³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

As the Deputy First Minister set out in his answer to S5W-33331 on 2 December 2020, officials continue to actively engage a range of stakeholders on issues relevant to home education guidance, and will listen to the views of all stakeholders in the preparation of the guidance.

The guidance will set out the legal position on home education and further information on the roles and responsibilities for home educators and for local authorities in relation to home education; and to support and encourage the collaborative development of relationships based on mutual trust and respect that function in the best interests of the child.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

We remain committed to improving health messaging on alcohol products in Scotland. Our is clear that we expect producers to include the UK Chief Medical Officers’ low-risk weekly guidelines of 14 units on product labels as well as nutritional information and health warnings. Information must be easily readable and on pack rather than provided elsewhere.

We, along with the Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive, are continuing discussions with the UK Government on their plans for calorie labelling on alcohol products in England, in order to explore options for approaching alcohol labelling requirements on a four-nations basis. We would consider taking action on a unilateral Scottish basis if an effective four nations approach cannot be agreed.

The Scottish Government do on occasion receive correspondence expressing dissatisfaction in relation to local authorities failing to take regard of the home education guidance. There have been 6 items of such correspondence in the period July 2018 – July 2021, some of which the Scottish Government were copied into for information, and were not the body responsible for addressing the complaint.

A complaint relating to the Scottish Government’s home education guidance would be made to the education authority in the first instance. Where an individual believes that a local authority has failed to carry out a duty in relation to education, the option of a complaint under Section 70 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 is available to them. As set out in our publication Section 70 of the Education (Scotland) 1980 Act: guidance on making a complaint , “Scottish Ministers strongly believe that any issues which arise between parents, carers or young people and schools and education authorities should be resolved at as local a level as possible.” There have been no section 70 complaints received in the period July 2018 – July 2021 in respect of home education.

On 26 April free lateral flow device (LFD) test kits were made available to everyone in Scotland, for twice-weekly asymptomatic COVID-19 testing via the universally accessible testing offer. In addition to this, free LFD test kits are available through the Scottish Government’s targeted asymptomatic testing programme which includes routine testing for:

• health care workers
• educational staff, senior phase pupils and HE/FE students
• prioritised workforces in the public sector and in critical national infrastructure
• high risk private sector settings such as food processing businesses

Free access to LFD test kits has been extended through the summer period until September, when a formal review will be undertaken by the Scottish Government. Workforce testing is currently being expanded and as now is open to all private sector organizations with more than ten employees.

The Scottish Government has no immediate plans to charge for LFD tests.

The Homelessness in Scotland statistics series reports data from the HL1 (homelessness applications), HL2 (snapshot temporary accommodation) and HL3 (placement level temporary accommodation) data collections.

Information on the number of children within the household applying for homelessness support and in temporary accommodation is currently collected and reported on through the HL1 and HL2 collections respectively.

Data is published in the Homelessness in Scotland statistics series. Data is published on a 6-monthly basis, with the most recent publication relating to the annual data for 2020-21. Table 15 of the latest publication reports the number of children in homelessness applications and Table 27 reports the number of children in temporary accommodation as at the end of a quarter. A link to the latest publication can be found here:

An additional question was added to the HL3 data collection in 2019 to gather information on the number of children living in temporary accommodation placements. However, not all local authorities have so far been able to provide this information as there is a lead in time required to update local authority management information systems and data extraction processes. Scottish Government are continuing to work closely with local authorities to assist with the provision of this data and understand timescales for when this can be made available.

Data sharing between the UK Government’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Social Security Scotland is an important element of the current devolution settlement. It allows the Scottish Government to top up reserved benefits in line with the provisions of the Scotland Act 2016. It also ensures that both governments can correctly pay people the “passported” benefits to which they are entitled because they are receiving other reserved and devolved benefits. As we will be required to share data for as long as the current devolution settlement exists, a shared protocol is desirable given the multiple complex interactions between devolved Scottish and reserved UK benefits and entitlements.

We have begun work with the DWP on a joint data strategy to inform our approach to data sharing in future.

We have reviewed the border health measures closely over the last 28 days and have assessed that there continues to be a requirement for the regulations to remain in place to reduce the risk of imported transmission and safeguard public health in Scotland. The regulations continue to be an important and proportionate part of the Scottish Government response to managing the pandemic.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government or by Public Health Scotland.

Information relating to the number of suspected cancer referrals made by NHS dentists would be held by individual Health Boards.

The information you have requested on the number of people who have a community alarm is set out below. We do not gather information on the number of households that this applies to so we cannot provide this information. There also wasn't a national collection pre 2011, so all existing data is included below.

The information requested regarding the number of NHS staff who have tested positive for COVID-19 at a hospital level is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. Public Health Scotland publishes Health Care Worker Data by NHS Board, this information can be accessed here: