Chamber and committees

Scottish Ministers honoured the commitment to treat sympathetically the compensation claims of the tenant farmers in the court actions of McMaster & Others v Scottish Ministers and Mackay & Another v the Scottish Ministers. Settlement terms are confidential to the parties involved in a litigation and should not be disclosed.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29439 on 17 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility, which can be found at: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29458 on 17 September 2024. 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.

The Scottish Government does not collect or hold, nor has assessed data on current 3G, 4G and 5G mobile notspots or areas with coverage, alongside train routes in the Highlands and Islands region. Overall policy relating to telecommunications, including mobile communications, is reserved to the UK Government.

The Strategy Steering Group for Palliative Care (SSG), representing the wide range of partners involved in palliative care, chaired by a National Clinical Lead for Palliative Care, and supported by a Clinical and Professional Advisory Group (CPAG), has been crucial in the development of our new Palliative Care Strategy.

The Strategy Steering Group last met on 20 June 2024, to consider the latest version of the draft Palliative Care Strategy and provide further feedback. We anticipate that the draft Palliative Care Strategy and associated consultation will be published in the coming weeks.

The Mixed Tenure Improvement Service is not a Scottish Government initiative and was established by the City of Edinburgh Council in 2021. The local authority has created this service based upon powers provided to them under the Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 to establish a Tenement Management Scheme.

It is for each local authority to review the delivery of their services.

During the 3-year Pilot programme in Wester Hailes, the team have had numerous discussions with owners and landlords.

In Lochend and Restalrig, the team have held a mixture of individual meetings and open ‘drop-in’ sessions where, over the course of a day and evening, local residents can discuss their concerns. So far five of these sessions have been held with the local community, in addition to the newsletters and letters that have been issued in the area.

The council have extended an invitation to Edinburgh Living Rent to hold regular meetings with them to discuss and agree options to improve local engagement.

The council is also in the process of establishing a dedicated project office in the community where residents can drop in to meet with the project team. It is anticipated that this project office will be in place during September.

The information requested is not held by the Scottish Government. Landlord Registration is administered and enforced by each local authority for their own geographical area. Any records of non-compliance by a landlord are kept by the relevant local authority.

The Scottish Government does not collect or hold management fee information about local authorities’ mixed tenure improvement services, which would need to be obtained directly from each local authority that operates such a service.

The Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 does not discuss “standard rates” for any aspect of work to be undertaken and no changes to this are currently under consideration.

Within an extremely challenging financial context, the Scottish Government has made difficult funding decisions. Local authorities have received all the funding they have requested for flood protection in 2024-25 and, as such, £26 million from the Flood Risk Management Programme is being repurposed this financial year to support local government pay and avoid impactful industrial action. Decisions on the status of future projects will therefore be made by individual local authorities. We have sought assurances from local authorities through COSLA that redirection of this portion of the funding will not impact on councils progressing with their flood protection schemes as planned.

Austerity measures are those which take forward a definite policy of reducing public spending on programmes and activity irrespective of the impact on the outcomes of those programmes and activity.

For example, the Labour UK Government’s severe restriction on the Winter Fuel Payment, and its consequent impact of reducing the budget for these programmes in Scotland by up to £160m, is a clear implementation of Westminster austerity.

This has followed Scotland long being subject to the austerity policies of the Conservative UK Government. In the face of this, the Scottish Government has stepped in to support people and services where it has been needed most – on social security, health, public sector pay, and public services – and has used all levers at its disposal to do so and mitigate the impact of Westminster austerity in Scotland. This includes an around £1.5 billion in 2024-25 from Scotland’s progressive Income Tax policy.

The new Labour UK Government’s commitment to the same debt rule as the previous government was always going to entail a similar fiscal constraint, and the UK Government is now pursuing policies that appear to be a continuation of Conservative austerity. Further spending cuts and austerity by the new UK Government will impact on the funding available for the budget here in Scotland.