Chamber and committees

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

As outlined earlier this year in response to a similar question from Mr Rennie, our over £600 million investment in the R100 contracts, our R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme and continued commercial coverage – including the emergence of newer technologies such as Low Earth Orbit satellite – means that every property in Scotland is able to consider options for superfast broadband connection today as was the case at the end of 2021, meeting our commitment.

FY 2022-23 - £150k was spent on internal development costs for the website. In the FY 2022-23 - £15k for hosting and support, we anticipate 2023-24 this will be £25k. Costs of c£5k was paid for misc. services such as legal advice, security certificates and promotional items.

The Scottish Government agreed to include targeted Land and Buildings Transaction Tax relief and Non-Domestic Rates relief, alongside UK Government reserved tax reliefs and seed capital funding, to ensure that the offer to Green Freeports in Scotland was competitive with Freeports elsewhere in the UK.

The Scottish Government will not work with the alcohol industry on provision of education in schools. Our wider approach to joint work with the industry will be based on the principles of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol, which recognises industry’s role as developers, producers, distributors, marketers and sellers of alcohol products.

Instead, the Scottish Government is committed to taking forward substance use education work in our schools through Curriculum for Excellence. Children and young people learn about a variety of substances including alcohol, medicines, drugs, tobacco and solvents. They will explore the impact risk taking behaviour has on life choices and health.

The Scottish Government is developing a national strategy for 20mph speed limits, which supports the 2021 Bute House Agreement and 2022 Programme for Government commitment.

We have supported local road authorities with £1.4 million in funding to undertake the necessary road assessments which will determine the number of roads affected and the financial implications of introducing the national strategy for 20mph speed limits. The findings from the road assessments will enable the multi-stakeholder 20mph task group to scope the next steps for implementation at their meeting in October, with full implementation on all appropriate roads by 2025.

The Scottish Government (SG) provides Financial Transactions (FTs) in the form of loans (such as Health Board GP Loans) and equity investments (such as the Help to Buy Scotland programme). Loans are capital amounts that are to be repaid.

FTs are managed and monitored by the SG Portfolio business area that issue them. FT outturn data is reported annually as part of the provisional and final outturn process. For those business areas falling within SG’s accounting boundary, information on performance is reported in the Scottish Government’s Consolidated Accounts. Overall FT performance is set out in the Scottish Government Annual Report, which reviews both the cash impact of schemes (advances, repayments, and write-offs) and their valuation through consideration of an annual impairment review and review of their fair value.

The Scottish Government and Agencies are responsible for reviewing and monitoring the performance of their FTs and reporting will vary: Fund managers (including Energy Savings Trust and the Scottish Investment Fund) may provide monthly or quarterly reporting alongside annual reports and multi-year programme performance reports to SG Portfolio teams. Loans paid out directly to loan applicants (such as the Help to Buy Scotland Programme) will be monitored directly by the Portfolio area responsible for them. These reports are reviewed and used to provide advice to Ministers on the future of individual programme and project funding.

The financial information provided in the answer to question S6W-21659 on 4 October 2023 is for FTs that fall within the SG’s accounting boundary and are reported within the SG Consolidated Accounts. The loan values are the net book value, after consideration of any impairment of changes to fair value through multi-year discounted cashflow models or from consideration of the impact of housing prices on the housing equity based loans. All arms-length bodies outside of the SG accounting boundary will be responsible for their own reporting.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Culture & Business Scotland (C&BS) received 39 applications for the Marketplace pilot programmes. 24 of these were successful and awarded places in the Marketplace pilot. Three of the successful applicants to participate in Marketplace had developed one of their proposed products to a business before.

C&BS state that they do not ask applicants to Marketplace about their contractual relationships with funders, and therefore they do not know if applicants have previously been unsuccessful for funding or had funding reduced by Creative Scotland.

We have commissioned The Lines Between to conduct research on the unmet needs of those people affected by historic forced adoption practices. The research will be published later this year and we will provide an update to Parliament at that time. The research will set out the support that those affected need to assist them on their journey of recovery, including access to records.

Working with Transport Scotland, Scottish Futures Trust published a market insights report looking at electric vehicle (EV) tariffs on its website in November 2022. This report highlights significant opportunities to harness private sector investment to support the continued development of Scotland’s EV charging network.

The pace and scale of investment in the public network will increase over the coming years; and our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund aims to leverage £60 million of public and private investment to increase the size of the network to 6,000 charge points by 2026.