Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government continues to provide £2.7 million to fund 27 advice projects as part of the Scottish Legal Aid Board programme. Nonetheless, in the face of tightening budgets resulting from the UK Government’s continuing austerity programme, we must target our funding to ensure it goes where it is most needed. We have therefore had to take the difficult decision not to continue funding of some of the Scottish Legal Aid Board projects which overlapped other funding from Scottish, UK and local governments. We will be working with affected projects in the coming weeks to offer support for the transition away from Scottish Government funding.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

The debt advice levy was devolved on 1 January 2019. The Scottish Government received £1,479,363 in respect of January to March 2019.

Allocation of funding for 2019-20 is still under consideration.

Evaluations of the Making Advice Work programme were conducted by the Scottish Legal Aid Board in 2014 and 2017. They are available on the Scottish Legal Aid Board web site.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

This information is not centrally held.

Data on Audiology service waits is included as part of the 18 weeks referral to treatment waiting time data which is published quarterly by ISD. The 18 weeks referral to treatment performance information is based on an aggregate return from NHS Boards and does not provide specialty level data.

As I set out in the chamber on 7 February, in response to Mr Findlay’s previous question on this matter, NHS Lothian has taken steps to manage the availability of spaces and to provide alternatives to on-site parking, along with alternative forms of transport.

The Board remains committed to ongoing, constructive engagement with patients, staff, visitors and neighbours to understand and address parking-related issues. This engagement, along with other measures undertaken by the Board to alleviate parking-related issues, is ongoing and will continue to be ongoing.

This information is in the public domain and can be found on the Scottish
Government’s website within the Budget Bill documents covering the last five
years. This information can also be found on the Scottish Legal Board’s
website in the published Annual Accounts covering the last five years. Links
to these websites and documents are attached.

Scottish Budget 2019-20
https://www.gov.scot/budget/

Scottish Budget – Archive https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback//
archive/20170105064207/https://www.gov.scot/Topics/Government
/Finance/18127/Documents

Scottish Legal Board – website – Published Annual Accounts
https://www.slab.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/annual-report/ .

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-21356 on 26 February 2019. 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 .