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The decision to enable cruise restart was based on the upward trajectory in Covid cases, concerns around the more transmissible Delta variant and the potential to transfer Covid (that has a relatively long asymptomatic incubation period) to multiple touchpoints across different locations, even with the use of near-person testing regimens.

By waiting until all of Scotland reaches level 1, risk of viral spread across the country will be lower. If the evidence supports the planned lifting of restrictions at the next review point, domestic cruising will be allowed from 19 July. By this time, more of the population will be fully vaccinated further reducing the risk of viral spread.

All of the evidence is published online and can be found here:

As with all decisions relating to the relaxation of restrictions, this has been given thorough consideration through the 4 Harms process which has included consideration of the economic harm. Since the beginning of the pandemic we have worked closely with the industry to identify the impact on the sector and mitigations that would be necessary to allow domestic cruise restart. We recognise that the tourism sector, including cruise, has strongly felt the impact of restrictions and our aim has always been to enable cruise restart as quickly and safely as possible.

The guidance to support the provision of the £400 one-off payment to teachers is available on the Scottish Government website at:

This exceptional payment is being made in recognition of the additional workload for teachers who have supported the delivery of the Alternative Certification Model (ACM) in the unique circumstances brought about by Covid-19 in 2020/21.

This will be paid through a grant arrangement to education authorities and directly from the Scottish Government through a grant to independent and grant-aided schools, further to claims being received.

The Scottish Government has engaged with a range of sectors, including catering and hospitality representatives, promoting the benefits of effective ventilation to reduce the risk of transmission within enclosed spaces. I would encourage all sectors to review the guidance we produced on ventilation, as this contains useful information and assets which could easily be incorporated within training courses.

The guidance can be found at:

We continue to engage with sectors and review this guidance as new evidence emerges regarding how these systems can prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other airborne viruses.

Any consultation on mandatory calorie labelling for food and drink purchased out of home would consider all relevant matters.

The Scottish Government welcome the Audit Scotland report, and we are pleased that it recognised the swift actions of Scotland’s public sector partners to respond to the significant and unprecedented challenges presented by Covid-19. The Scottish Government agrees with Audit Scotland that we need to learn from this pandemic and bring that learning both into planning for future pandemics, and into our long term procurement strategy. This work is already underway. Officials are working across the public sector including with the NHS to learn the lessons and take them into future PPE procurement.

To address environmental concerns surrounding PPE, the Scottish Government has funded a Small Business Research Initiative £310,000, with Transport Scotland providing additional funding, to assess and evaluate prospective reusable PPE solutions and technologies to assist in decontaminating PPE. This initiative, led by NHS Tayside on behalf of the Scottish Government, supports companies to develop more environmentally-friendly PPE by providing funding to enable them to undertake vital research and development of their prospective solutions.

The Scottish Government has also established a PPE Innovation Working Group with partners across Scotland. The purpose of this Group is to oversee the implementation of positive changes to the provision of clinical PPE in Scotland. As part of this work, the Group will consider potential work streams and opportunities which surround the environmental impact of PPE and how manufacturers with innovative PPE solutions can better collaborate with NHS Scotland in the future.

The online vaccine booking portal closed on 11 June.

The online portal was part of the Scottish Government’s measures to widen the accessibility of vaccine appointments, and was extended for another week, on top of the original three week window. 40% of the young people aged 18-29 who were still to be vaccinated, self-registered on our online portal.

Those who did not register online, are being scheduled for an appointment on the system, and letters are coming out over this week and next. However, to give advanced sight of appointments online, we are launching an appointment checker on NHS Inform to help people view their pending appointments. This will help those people, like students, who may have moved away from their registered GP term time address. This will also help them view their offered appointment earlier and chose to reschedule to fit with their work and life.

The National Vaccination Scheduling System (NVSS) has successfully appointed millions of Scottish citizens while achieving exceptionally high uptake rates this demonstrates a massive success for a system built from scratch in the space of 8 weeks.

Our intention has always been to evolve and continually enhance the NVSS. As the programme has engaged with younger cohorts it has become evident a digital first online booking approach would be beneficial. The programme team are in the process of designing an online booking system for the autumn/winter Flu vaccinations.

The Scottish Government, unlike the UK Government, included a requirement within the Scottish High Level Output Specification (HLOS) for Network Rail (NR) to take action on climate change during this Regulatory Control Period.

For the period 2019-2024, the Scottish Government is providing funding to support a 21% increase in NR spending on operation, maintenance and renewal activities on the Scottish rail network. This is in line with the Office of Rail and Road’s independent determination of costs necessary to deliver safety, performance and resilience requirements, including Climate Change action.

In March of this year, NR published two reports from independently commissioned experts following the derailment at Carmont. The work was a recommendation from the NR Interim Report on the Carmont derailment published in September 2020, to establish two task forces examining in detail NR’s GB wide management of extreme weather and earthworks.

Build through the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) Highlands and Islands contract - including the subsea cable between Ormsary and Jura - was delivered through a combination of funding from Scottish Government, UK Government, Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), Local Authorities and BT.

However, it is not possible to provide a breakdown for a single piece of infrastructure.

The Scottish Government is taking forward a wide range of action in schools and colleges to address gender based violence and sexual harassment.

To support schools to deliver learning on relationships, sexual health and parenthood education, Education Scotland have produced experiences and outcomes which set out what each pupil is expected to learn and how their learning is expected to progress through the four levels of learning.

In addition to this, we are funding a number of targeted programmes to support positive behaviour and relationships. This includes the Mentors in Violence Prevention Scotland Programme which is working to tackle gender stereotyping and attitudes that condone violence against women and girls; pilot of a whole schools approach to tackling gender based violence with Rape Crisis Scotland and Zero Tolerance; and, running up to three Fearless campaigns nationally to educate and support young people to speak up about crime, making their lives and that of their communities safer.

We are also developing a National Approach guidance document, with partners on the Gender Based Violence in Schools Working Group, to ensure consistency in messages on sexual harassment and gender based violence to everyone working with children and young people.

In colleges and universities, institutions are expected to adopt and adapt the Equally Safe in Higher Education Toolkit, and in doing so adopt a Gendered Analysis to this issue, assess their own policies and practices against the Toolkit and put in place policies, reporting processes and support arrangements to keep students safe.

The Scottish Government continues to fund several projects aimed at support the further and higher education sector, by developing online training and resources, particularly for the college sector; developing an institutional GBV Charter Mark and the parameters of effective risk management approaches to work already undertaken by Universities Scotland; and, to purchase an online tool to enable staff and students in certain Glasgow-based institutions to anonymously report gender based violence and racial harassment issues.