Chamber and committees

A new model for delivery of active travel behaviour change interventions has been introduced for 2024-25. The People and Place programme will be delivered by Scotland’s seven Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs). Grant offer letters have been issued to all of the RTPs which contain the information required for drawing down funding from their allocation once the grant offer is accepted. This funding will be available to the RTPs, working with their delivery partners, to spend on behaviour change interventions during the 2024-25 financial year.

The North East Bus Alliance has spent £9.94 million from the Bus Partnership Fund. This includes funding for the business case for Aberdeen Rapid Transit (ART) and bus priority on its associated corridors. This also includes £0.33 million for the development and delivery of bus gates in Aberdeen City Centre, which opened in August 2023, and supporting works of £7.98 million on South College Street, which enabled the bus gates. The North East Bus Alliance have reported that bus gates in Aberdeen City Centre have reduced journey times for passengers by up to 25%, benefitting over 600,000 passengers each month.

Future work on ART, led by Nestrans and its partners Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeenshire Council and the North East Bus Alliance, will be funded through the Aberdeen City Region Deal.

a) The length of carriageway or lane reserved for the use of buses (and other vehicles as identified) delivered through the Bus Partnership Fund is 12.16km. This includes bus gates in Aberdeen City Centre, which the North East Bus Alliance has reported to have reduced journey times for passengers by up to 25%, and a bus gate at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, opened in March 2024, providing improved public transport access to this important facility as well as improving connectivity with the city centre. A section of bus lane has also been delivered on the M8 eastbound between Claylands (Junction 2 of the M8) and Hermiston Gait (Junction 1 of the M8) in the form of an actively managed hard shoulder for buses. This also includes 2.58km of BPF funded bus lanes in Edinburgh that are currently in operation and the Council are seeking to make permanent.

b) In addition to bus lanes, other bus priority and supporting measures have been delivered through the Bus Partnership Fund. This includes bus priority at 66 signalised junctions across Scotland, including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Ayrshire, Oban, Dundee and Perth, helping buses to get through them more quickly. Seven supporting projects have also been completed, including measures such as bus lane enforcement cameras. When the Bus Partnership Fund was launched and STPR2 was published, there were not many bus priority measures identified that could be built straight away. Therefore the Bus Partnership Fund also provided funding which has seen 32 studies completed to identify, develop and design further pipeline bus priority measures.

Eight temporary electronic variable message signs have been deployed on the A9 between the Birnam and Moy, which display a number of road safety messages to drivers. These include “Don’t Drive Tired” and “Don’t Use Mobile Phones When Driving” to encourage responsible and considerate driving, as well as “Drive on the Left” in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian to assist visitors from overseas. For 2024, these signs were installed during the last week in March and will be in place until the start of November to cover the main tourism season. The estimated cost for installing and maintaining the signs in the 2022-2023, 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 financial years is £155,439.57 excluding VAT. The use of these signs on the A9 in future years will be considered through Transport Scotland’s ongoing assessment of the safety performance of the trunk road network.

The Scottish Government funding for active travel projects is not allocated based on STPR2 recommendation delivered. We fund a range of projects throughout Scotland that deliver on recommendation 3 of the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2) to connect villages to towns by active travel. This includes funding for the National Cycle Network programme, investment in active travel infrastructure on the trunk road network, and funding provided to local authorities via the Sustrans Places for Everyone programme and the new Active Travel Infrastructure fund, and directly through the Cycling Walking Safer Routes (CWSR) grant.

SEPA is a member of the Pharmaceuticals in the Environment (PiE) Group. The group last met on 31st January 2024 to continue discussions and undertake process mapping to understand the current evidence, as well as regulatory and non-regulatory tools available to inform future activities and strategy regarding levels of imidacloprid and fipronil in UK surface waters.

SEPA has designed an investigative monitoring programme to help understand chemical pressures on Scotland’s water environment.

Regulation of the internet is a reserved matter falling to the UK Government and Parliament. Within that context, the Scottish Government engages with the UK Government and Ofcom, the new online safety regulator, on the implementation of the UK Government Online Safety Act in Scotland to address illegal and harmful material on the internet.

Decisions about operational policing priorities are a matter for Police Scotland, which is operationally independent of the Scottish Ministers. Where alleged criminal activity relating to intimate image abuse, including where this involves 'deepfakes', is reported to Police Scotland, they will investigate with a view to determining whether there is sufficient evidence to report to Crown Office for consideration of prosecution.

In 2023, Police Scotland undertook a 4-week online child sexual abuse and exploitation media campaign targeting sexual predators who groom and abuse children online, including through use of sexually explicit 'deepfake' images. Police Scotland's Cyberharm Prevention Team are also undertaking a National "sextortion" Prevention Campaign aimed at education and support for those affected by crimes of extortion, including people affected by "deepfake" images.

In terms of resources allocated to education and prevention, school pupils learn how to conduct online relationships safely and understand the risks and consequences of sharing intimate images. The Scottish Government's Gender-Based Violence in School Guidance makes clear that this includes non-consensual sharing of sexual images or threatening to do so.

The Scottish Government also funds Education Scotland to coordinate the Mentors in Violence Prevention programme, focussed on challenging attitudes underpinning gender-based violence, and supports schools to access Rape Crisis Scotland's National Sexual Violence Prevention programme.

STPR2 is a national appraisal and identifies recommendations to be delivered over the long term. The delivery of the recommendations is subject to the funding allocations agreed by Parliament each year through the annual budget process.

In the case of Recommendation 3, which focuses on village-town active travel connections, investment will likely be phased over numerous years. Currently, projects are identified by local authorities and regional partners who then apply for funding through the Sustrans Places for Everyone programme, the new Active Travel Infrastructure fund, and directly through the Cycling Walking Safer Routes (CWSR) grant.

In the case of the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund, we accept proposals for funding the construction of various types of active travel interventions, which can include village-town active travel connections.

The assessment and prioritisation of projects considers a multi- criteria approach and includes two main factors: the impact they achieve and the deliverability of the project. Some of the factors considered in the prioritisation of projects are: potential for mode shift; the quality of proposed infrastructure; safety and security; integration with existing active travel infrastructure and/or public transport; impact on the most deprived 20% of communities; impact on community severance; access to schools; access to employment; access to other locations and value for money.

Figures in the following table show the gross General Dental Services budget and respective spend for the previous four financial years.

• Information on 2023-24 spend is not available at this time and will be published as part of the overall Scottish Government consolidated accounts to be laid in Parliament later this year.

The Scottish Government is working with Public Health Scotland to identify what data is already collected in Scotland on metastatic breast cancer and what data we would like to expand our datasets to include going forward.