service, to ensure that clinical standards are met and the caseload is effectively managed.

To support the delivery of the Neurological Framework, the Scottish Government has commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to support quality assurance of the implementation of the HIS General Standards for neurological care. Condition-specific third sector organisations will be an integral part of this evaluation and will help us understand how these standards are being implemented for people across Scotland.

A report on the STEM Education and Training Strategy will be published on the Scottish Government website today - www.gov.scot/isbn/9781804353592

The report highlights progress made on a range of STEM-related education and training initiatives; including those areas where progress has been more challenging. Among other things the report notes recent work on responding to the Logan Review of the Scottish Technology Ecosystem, progress on the Young STEM Leader awards initiative and a new round of STEM education grants.

The report also sets out our intention to continue to operate under the current STEM strategy until 2025, and we will continue to publish annual reports until then.

We launched the Fisheries Climate Change survey in November 2021 during COP 26 to assess the fishing sector’s readiness/ preparedness to respond to the climate change challenge. We said then that the results will be used to inform a stakeholder workshop in 2022.

The analysis is complete and we are now in the process of compiling a summary of the responses received and we will be publishing the summary shortly.

We are also in the process of planning the stakeholders workshop where we will present and discuss the results from the Fisheries Climate Change survey.

In October 2021, I was delighted to launch the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults, supported by a £15 million investment for 2021-22. This funding has now been successfully distributed to a wide range of grassroots, community based projects across Scotland. A further £15 million was announced this month for a second year of the Fund in 2022-23.

£15 million in both 2021-22 and 2022-23 is a significant investment in grassroots, community mental health and wellbeing support. To date, almost 2000 awards have been made to projects, focused on a range of at risk groups including older people and those facing social isolation, people with long-term health conditions and people facing socio-economic disadvantage. This is making a real difference to mental health and wellbeing in many communities.

To aid with pandemic recovery and respond to the high demand for community projects in 2021-22, an additional £6 million was provided in February, bringing total funding for 2021-22 to £21 million. We will continue to build on the success of this work in Year 2, and ensure that the sizeable additional £15 million investment makes a valuable impact on mental health and wellbeing within communities across Scotland.

Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) have recently stated that their clinical physiology degree programme will not continue beyond the current cohort which commenced in September 2021 and as such Scottish Government are actively working with NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to review the ongoing provision and access to a clinical physiology degree for Scottish Students.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. Principals' salaries are for individual colleges to determine.

Whilst Public Sector Pay Policy does not apply directly to colleges, the SFC’s Financial Memorandum states that colleges must have regard to it.

We expect colleges and their boards to be mindful of Public Sector Pay Policy and demonstrate restraint when determining senior staff salaries.

Pay arrangements for senior staff must ensure value for money, affordability and sustainability in the longer term.

The following table represents a breakdown of the current ScotRail rolling stock by class of train, year built and approximate age. There is no single lifespan for a train: any decision to replace a train fleet is based on multiple evaluation criteria. While there are no expiry dates attached to the current train fleet, the Rail Passenger Services Decarbonisation Action Plan commits to all diesel trains (both multiple unit types and High Speed Trains (HSTs)) being replaced by 2035.

We are grateful to all those staff who supported the delivery of Scotland's Covid-19 vaccination campaign, a significant number of whom were already employed across primary care services or drawn from substantive roles across NHS Scotland. All those individuals deployed in roles normally undertaken by substantive staff were employed by NHS Scotland for the duration of their involvement.

To enable a sustainable vaccination workforce, funding has been made available to Boards, which enables those on fixed-term contracts to be recruited to permanent posts. The Scottish Government expects Boards to support where possible, the redeployment of staff, to retain the valuable skills and experience that this workforce has developed.

There are no immediate plans to make any changes, the resource will be kept under continual review and we intend on evaluating its effectiveness this summer.