Chamber and committees

The Rural Payments and Services IT platform has been operational for some time allowing compliant payments to be made. Nearly all of the key functionality identified in the final business case of the Futures Program has now been provided. Some remaining functionality is outstanding, most of which will be delivered in comparatively small releases over the next six months.

CAP 2015 is highly complex and replaced two former schemes with six new schemes under Pillar 1. In developing its IT system, Scotland faced a harder task than other parts of UK, because of the complex nature of our land and the implementation of our targeted policies under Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 that have been developed to meet the requirements of our agriculture industry. Under EU rules only claims which have been fully checked and validated can be paid, adding to the complexity of the IT system. EU conservative estimates are that, generally, CAP 2015 is 20 % more complex to administer.

The system is currently helping to process around 41,800 claims per year for approximately 20,000 customers; mapping 700,000 land parcels and 1.7 million internal features to an extremely high level of precision covering 4 million hectares of land; and helping to pay over £540 million annually to customers to the benefit of Scotland’s rural communities and our rural economy.

Of course, the system was built with the intention of continuing to meet the current CAP requirements and provide the core functionality for the next CAP implementation. This was prior to the UK Government’s decision to take us out of the EU.

We are aware of the recent media reports indicating that researchers at Portsmouth University have succeeded in improving a naturally occurring enzyme which can digest polyethylene terephthalate (PET). It will be important to understand the full material lifecycle impacts of such approaches and while this is an interesting development given the urgency of tackling plastic pollution I feel it is important that we continue to take action now to address the causes of plastic pollution.

Current action includes introducing a Deposit Return Scheme, improving recycling and encouraging industry to improve the recyclability of products (e.g. via product design). We will continue to support innovation through our Circular Economy Investment Fund which supports projects led by Scottish SMEs. Zero Waste Scotland is open to discussing potential applications of this and other innovative technologies with companies looking to deploy them within Scotland.

The High Speed Train (HST) power car involved in the incident is currently on lease to Great Western Railway, they are investigating the incident and are responsible for any repairs. Any lessons learned from the incident on 17 April will be taken on-board by the vehicle owner and current operator and shared with Abellio ScotRail. The power car involved will be leased by Abellio ScotRail later this year.

Abellio ScotRail is obliged to provide rolling stock to deliver its service provision and has already adjusted leases of existing rolling stock, postponed upgrades and maintenance to mitigate against project slippage. It has also agreed leases for more trains during this franchise term and will continue to keep other options for more rolling stock under review. Abellio ScotRail continues to focus on optimising capacity from their available fleet, and are working closely with Transport Scotland to ensure that all options are assessed to mitigate against the Hitachi fleet introduction delays including working on a plan to bring in a number of class 365 trains on a short term basis for the Edinburgh to Glasgow via Falkirk route.

The First Minister and I have reiterated on many occasions to senior management from the global Hitachi organisation the importance of this new fleet to Scotland’s Railway and the wider Scottish Economy. I also visited the Hitachi factory at Newton Aycliffe last year to see progress with the new fleet and meet the staff there. I and officials at Transport Scotland continue to press representatives of Hitachi and Abellio ScotRail on this matter.

Over the next 15 months Abellio ScotRail will gradually introduce into Scotland the following additional fleets:

Seventy Class 385s electric trains for central belt routes, 26 HSTs onto Scottish inter-city routes, 5 more class 320/4 electric trains on the Strathclyde network to help provide a net increase of more than 200 extra carriages across the fleet compared to today. In addition ASR is working on a plan introduce additional 365 electric trains on a short term basis to run on the Edinburgh-Glasgow route ahead of the new class 385 introduction.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-10132 on‎ 27 July 2017. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

In January 2016 the Scottish Government announced £24 million for the design and construction of a new grade-separated junction at Laurencekirk as part of a package of additional investment alongside the Aberdeen City Region Deal. This additional investment enabled Transport Scotland to commence the design and assessment process of the scheme.

Telecommunications, including investment in and supporting of broadband infrastructure, is a matter reserved to the UK Government. Despite this, the Scottish Government is the only UK administration to have committed to delivering 100% superfast broadband access.

The R100 Intervention Area was determined through an Open Market Review (a detailed consultation with suppliers and a necessary part of the State Aid approval process), which identified premises that will not have superfast broadband access delivered, either commercially or via the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme.

Within this intervention area, we have taken the decision to focus the initial R100 procurement on more rural areas, incentivising suppliers to target the most difficult to reach premises.

NHS Grampian will receive a resource budget uplift of 2.1% in 2018-19, the highest percentage uplift of any Territorial Board. This includes a‎ £5 million share of additional NRAC parity funding which takes the Board’s annual resource budget to £921 million and within 0.8% of parity.

The welfare of NHS staff is critically important; every health board is required to have policies in place and to comply with national policies on managing health at work, which includes activity to support staff wellbeing. The Health and Social Care Staff Experience Report 2017 indicated that an increasing number of staff are engaged and feel empowered in their roles.

The Scottish Government supports NHS Health Boards in their efforts to ensure that they have the right staff in place to meet the healthcare needs of the local population. Staffing levels within NHS Grampian have increased by nearly 8% under this Government, rising from 11,203.3 WTE as at September 2006 to 12,063.9 WTE as at December 2017. While there has been a slight decrease in NHS Grampian workforce, down 0.4%, in the last year, we are confident the steps we are taking to improve workforce planning arrangements will directly benefit NHS Grampian, its workforce and patients.

With regards to waiting times, in 2017-18 the Scottish Government made £50 million available to specifically reduce waiting times across NHSScotland – with £4.9 million made available to NHS Grampian. This additional funding is aimed at building up their capacity and making sure that all patients are seen and treated in a timely fashion.

Announced in November, the Access Collaborative will provide further support by looking at different ways patients can receive timely, accessible care and improve the way elective care services are provided and managed across the NHS in Scotland.

Officials continue to meet regularly with NHS Grampian to support improvement in waiting time performance.

Using statistics provided by thinkbroadband – the same independent analysts used by the UK Government - Aberdeenshire superfast broadband coverage (at 30Mbps or more) has increased by 60.2 percentage points from 20.3% when the first DSSB cabinet went live in April 2014 to 80.5% in March 2018.

Crucially, we are not stopping there. Any home or business that cannot receive superfast broadband, either commercially or through DSSB will be included in the intervention area for the R100 programme.

Telecommunications, including investment in and supporting of broadband infrastructure, is a matter reserved to the UK Government. Despite this, the Scottish Government is the only UK administration to have committed to delivering 100% superfast broadband access.