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The Scottish Government is committed to implementing a new centre of excellence for rural and remote medicine and social care, and will work with a wide range of stakeholders to develop more detailed plans for this centre and associated timescales for delivery.

Medicine administration is primarily recorded on medicine administration record (MAR) charts. The dose/dosage is recorded along with the times for administration. This will either be specific times or it may be words such as breakfast, noon etc. A small number of care homes use an electronic MAR (eMAR) system, where the timing of the medicines is recorded electronically. This can confirm that the resident’s medicines were administered, the time of administration and confirmation of the stock balance.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6T-00019 on 26 May 2021. The answer is available on the Parliament's website at: .

The Care Inspectorate is the regulatory body for care services in Scotland, which supports improvement. The Care Inspectorate carry out regular comprehensive inspections of all care homes in Scotland, and are accountable to Scottish Ministers. By law all care providers in Scotland must be registered with the Care Inspectorate. The Care Inspectorate looks at the quality of care in care services, including care homes to ensure it meets high standards. Where improvement is needed, it supports services to make positive changes.

In addition, as part of the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer’s strategy for pharmaceutical care in Scotland ‘Achieving Excellence in Pharmaceutical Care’ the Scottish Government committed to improving the pharmaceutical care of residents in care homes. A Scottish Pharmacy Clinical Leadership Fellow has been appointed and is focussing on key improvement areas such as: developing a national pharmacy care home specialist interest group, reducing medicines waste, undertaking a national audit to determine the pharmacy resource to care homes, developing a pharmacy care home training resource with NES, reviewing how care home residents access medicines and investigating the benefits of using information technology in care homes (for example using electronic medicine administration records (eMAR) and medicines, care and review (MCR).

No, in summer 2021 our current vaccination status letters will be replaced by fully digital Covid Status Certificates to be used for outbound international travel. There are no plans at this stage to also use these certificates to introduce Test and Release for inbound international travellers from amber list countries. We are working across the 4 nations to consider the role of Covid Status Certificates for inbound travel .

The Scottish Government has fully considered all of the suggestions made by stakeholders alongside all current data, scientific evidence and clinical advice available to us. Based on this assessment, subject to the relevant guidance being in place, our recommendation is that cruise restart when all of Scotland reaches Level 1.

While we would have been keen to provide a date, we need to work with the data available and any date would have been subject to review. This decision has been informed by the combination of risks that exist with both cruises and within the wider travel context, such as: the current trajectory of Covid infections and the unknowns around the new Delta variant, the close-proximity form of leisure that cruises offer that has high risk of uncontained rapid transmission, and, the opportunities to spread Covid through multiple stops in different levels around Scotland. These are only some of the risks, and although some of them could be mitigated through good protocols, it is the compound effect of all the risks involved which has led to this decision.

We are committed to reviewing restrictions every 3 weeks as part of the phased national easing through the Levels. The next review point is scheduled ahead of the planned easing of restrictions from 28 June. Our aim is to enable a restart to cruise as quickly and safely as possible and we are keen to continue to work with the sector on any required guidance ahead of this date.

The Improvement Service published its latest Early Learning and Childcare Expansion Delivery Progress Report. The report is available on the Improvement Service website and linked on the web page.

This report provides an update on progress by local authorities towards the delivery of 1140 hours of funded ELC at the end of April 2021 as reported by local authorities, comparing this to their reported position throughout this academic year. As members of Parliament will be aware, the duty on local authorities to provide 1140 hours of funded early learning and childcare to all eligible children will come into effect in August 2021.

As the report sets out, local authorities continue to make good progress towards delivery, with an additional 10,510 children accessing 1140 hours since February 2021. The report also shows that the local authority ELC workforce in Scotland is reported to have increased by 7,178 FTE since academic year 2016/17, including an increase of 230 FTE since February 2021.

Following a revision to the Improvement Service data collection framework in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, data gathering is planned for the beginning of each academic term through to April 2022.

The timeline for publishing the Island Connectivity Plan remains the beginning of 2023 when the current Ferries Plan (2013-2022) ends.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-00577 on 16 June 2021. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at

The Scottish Government's Infrastructure Investment Plan published 4 February 2021 stated that:

"We will produce and maintain a long-term plan and investment programme for new ferries and development at ports to improve resilience, reliability, capacity, and accessibility, increase standardisation, and reduce emissions to meet the needs of island communities, supported by investment of at least £580 million during the next five years as well as completing two new ferries for the Isle of Arran and the Uig Triangle"

We will produce this long-term plan as part of the Islands Connectivity Plan that will replace the Ferries Plan from January 2023. In the meantime, our investment programme continues to be based on the Vessel Replacement and Deployment Plan; additional detail of the current programme is included in Annex D of the Infrastructure Investment Plan and updates have recently been shared with key island stakeholders.