Chamber and committees

Water abstraction is one of seven Provisioning Services included within Scotland’s Natural Capital Accounts. Water abstraction within the accounts is measured using the volume of water abstracted for public water supply by Scottish Water, irrespective of the manner of abstraction or its ultimate use. Between 2002 and 2017, water abstraction in Scotland declined from 912 million m3 to 666 million m3 respectively. Although demand for water for domestic consumption and operation use increased over this period, the decrease in water abstraction was due to a reduction in the amount of water that was lost through leakages. The amount of water lost through leakage was reduced by nearly 50% over this period – from 413 million m3 in 2002, to 204 million m3 in 2017.

The information requested is not centrally held.

The Natural Capital Accounts is based on an internationally agreed framework produced by the United Nations System of Environmental Economic Accounting and the principles of the methodology are to provide calculation for environmental assets. The terms provisioning (meaning items that can be consumed), regulating (meaning items that help regulate the environment) and cultural (meaning providing recreational opportunities) are a good way of measuring the contribution of the environment and ecosystem to the economy depending on the value of the natural asset.

The Scottish Government does not consider that making a distinction between private and public sources would be beneficial. The terms private and public take on slightly different meaning in the natural capital accounts to normal accounting. For instance private usually means businesses but in the natural capital accounts it can mean any asset owned by a private organisation including households. Public in natural accounts means any asset that the public can be affected by.

PM2.5 can be given off by a variety of sources such as industrial and vehicle emissions. The decline in PM2.5 in the atmosphere up until 2017 was unrelated to any vegetation.

This information is publicly available on the Scottish Government website within the Free Personal and Nursing Care in Scotland 2017 – 2018 Report.

This is accessible on the link https://www.gov.scot/publications/free-personal-nursing-care-scotland-2017-18/ and can be accessed within the supporting files, publications, tables and charts.

The grazed biomass in the natural capital accounts is categorised as the pasture that livestock eat while the livestock are assumed to be a produce not associated with natural capital. Therefore the decline of grazed biomass is due to a decline in the numbers of grazing cows, sheep and pigs between 2006 to 2015. The grazed area will still exist even if livestock are not grazing on it, but will then be accounted for as ‘other’ agricultural biomass within the natural capital accounts.

The reduction in grazing biomass will therefore have a negligible effect on the overall natural capital account as the value of the natural capital will be classified elsewhere when not being grazed by livestock.

Consequently, there will be no effect caused by the decline in the grazing biomass on rural agricultural revenue, and the report indicates that the overall agricultural biomass is increasing. If more livestock are introduced onto grazing land, this will have the reverse effect where ‘other biomass’ will then be classified as ‘grazing biomass’ and therefore can be considered as a potential storage of land-use which can be repurposed for a variety of activities.

The Health and Care (Staffing) Act, passed earlier this year, will require Health Boards to clearly identify the needs of service users, the workload and skills required to deliver those needs and ensure appropriate numbers of suitably trained staff are in place to achieve this. This will support the wider workforce planning process by enabling a rigorous evidence based approach to staffing decisions.

We are on track to deliver our commitment to create 2,600 extra nursing places this Parliament, and have increased the nursing and midwifery student intake by 7.6% for 2019-20 - an extra 283 places. This is the seventh successive rise, equating to over 4,000 entry places, which will see a record number of nurses in training in Scotland.

We have also protected free tuition for nursing and midwifery students and are increasing the bursary to £8,100 this year, and again to £10,000 next year.

In addition we are undertaking initiatives to recruit more nurses and midwives through a return to practice course and a national recruitment campaign which will run in autumn 2019.

Consultant staffing remains at historically high levels, up by 49.3% since 2007. We will have increased the number of medical places at Scotland’s universities by 2021 to a record high of 1,038. This includes 50 ring-fenced widening access places.

The Scottish Government is committed to listening to the voices of older people to inform and shape policy and services and we have demonstrated this by working with the Older People’s Strategic Action Forum who played an integral role in developing ‘A Fairer Scotland for Older People – A Framework for Action’ published in April 2019. The first annual report on the framework will be published in April 2020.

Integration Authorities have statutory duties to engage with their local communities, including older people, and to report on that engagement as part of their annual reporting cycle.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) carry out a programme of unannounced Older People Acute Hospital inspections to provide assurance that older people are being treated with compassion, dignity and respect while they are in hospital, with a focus on the quality of care. As part of the inspection process, the inspection team speaks to older people and their carer and families to get their views. A summary is included in inspection reports, published on the HIS website, and shared with the Health Board.

And finally, Scotland’s refreshed housing strategy for older people, “Age, Home and Community – The Next Phase” also commits to ongoing engagement with older people.

NHS Grampian report that they regularly review a range of data in order to provide a general oversight of demand and also to provide monitoring and surveillance to gauge the effect of targeted improvement efforts.

This can cover demographic data such as population projections, life expectancy and healthy life expectancy data but also includes analysing information on the use of acute and mental health services by older people, for example, emergency admissions trends and reasons.

In addition to this, the Board assesses its future requirements through various modelling and simulation approaches. This helps to take account of the future needs and demands of the population by age and by specialty, and allows for the impact on hospitals, Health & Social Care Partnerships and the third sector to be modelled and planned accordingly.

If the member would like more detailed information he should contact NHS Grampian.

We have not developed forecasts for the level of renewable energy production at specific points in the future.

However, Scotland's Energy Strategy made clear the Scottish Government's unwavering commitment to the development and deployment of renewable technologies in Scotland. Our Strategy has set a target for 50% of all energy consumed for power, heat and transport in Scotland to come from renewable sources. As of 2017, progress towards this target was at 20% - the equivalent of powering and heating 1.8million households in Scotland.

Recently published statistics indicate that, as of March 2019, Scotland had 11.3 GW of installed renewable capacity operational, with another 12.9GW in the pipeline. And in 2017, the equivalent of 5.9% of non-electrical heat demand was met from renewable sources, up from 4.7% in 2016. Of course, as has already been demonstrated earlier this year, data for 2018 indicate that 73.9% of Scotland’s electricity demand could be met by Scotland’s renewable electricity supplies, with the largest contribution provided by wind energy.

Continued progress will be vital in order to achieve our climate goals. Scotland’s Energy Strategy gives us the flexibility to respond to changes in the energy sector in years to come, and to pursue all appropriate low or zero carbon options.