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The Scottish Government has provided in-kind support to Valneva via Scottish Enterprise. There has been no financial investment made in this facility by the Scottish Government.

The decision for any company to list on the Nasdaq is a commercial decision made by the organisation itself and the company already has a stock exchange, listing on the Paris Bourse (Euronext).

Vaccines Taskforce and BEIS have provided the following commentary that the UK Government has supported Valneva by providing funding for its early clinical trials and has also made a multi-million-pound investment to upgrade and expand Valneva’s Livingston manufacturing facility, as part of its supply agreement for COVID-19 vaccines.

Self-registration for 18–29 year olds closed on 11 June 2021. 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.

The 18-29 year olds who did not register online, are being scheduled for an appointment on the system this week, 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 number of first and second doses administered per week to people living in the Scottish Borders has been sourced from Public Health Scotland. These data are from week ending 3 January to 20 June 2021.

Marine Scotland currently monitors marine plastic pollution in three programmes which have been used to establish baselines for seabed litter, floating microplastics and beach litter. These were published in Scotland’s Marine Assessment 2020 and can be found at .

Gambling has the potential to negatively affect physical, psychological health, and the social functioning of the people who gamble and others around them.

We will continue to consider evidence on what works best to address the issue of gambling harms in Scotland. We are working closely with Public Health Scotland, the third sector and those with lived experience to develop a person-centred approach to treatment for problem gambling and the reduction of gambling related harms. We are collaborating with many organisations across the country to help inform a Scotland focussed gambling strategy to reduce the harmful impacts of problem gambling in our communities.

Anyone with concerns about problem gambling can find advice on NHS Inform or can consult their GP. Out of hours, advice and support can be obtained from NHS24 on 111 or from Breathing Space on 0800 83 85 87.

Dancing is not permitted at weddings in level 0 of the levels framework.

When we move beyond level 0, and out of the levels framework, almost all COVID restrictions will be removed for businesses and individuals. This will mean that dancing and singing at weddings will be able to resume at this time. In addition, businesses can reopen and can operate without restrictions on physical distancing or caps.

Some baseline measures will remain, including good hand hygiene and surface cleaning and continued compliance with Test and Protect. More guidance on these baseline measure will be provided prior to moving beyond level 0.

Amending Regulations were made to the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 today.

These Regulations amend the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Regulations 2020.

The regulations adjust the physical distancing requirements at funerals so that family members may be involved in funerals by carrying the coffin or assisting to lower the coffin into a lair. The regulations also amend the physical distancing rules for the purpose of the 1888 Cup rugby event at Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh on 26 June 2021. The physical distancing requirements are reduced to 1.15 metres within Murrayfield Stadium for the purposes of that event.

The Regulations provide for extended opening hours for hospitality in the event that a match during the knockout stages of the UEFA EURO 2020 Championship which is being shown in hospitality premises runs over the currently permitted opening hours. This amendment was also set out in S6W-00988 on 23 June 2021. In the event of extended play, and limited only to match days and the games where this occurs, closing time for hospitality premises showing the game is extended up to 23:30 where a venue is showing a match live which runs over the current opening hours. This is not a blanket relaxation of the rules but a specific and pragmatic approach to facilitate safe viewing of full Euros matches.

The regulations also adjust the rules on face coverings at weddings and civil partnerships to remove the requirement for persons accompanying a party to be married or entering into a civil partnership to wear a face covering.

The Regulations have been published at

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

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted globally, including on our international development partner countries, and our programmes based there.

This necessitated a re-fresh of the Scottish Government's approach to International Development, to ensure that we focus our work on areas where we can make the biggest contribution and difference in our partner countries against the backdrop of the new reality of COVID-19. To that end the Scottish Government Programme for Government announced on 01 September 2020 our intention to review our approach to International Development. I announced the results of this Review to the Scottish Parliament via S5W-35666 on 3 March 2021. Through that review I met with representatives of our partner country Governments, and civil society, to discuss their priorities for building back fairer and stronger from COVID-19. Further information on the Review can be found here: ( ).

Separately, in December 2020 the Scottish Government provided £2 million of funding to UNICEF for their response to the Pandemic in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia, which included funding to help prepare the health systems in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda for the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine ( ).

We have also tried to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on our project partners by pivoting funds to make available total funding of £991,594 from the International Development Fund and Humanitarian Emergency Fund where we were able to do so. The Humanitarian Emergency Fund in particular provided a total of £240,000 to the: Disasters Emergency Committee; Mission Aviation Fellowship; Mercy Corps and SCIAF towards their COVID-19 response efforts for vulnerable communities. Further information on this pivoted spend can be found . Scotland has also sent 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.

Finally, 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-19 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.

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

The guidance is up to date which specifies the seating arrangements at weddings in levels 1 and 0.

The Scottish Government maintains up to date COVID-19 safety guidance for Early Learning and Childcare settings. This guidance is developed in consultation with public health experts on both the Advisory Sub-Group on Education and Children’s Issues, and in Public Health Scotland.

The Advisory Sub-Group for Education and Children’s Issues has now provided further advice, specifically on whether groups of parents should be permitted to attend ELC settings for outdoor events such as nursery graduations. Their advice is that groups of parents and carers should not attend end-of-year events in Early Learning and Childcare settings in this academic year, whether indoors or outdoors.

The guidance seeks to minimise the number of contacts that children and staff have, to keep them safe and to reduce the risk that children and staff need to self-isolate in the event of someone in the setting testing positive.

Our guidance is also in place to keep children in learning, and essential childcare settings open to support families now and over the summer. This has been a difficult decision that carefully weighed up the risks against the benefits.

I am grateful to settings that have found safe ways to allow children to celebrate with their friends and key workers and found creative ways to share this with parents and carers. I encourage other settings to find ways to ensure that parents can share in their child’s experience with, for example, videos and photos.