Chamber and committees

The budget directly associated with the implementation plans in Developing the Young Workforce – Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy is £12 million for 2014-15 and £16.6 million in 2015-16. That is in addition to our substantial existing investment in post-school learning, along with the resource local government partners make available to schools.

NHS Lothian has not made any decision to suspend the recruitment of nursing and other staff due to ‘reported budget deficits’.

The current year end forecast for 2014-15 is that the board will deliver a balanced financial position.

For 2014-15, NHS Lothian received an additional £17.521 million of ‘NRAC (NHSScotland Resource Allocation Committee) parity funding’ recurringly into their baseline allocation. A further £7.000 million is planned for 2015-16.

To provide the board with flexibility between years, the Scottish Government assisted NHS Lothian by carrying forward a £0.324 million surplus from last year (2013-14).

To date other allocations of funding have also been provided as follows:

For 2015-16, NHS Lothian was previously planning on a £32.877 million baseline funding uplift (equivalent to a 2.8%); however as a result of the recent announcement of additional funding for drugs and delayed discharges, this has been increased by a further £9.135 million; taking the increase for 2015-16 to a total of £42.013 million; (equivalent to 3.5% of baseline funding).

NHS Lothian has confirmed that they have not suspended the recruitment of nursing and other staff and in the last 14 days they have recruited 114 clinical staff and 19 non- clinical staff.

NHS Lothian has not made any decision to suspend the recruitment of nursing and other staff.

Dundee City Council’s tender for the V&A Dundee construction project was published on 16 August 2013.

The Scottish Government is a supportive funder of the V&A Dundee but Dundee City Council is the contracting authority for the construction project.

The V&A Dundee construction tender notice can still be viewed on the Public Contracts Scotland website:

http://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/show/search_view.aspx?ID=AUG152427

We continue to monitor the uptake of the blacklisting questions in pre-qualification questionnaires, and to meet regularly with trades unions on the issue.

We have now published a consultation paper on proposals to both transpose the new European procurement directives and implement the provisions of the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014. This includes the principles which we think should underpin statutory guidance on a range of workforce-related issues, such as blacklisting. Guidance imposing obligations on public bodies needs to be developed carefully and in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders.

The consultation currently underway will give all parties an opportunity to comment formally on the effectiveness of the current guidance, now that it has been in place for a reasonable period of time, and on plans for the future. We will bring forward our more detailed proposals for statutory guidance following this consultation.

Conducting a procurement process does not usually create an obligation to award a contract, and public bodies may specify in tender documents that they reserve the right to cancel the project and not award a contract. It is sometimes possible, therefore, to cancel a procurement process prior to the award of the contract if the public body no longer wishes to proceed with the project. Cancelling a procurement process can, however, especially where the costs of tendering are high, lead to bidders claiming costs. Whether or not there will be any liability for the public body will depend on the specific circumstances in which the procurement was cancelled.

Stopping a procurement process with the intention of re-running it, as opposed to cancelling the project, will also bring with it a risk of challenge by the bidders depending on the circumstances that led to the decision not to continue with the original competition and to start again. In addition to that risk, the public body would also have to consider the impact on service continuity as a result of re-tendering (for example, if this would mean that there was no new contract in place at the expiry of the current contract resulting in a gap in the provision of the service).

The contract for the new NHS Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary was issued to the Official Journal of the European Union on 25 June 2013, while the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route/Balmedie to Tipperty was issued on 18 January 2013.

This is the publication in which all tenders from the public sector which are valued above a certain financial threshold according to EU legislation must be published.