Chamber and committees

A range of research has been carried out into the economic benefits of home internet access by various organisations. The Scottish Government has no plans to duplicate this work.

The Scottish Government is a member of the British-Irish Council workstream on Digital Inclusion and is working alongside neighbouring administrations to ensure that good practice and successful approaches can be shared, and to promote a unified agenda on the issue as we consider what further measures may be necessary to continue to improve digital inclusion in Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-33483 on 11 May 2010. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The Scottish Maritime Museum has made it clear that it needs a solution to the problem of removing the City of Adelaide from its current location within this calendar year. That is the key timeframe within which we are working. The consultants appointed by Historic Scotland to investigate all the available options are working to the agreed deadline of 31 May 2010 for delivery of their report to Historic Scotland. I therefore hope to announce the outcome of this work in the summer.

The Scottish and UK Governments were not represented at the recent European Stakeholders Conference. We are not aware of the Scottish Government being invited to attend the conference. We understand that the UK Minister for Tourism, Margaret Hodge MP, was not able to attend due to the UK General Election. The conference coincided with an informal ministerial meeting on tourism that was hosted by the Spanish Presidency and the UK was represented at that meeting by the British Embassy in Madrid.

The Scottish Government is adopting a comprehensive approach to the delivery of sustainable educational benefits and change for those most in need. This includes provision of the national education platform known as Glow, serving a potential user base of 1.5 million; development of national and user generated digital content; a collaborative national procurement framework to enable local authorities to purchase ICT equipment at competitive prices and a review of Scotland''s previous digital inclusion strategy. There are no plans to introduce a Home Access Grant.

The Scottish Government, through Scotland Europa, has raised awareness of the call for application for funding for eco-innovation projects under the 2010 Competitiveness and Innovation Programme with Scotland Europa members, which include companies, business associations, Universities, local authorities and agencies “ Scottish Natural Heritage and, Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).

Information has been circulated to Scottish Enterprise account managers and innovation specialists for discussion with client companies.

Enterprise Europe Scotland has been carrying out general awareness raising activity and responding to company inquiries with briefings on the eligibility criteria, what is funded, mechanics of the programme etc. and are considering further joint promotion with SEPA.

Officials have had a number of discussions with their UK Government counterparts in order to enable extensive consultation to take place in 2007 and again in 2008 on implementation of the EC Directive on batteries and accumulators and waste batteries and accumulators.

The level and structure of the relevant fees are intended to enable the environment agencies to recover the costs of the activity needed to monitor compliance with the directive.

Extensive consultation was carried out with stakeholders on the introduction of the regulations, including the establishment of a separate Scottish stakeholders group. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has had subsequent engagement with stakeholders on the implementation of the regulations.

There is a wealth of material that has been digitised within Scotland and a massive undertaking by the National Collections and other organisations supported by the Scottish Government to ensure that cultural works are preserved and accessed through digitisation. A number of partnerships and collaborations including Digital Access Scotland exist to co-ordinate and advise on the various aspects of digitisation in national and local collections.

On-line accessibility is ensured through the organisations'' own websites together with the use of sites such as Flickr and YouTube. These websites comply with the Disability Discrimination Act to ensure inclusion for all online users.

Making cultural works available in a digital format widens access to the collections and also preserves the items for future generations.

£4 million is being made available through the Scottish Government''s eHealth programme to further expand telehealthcare services across the country over 2010-11. All 32 local health and social care partnerships are being offered £120,000, subject to committing match funding of an equal or greater amount. This takes the Scottish Government''s total investment in the programme since its inception in 2006 to £20 million.

The additional funding will enable Scotland to further build on the achievements to date in developing technology-enabled services which support a shift in the balance of care from institutional to community settings; improve outcomes for service users and carers, and help deliver key health and care performance targets.