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From 18 April, we are no longer asking the general public to test themselves regularly if they are asymptomatic. This change is possible because of the progress we have made in our ability to protect Scotland’s population from the most severe harms of COVID-19 through our widespread vaccination coverage and access to new Covid treatments.

Covid testing in hospital settings for emergency admissions and elective patients will continue to be available, helping to protect vulnerable individuals in high risk settings and ensuring patients receive the most effective treatment.

Health and social care workers should continue to test themselves regularly to reduce the risk of spread of infection in higher risk settings; as should care home and hospital visitors. All ongoing testing in higher risk settings will be kept under regular clinical review.

The routine childhood immunisation programmes have continued in Scotland throughout the COVID-19 pandemic for children of all ages.

Uptake for vaccines given to children aged under one year has remained consistently high in Scotland. Statistics on childhood immunisations are published quarterly by Public Health Scotland, which show that around 96% of children had received each routine immunisation by the time they were 12 months of age in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Uptake of the rotavirus vaccination by 12 months of age increased during the pandemic, from 93.2% in 2019 to 94.2% in 2021. Uptake of the first dose of MMR by the age of 24 months also increased, rising from 94% in 2019 to 94.4% in 2021.

The continued high uptake of childhood immunisations is a testament to the hard work and commitment of the NHS and the recognition of the benefits of vaccination.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07621 on 25 April 2022. 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

The routine pre-school immunisation programmes are delivered by local Health Boards in Scotland. If a child has missed a routine immunisation appointment, their parent or guardian will be able to contact the Health Board directly to arrange another appointment.

The Personal Child Health Record (or Red Book) is provided to all parents in Scotland and contains information on what vaccinations children should receive and when they should receive them, and is used to record when a vaccination has been administered. This enables parents or guardians to check whether any vaccinations have been missed, and provides contact details to arrange an appointment if needed. Information on childhood vaccinations is also available on the Parent Club website.

If a parent or guardian is unsure on the vaccination status of a child, they can contact their local Health Board or GP who will be able to provide them with more information.

The information you have requested is publically available at the Scottish Energy Statistics Hub (shinyapps.io) taken originally from National Grid - : https://carbonintensity.org.uk/ .

In addition to that, the recent announcement of ScotWind has seen aspirations from consortia to develop up to 25GW of offshore wind capacity. This will allow us to make huge progress in further decarbonising our energy supply while securing commitments from ScotWind developers to invest at least £1bn in Scotland’s supply chain for every gigawatt of power.

The Scottish Government is clear that nuclear energy represents a bad deal for consumers and our priority continues to be to support energy efficiency, develop Scotland’s huge renewable resource and to promote storage and flexibility.

Scottish Government policy towards local authority spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant as part of the annual local government finance settlement.

It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them (including any funding for arts and culture).

Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS) who are the National Development Body for the Scottish museums sector, distribute funding on behalf of Scottish Government.

Details of the grants awarded by MGS are provided below however please note that their grant processing sytem only provides details of the grants awarded since 2015.

a) Aberdeen City Council Area

There are no jobs related to the National Care Service which are being recruited by Scotland Excel at this time.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-07488 on 25 April 2022. 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

The Scottish Government acknowledges the importance of the Growing Up in Scotland Study (GUS) longitudinal study which allows us to track the health and wellbeing of Scotland’s children and young people over an extended period of time. We also note with concern the initial findings from the most recent GUS ‘Life at Age 14’ report published on 15 February 2022.

The report, which is based on data collected in 2019/20, aligns with our understanding of the need to ensure that all children and young people are able to access the right support for their mental health and wellbeing as early as possible, without stigma.

That is why we continue to prioritise building and improving mental health and wellbeing support services for children and young people and continue to invest significantly in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our children and young people. In the 2021-22 financial year this included: Investing £40 million in improving Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, £16 million on our commitment for all secondary schools in Scotland to have access to a mental health counsellor, £15 million on provided to local authorities to fund over 230 new and enhanced community supports and services for children and young people and over £160 thousand to provide enhanced digital resources on mental health and wellbeing available via the Young Scot 'Aye Feel’ website, Scottish Youth Parliament ‘Mind Yer Time’ websites.

In addition we have invested in a range of resources to support parents, cares and adults working with children and young people to ensure they are fully equipped with the tools and knowledge needed to make a difference to children and young peoples lives. This includes investing in a suite of resources for all school staff , developed by our Mental Health in Schools National Working Group, and providing a range of advice and resources for parents and carers, available through ParentClub.scot , including specific resources for parents of teenage children .

The regulations for foods for special medical purposes are one of the categories covered by the foods for specific groups legislation. Retained Regulation (EU) No 609/2013 on Foods for Specific Groups replaced the former Foods for Particular Nutritional Uses approach and begun a new EU phased process to review and update the composition and labelling for each category. As part of this process, Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/128 was introduced and has applied to businesses since 2019.

This, now retained Regulation, lays out the compositional, labelling and notification requirements of foods for special medical purposes. These foods are a category of Foods for Specific Groups , specially processed or formulated and intended for the dietary management of patients and to be used under medical supervision.

These foods are intended for the exclusive or partial feeding of patients with a limited, impaired or disturbed capacity to take, digest, absorb, metabolise or excrete ordinary foodstuffs or certain nutrients contained therein or metabolites. They are also intended for use by patients with other medically-determined nutrient requirements, whose dietary management cannot be achieved only by modification of the normal diet, by other foods for particular nutritional uses, or by a combination of the two.

The powers to enforce the requirements in Scotland are contained within The Foods for Specific Groups (Scotland) Regulations 2016 (as amended).