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The governance applied to the Marine Fund Scotland will deliver on the Future of Fisheries Management policy document published last December. This will provide a clear framework to manage fisheries, balancing environmental, social and economic interests, adopting an ecosystems approach to fishing which follows the science.

This approach will ensure that all sea fisheries catching activity is in balance with the available opportunity in the exploitation of wild fisheries stocks. In addition, scallop dredge fishing activity is also controlled by other measures such as the limited availability of licence entitlements which have been capped following the removal by Marine Scotland of latent unused licences ensuring there is no increase in scallop dredge capacity.

Scottish Government regularly monitors SME debt levels and meets monthly with Scottish Financial Enterprise and the main banks in Scotland to monitor trends in lending facilities and identify key emerging themes. In the event that these identify areas of concern, Scottish Government will work with UK government (Treasury, British Business Bank) as well as other SG policy areas and enterprise agencies to develop an appropriate response.

The aim of the Scottish Government’s annual £10 million International Development Fund (IDF) is to support and empower our partner countries: Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia, and Pakistan. The COVID-19 Pandemic has greatly impacted our programme over the past year. On 01 September 2020, the Programme for Government set out our intention to review our approach to International Development to ensure that we were focusing our work on areas where we could make the biggest contribution and difference in our partner countries against the backdrop of the Pandemic, further information on the Review can be found here ( International development: Coronavirus (COVID-19): review of international development programme - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ). In December 2020 the Scottish Government provided £2 million of funding to UNICEF for their response to the Pandemic in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia ( Aid for COVID-19 response in Africa - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ).

We have also tried to mitigate the effects of the Covid Pandemic on our project partners by making available total funding of £991,594 from the IDF and Humanitarian Emergency Fund where we were able to do so. In terms of other support, Scotland is sending life-saving oxygen and ventilation equipment to India ( 100 oxygen concentrators and 40 continuous positive airway pressure ((CPAP) ventilators ) as part of a UK-wide effort to support them in the fight against COVID-19.

We have also committed to not only maintain, but in fact increasing our International Development budget by 50%, to £15 million, which is intended to assist with Covid preparedness in our partner countries. This is in contrast to the UK Government's ODA funding being cut from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5% of GNI which will have such disastrous effects on the world's most marginalised and vulnerable communities at a time of great need.

The recruitment and deployment of teachers in local authority schools are matters for individual local authorities.

Whilst local authorities are responsible for the recruitment and deployment of their staff, we are firmly of the view that we will need all possible teaching resources at our disposal to compensate for any loss of learning suffered since the start of the pandemic. It is for that reason that we have provided over £200 million of additional funding to support the recruitment of additional staff to aid education recovery.

In the first 100 days of this Parliamentary term, we will fund councils to increase teacher numbers by 1,000 and classroom assistants by 500. This as part of our commitment to support the recruitment of 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants over the parliamentary term.

We are working closely with COSLA regarding recruitment practices and the employment of teachers for next academic year, and Local Authorities are currently undertaking an assessment of staff requirements to support education recovery. This issue has also been discussed with the teaching unions at the Scottish Negotiation Committee for Teachers.

The budget agreed by Scottish Ministers for SQA for 2021-22 is based on the SQA levy to local authorities and entry fees charged separately remaining at the same level as has been the case since 2012-13.

These fees provide a contribution towards the cost of awarding, rather than covering the full cost for that individual local authority, school or college. The costs of awarding National Qualifications, even this year, are greater than the contribution made by local authorities in the form of a levy.

The Scottish Government currently have no plans to legislate in relation to whiplash injury claims, however, through dialogue with the Ministry of Justice, we will monitor the impact of the provisions recently commenced in England and Wales and keep the issue under review.

Our Coronavirus guidance on reducing the risks in schools was developed in collaboration with local authorities, unions, parents representative groups and teaching bodies, with input from technical experts working across the UK. This includes a section on the potential use of CO2 monitors to assist in assessing whether adequate ventilation is being provided. Each local authority and school can utilise this technology as appropriate to their particular circumstances.

We have worked from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic with the Scottish Heads of Property Services forum to get input and feedback on guidance, and ventilation is a standing agenda item at each meeting. The forum was used to request progress information including: local authority plans to utilise CO2 monitoring, ventilation upgrades required, observations from operational schools and issues arising during different weather conditions where ventilation and thermal comfort could be in tension. The Scottish Heads of Property Services use this forum to share expertise and learning to ensure that efforts and resources are best deployed to optimise solutions across the whole learning estate in Scotland. Links have also been established with other expert groups representing the UK governments to help inform future guidance.

The virus continues to have severe direct impacts on people’s health, and the potential to put significant pressures on NHS capacity. For this reason, and to tackle the new, faster-spreading Delta variant, we have made the difficult decision to delay a move to Level 1 for some Local Authorities which have displayed high or rapidly increasing levels of incidence.

The decision to allocate areas to a Level, finely balances the need to control the virus and to minimise the wider economic and social harms of the restrictions. Consideration of the economic harms from Covid (Harm 4) is factored into the design of the Levels themselves, and a 4 Harms Assessment was undertaken on these Levels when they were last updated and published.

On 1 June, we published Coronavirus (COVID-19): Protection Levels allocation to local councils which explains the basis on which Levels 2 and 1 were applied to local council areas in Scotland. The Government also has a legal duty to undertake statutory Impact Assessments when Regulations concerning the Levels are changed. These include Equalities, Islands, Child Rights/Wellbeing, and Business and Regulatory Impact Assessments, and they are now published.

The Scottish Government is working with mental health organisations, employer groups and trade unions to improve mental health support in workplaces across Scotland.

In October 2020 we published our ‘Mental Health – Transition and Recovery’ plan which outlines our response to the mental health impacts of COVID-19. We have recently convened a short life working group aimed at addressing 3 key employment actions from the plan: Mentally Healthy Workplaces; Fair Work Practices; and Home Working.

The focus of the group will be on identifying the key challenges that businesses of all sizes, including self-employed people, will face in supporting the mental wellbeing of their workforce. We will review existing practice and identify any key gaps that may prevent a positive mental health and wellbeing culture within the workplace.