Chamber and committees

Some instances of overcrowding on the Glasgow to Edinburgh route have been recorded during peak times compared to a similar period in 2014-15. These can largely be attributed to significant disruptive events, notably the closure of Winchburgh tunnel and the closure of the Forth Road Bridge in December 2015.

The majority of Edinburgh to Glasgow trains calling at Croy, Falkirk High, Polmont and Linlithgow will be served by six coaches. All services between Edinburgh and Glasgow via Airdrie and Bathgate will be served by six coaches. ScotRail will, when possible, ensure that the Stirling, Dunblane and Alloa service has the maximum amount of rolling stock allocated.

The ScotRail Alliance has developed a fully coordinated timetable which makes best use of all available rolling stock during the tunnel closure to provide as much additional capacity as possible.

During the tunnel closure the ScotRail Alliance will be using a queuing system at Queen Street station to ensure trains departing from the low level are not full enabling customers at intermediate stations to board.

The Scottish Government is of the view that it is for elected Members of the Scottish Parliament to hold Scottish Ministers to account for their financial judgments.

Audit Scotland, working on behalf of the Auditor General for Scotland, supports the role of the Parliament and is responsible for providing independent assurance that public money is spent properly, efficiently and effectively. Audit Scotland reports which have considered issues of financial sustainability include Scotland’s public finances: addressing the challenges (August 2011) and Scotland’s public finances – a follow-up audit: Progress in meeting the challenges (June 2014).

The Scottish Government is subject to budgetary rules, expenditure limits and statutory borrowing limits. There are established mechanisms in place for reporting to Parliament on performance against these rules. The Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts report on outturn compared to the budget authorised by the Scottish Parliament. The consolidated accounts for the 2014-15 financial year are available at: http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/10/3786.

Audit Scotland, on behalf of the Auditor General, also reports annually on the Scottish Government’s outturn against budget and expenditure limits.

The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) takes a wide range of steps to minimise the risk of transmission of infection between donors and patients, including complex and extensive donor deferral criteria and microbiological screening for a variety of infectious agents.

The UK Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs and the UK Blood Services' Standing Advisory Committee on Transfusion Transmitted Infections monitor new and emergent infectious threats to the UK Blood Supply through a range of mechanisms including reports from health protection agencies, the Emerging Infectious Diseases Monitor group of the European Blood Alliance and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. They commission risk assessments and recommend intervention where necessary.

The pattern of infectious disease in the general population (and therefore amongst blood donors) changes both on a national and a global level and new or amended deferral and screening measures are taken as required. For example, SNBTS introduced deferral of donors who have visited countries affected by Zika virus from 5 February 2016.

Haemophilia is now commonly treated with 'recombinant factors' that are manufactured in a laboratory and do not come from donated plasma. Plasma products are screened in the same way as whole blood and are subject to a variety of processes to kill or remove any pathogens that may be present.

The Standards for Registration, which are set by the General Teaching Council for Scotland, require teachers to commit to the principles of democracy and social justice through fair, transparent, inclusive and sustainable policies and practices in relation to the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010. Further, part 5 of the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s (GTCS) Code of Professionalism and Conduct on Equality and Diversity requires teachers to engage and work positively with pupils, help pupils understand different views, perspectives and experiences and develop positive relationships as well as recognise that they are role models.

The Scottish Government very much advocates training around relationships, sexual health and parenthood education and would encourage local authorities and schools to provide training for their teachers. We encourage organisations who offer training on LGBTI issues to contact schools and local authorities directly.

The Scottish Government takes bullying very seriously. Bullying of any kind, including homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying, is unacceptable and must be addressed whenever it arises.

We want all children and young people to be free from discrimination, so that they can learn and reach their full potential. The Scottish Government launched ‘A National Approach to Anti-bullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People’ in 2010. The approach forms part of our wider attempts to improve the health and wellbeing of our children and young people. There have been many policy developments since the publication of the national approach and a working group was established in January 2015 to refresh the approach which included Stonewall Scotland and LGBT Youth Scotland. The purpose of the refreshed national approach is to communicate and promote a common vision and aims to make sure that work across all sectors and communities is consistently and coherently contributing to a holistic approach to anti-bullying, including prejudice-based bullying in Scotland. The guidance will be published in spring 2016.

To support this we have established and wholly fund respectme, a national anti-bullying service, to build confidence and capacity to address all types of bullying effectively, aligned to the National Approach. respectme provide direct support to local authorities, schools, youth groups and all those working with children and young people and is jointly managed by SAMH and LGBT Youth Scotland.

Education Scotland also continue to provide support around promoting positive relationships with children and young people, which includes providing support and resources for schools around anti-bullying strategies.

We funded LGBT Youth Scotland to develop a toolkit - Dealing with Homophobia and Homophobic Bullying in ScottishSchools (2009) to support teachers in recognising, challenging, and reducing homophobia and homophobic bullying in their schools; and we will be working with the relevant partners to update this toolkit to ensure it remains current and continues to support teachers and children and young people.

Staff across Rural Payments and Inspections Division area offices have received face to face training, e-learning and desktop guidance to support the launch of the new rural payments and services system in December 2014.

They have also had access to on the job coaching on the system from line managers and trainers to support the processing of applications.

Staff are now able to access online the most up to date training, guidance and communications from one place making it easier to find the information they need when dealing with customer applications.

Direct payments are normally fully funded by money obtained from the European Commission (EC). This involves calculating the amounts due, placing a request for the requisite funds with the EC via the Rural Payments Agency who act as the co-ordinating body for the UK. This process can take eight days in most circumstances and longer if public holidays intervene. In order to shorten this time frame, the Scottish Government has decided to make the payments in advance of the reimbursement from the EC using its own cash management process to allow payments to be made in, at best, three days or typically four days.

In any new IT system there can be unforeseen IT issues which need to be fixed. Although system integration and user acceptance testing takes place before go live the nature of the CAP system is such that it is not possible to use extensive testing in a live environment.

As the issues cannot be foreseen we cannot say what they are, and it would not be prudent to make assumptions around what they are.

As with the introduction of any new IT system, there is a robust process to manage, prioritise and resolve any system issues as quickly as possible.