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The Inventory Management System (IMS) was successfully rolled out to all Health Boards at the end of March 2023. Further work is underway with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and Scottish Ambulance Service to identify potential areas of benefit for local IMS stores. In addition to this, Data and Analytics workshops have been held with 8 Boards to demonstrate further improvements at a local level as a result of the IMS implementation.

Asylum and immigration are entirely reserved to the UK Parliament and are handled by the Home Office, including provision of asylum accommodation for people who would otherwise be destitute while waiting for an asylum decision from the Home Office.

The Scottish Government has regular discussions with the Home Office and local authority representatives about asylum accommodation, including different types of contingency accommodation. We have been consistently clear that people seeking asylum should be accommodated in communities, with access to the essential support and services they need. The Scottish Government supports widening dispersal in principle, but believes that participation by local authorities should be voluntary. Funding for local authorities, introduced for the first time in 2022, is a positive step but this needs to be a long term commitment to make asylum dispersal more attractive and enable better support for people seeking asylum as well as local communities. Improved partnership working, data and information sharing are also needed. The Scottish Government is clear that the Home Office must engage with local authorities and COSLA on these matters.

As part of the UK Government’s plans to pursue alternative accommodation sites, the UK Immigration Minister spoke to Scottish Government and COSLA on 25 May.

In that meeting the Scottish Government was very clear that hotels and other forms of temporary accommodation, including vessels, are not suitable for people seeking asylum. It is not comparable to use for displaced people from Ukraine or other groups supported in temporary accommodation, because of fundamental differences in the rights and agency of people seeking asylum. While people are waiting for a decision on their asylum application they are restricted from working and have no recourse to public funds – a policy which prevents access to most mainstream benefits.

The Scottish Government was also clear that if the Home Office were to impose a vessel in Scotland they must: undertake a detailed risk assessment and engagement through the Asylum Partnership Board and local service providers in Scotland; fully engage the relevant local authority in this work; and that suitable funding is provided for local authorities and services to ensure that essential services are in place, people are supported appropriately and any impact on local services is minimal.

There are no current plans to publish correspondence in order to prevent substantial prejudice of relations between administrations and in the interest of maintaining the effective conduct of public affairs.

In the Programme for Government 2021-22, the Scottish Government pledged to develop a Scottish Education Exchange Programme to support the international mobility of staff and learners.

The Scottish Government is working as quickly as possible to provide information to partners on the timetable for the delivery of a Scottish Education Exchange Programme.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-18675 on 20 June 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

In the Programme for Government 2021-22, the Scottish Government pledged to develop a Scottish Education Exchange Programme to support the international mobility of staff and learners.

The Scottish Government will work as quickly as possible to provide information to partners on the timetable for delivery of this commitment.

As set out in the Scottish Government’s Framework for Tax, engagement is one of the six principles for good tax policymaking. We already consult widely on tax ahead of each Budget, listening to the views of tax experts, trade unions, anti-poverty campaigners, wider civic society and business organisations before making tax decisions. The Tax Advisory Group will build on this inclusive approach. It will be a key part of achieving our ambitions for Open Government and greater engagement on tax policy, including as part of the policy cycle for Budget 2024-25.

Summer 2022 was the first time that SEPA has imposed suspensions on abstraction licences, imposing both full (a complete suspension on all water abstractions) and partial (allowing for a reduced volume to be abstracted) suspensions.

All abstraction suspension decisions by SEPA were made in August 2022 but the suspensions for two catchments were effective from 1st September 2022. The breakdown of suspensions are as follows: August 2022, 87 full suspensions and 39 partial suspensions; September 2022, 30 full suspensions and 19 partial suspensions. There were no other suspensions.

The recently released Data Strategy for Health and Social Care details a set of ethical principles for the use of data across our health and care sector. These principles are applicable to the use of AI as well as the broader use of data.

Furthermore, the Data Strategy sets out our intent to work towards the safe adoption of AI tools, working to international best practice. We have also committed to developing a policy framework for adoption of AI across health and by Spring 2024.

COSLA and The Scottish Government published our Data Strategy for Health and Social Care which has committed to setting out the preferred information standards for use across Scotland’s health and social care sector. Scottish Government will seek to align with international and UK defined standards to facilitate interoperability and bring consistency to the ways in which clinical information is recorded. Work is progressing to implement SNOMED CT in health settings (with a new Ontology server now operational), alongside the recent implementation of ICD 11 codes in mental health. Furthermore, work is now underway to stand up a Data Standards board for Scotland’s health and care data in summer 2023.

Digital skills resources for healthcare staff can be accessed on the dedicated Digital health & Care Section of the Turas Learning Platform: https://learn.nes.nhs.scot/2198 .