Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not collect or hold information on mobile broadband services and Wi-Fi on bus and coach services, which form Scotland's principal modes of public transport. These are provided either through local authorities or directly by operators on a commercial basis.

In terms of the ScotRail network in Scotland, which is managed and let by Transport Scotland, there has been a rolling programme of Wi-Fi installation on trains since December 2013. Approximately 45% of the ScotRail fleet is currently Wi-Fi enabled. The present Abellio franchise commits ScotRail to fit all of the fleet with Wi-Fi by December 2018.

CalMac Ferries Ltd, which is owned by the Scottish Government, provides public Wi-Fi on the Wemyss Bay to Rothesay route, which covers those two ports and the MV Argyle and MV Bute. The service has been available on this route since February 2015. CalMac Ferries Ltd will be providing Wi-Fi across their remaining ports and vessels and is working with the suppliers to make sure that this will happen as soon as possible. The programme of works is being developed with an anticipated completion date of spring 2016.

Serco NorthLink Ferries provide Wi-Fi on all their passenger ferries to/from Aberdeen-Orkney-Lerwick and on the Scrabster-Stromness route. Wi-Fi is also available in the ports served by NorthLink. The Scottish Government does not hold any figures on usage.

Our £410 million investment in the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme will extend fibre broadband access to at least 95% of homes and businesses in Scotland by the end of 2017. The programme has already met its target of 85% coverage across Scotland. Coverage in the Highlands and Islands will reach 84% whereas planned commercial rollout would only have served 21% of premises. 75% of premises on Orkney will be covered by the Digital Scotland programme. No commercial coverage was planned on Orkney.

A key priority is to ensure that the remaining 5% have access to superfast broadband as early as possible. We have established Community Broadband Scotland to progress community led solutions and are working closely with partners to develop plans to extend coverage even further. We expect to announce plans later in 2016.

Regulation of nuisance calls is currently reserved to Westminster. The Scottish Government does not, therefore, have the powers needed to fully address the issue, which currently sit with Ofcom, the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Telephone Preference Service.

We will continue to work with the UK Government, and key stakeholders such as Which?, to ensure that UK-wide regulation in this area is made as effective as possible. In addition, when consumer advocacy and advice are devolved under the Scotland Bill, we propose to establish a unified consumer body in Scotland that will give consumers – particularly those in vulnerable positions – greater clarity on where to turn for help and advice and, in the case of nuisance calls, lead to earlier identification of malpractice.

The Scottish Government has modelled increasing the repayment threshold from £17,000 to £21,000. This is expected to increase the resource accounting and budgeting charge by around four percentage points.

The Scottish Government maximum budget for the cost of loans in 2016-17 and each of the last five years is in the following table. The figure for 2016-17 is an initial estimate.

*Includes income contingent student loan writedown, additional budget secured at Spring Budget Revision.

**Includes £61.4 million mortgage-style loan book writedown for sale of loan book and £16.4 million for income contingent additional interest subsidy.

Based on the draft budget, the resource accounting and budgeting charge is expected to be £175.6 million in 2016-17.

The following table sets out the non-cash departmental expenditure unused in each of the last five years:

*There was a budget overspend in 2011-12.

The non-cash departmental expenditure budget is only available for spend related to the student loans resource accounting and budgeting charge, underspend cannot be used elsewhere.

The non-cash DEL budget for 2016-17 is £175.6 million. The budget has been adjusted downwards to reflect estimated requirements.

The Scottish Government remains committed to ensuring that producers in the developing world achieve a fair price for their goods. Through our continued partnership with the Scottish Fair Trade Forum, who have been awarded more than £1.2 million from the Scottish Government between 2007 and 2017, we are reaching more people than ever before with the message that choosing to buy Fairtrade products really does make a difference to peoples lives.

Never is this more apparent than when we hear directly from the producers themselves – and this year, during Fairtrade Fortnight, we will once again welcome producers to Scotland from as far afield as Myanmar, Nicaragua and Mauritius. It is their stories of how Fairtrade has helped them overcome hardship and poverty which will help inspire people to choose one of the 4,000 Fairtrade products now readily available in high streets up and down the country.

A full programme of the events being held during Fairtrade Fortnight to promote and encourage support for Fairtrade will be published on the Scottish Fair Trade Forum's website in the next few weeks.

http://www.scottishfairtradeforum.org.uk/newsroom/events/

The most recent statistics on the number and percentage of fuel poor households by local authority area were published on 29 January 2016. They relate to the period 2012-14. The next publication of fuel poverty statistics for Scotland is due in December 2016 and will include figures broken down by local authority for the period 2013-15.