Chamber and committees

Operational decisions on matters such as staffing are the responsibility of individual colleges.

The Scottish Government expects every effort to be made by Scotland’s colleges, in consultation with trade unions, to protect jobs, while continuing to deliver provision to meet regional needs.

Following his appointment as First Minister, Humza Yousaf met with James Hamilton on 27 July 2023 and with Lady Dame Elish Angliolini on 2 August 2023. Scottish Government officials have also engaged with the First Minister's independent advisers on a number of occasions in the course of routine business, including to consult them on the 2023 edition of the Code prior to its publication.

The Scottish Government provided funding in 2023-24 to carry out a piece of quantitative research to establish a baseline measure of public awareness and understanding of the symptoms and risk factors for cardiovascular disease (including awareness of FAST (Face, Arm, Speech, Time), to track progress over time should communications activity be undertaken in this area, and to inform and consider the case for public information campaigns in relation to cardiovascular disease.

This research did not provide any evidence to support the use or not of BE FAST. The decision not to adopt BE FAST was based on existing research and the National Clinical Guideline for Stroke for the UK and Ireland and is aligned with the stance of Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland, Stroke Association and the rest of the United Kingdom’s health services.

Under the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act VisitScotland have a duty to prepare and publish guidance for local authorities on the introduction and administration of a visitor levy. Whilst that guidance is for local authorities, it will be of interest to businesses and other organisations. Scottish Ministers are currently considering that guidance, as required under section 23 of the Act. Local authorities are best placed to provide guidance to businesses in their area on the specific visitor levy schemes they decide to put in place.

The Scottish Government, through Transport Scotland’s Trunk Road Casualty Reduction programme of works, is delivering signalisation works on the A75 at the Cuckoo Bridge Roundabout. The works are currently programmed to start on site in January 2025.

The Scottish Government is committed to providing financial support for bereaved people on a low-income.

Funeral Support Payment has provided £51.1 million of support to over 26,000 people since launching in September 2019. The average award for 2024-25, up to 30 June 2024, is £2,065. There is a statutory duty to uprate the payment and in 2024/25 we increased the flat rate payment by 6.7%.

We are committed to continually reviewing and improving Funeral Support Payment; we substantially widened eligibility compared to the UK Government’s Funeral Expenses Payment at launch and have recently introduced legislation to make further improvements.

While this is an operational matter for ScotRail as the service provider, the Member might wish to note that Office of Rail and Road (ORR) publishes information on passenger numbers on its website: Passenger rail usage | ORR Data Portal

The Member may wish to contact ScotRail who might be able to provide a more detailed information, if required.

The Energy System and Just Transition: Independent Analysis published in support our draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan highlights the need for careful management of the North Sea energy transition, including the fields linked to the Forties System.

Offshore oil and gas licensing and consenting, as well as the associated fiscal regime, are reserved to the UK Government.

Publication of the outputs from a programme of work to better understand our energy requirements as we transition to net zero - Energy system and Just Transition: independent analysis - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

This information is not held centrally. Public Health Scotland publish information on the number of Dental Practices in Scotland and this can be found at:

Dental Practices and Patient Registrations - Datasets - Scottish Health and Social Care Open Data (nhs.scot)

The following below shows the number of practices that have received financial support through Scottish Dental Access Initiative grants in each of the last five years.

Transport Scotland considered carefully the respective roles of ScotRail Trains, Scottish Rail Holdings and Transport Scotland when establishing the appropriate arrangements under the requirements of the current flawed UK rail legislation.

An important consideration has been that the cost of these arrangements would be significantly less than the alternative management and contract costs associated with the previous private franchise arrangements.