Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is currently working with key stakeholders to finalise a new Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus (SHBBV) Strategy, which will supersede the SHBBV Framework published in 2015.

The new Strategy will be published in Spring 2023, and will outline key priorities for the sector for 2023-2026.

We want disabled people in Scotland to have choice, dignity and freedom to access suitable homes, built or adapted so they can participate as full and equal citizens.

Scotland has led the way in the delivery of affordable housing across the UK. Since 2007, we have delivered 118,124 affordable homes, 83,291 of which were for social rent.

Our ambition is to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032 – 70% of which will be for social rent and 10% in our remote, rural and island communities.

We are building homes that are sufficiently flexible to meet the needs of people as they change over time. The Housing for Varying Needs design guide incorporates the ‘barrier free’ concept of accessibility in homes. Recent analysis shows that 98% of new build homes delivered by housing associations and councils in 2021-22, where information was returned, met that standard.

A review of Housing for Varying Needs is underway. This work will directly inform the development of a Scottish Accessible Homes Standard, set to be implemented from 2025-26. This will enhance the accessibility and adaptability of new homes, ensuring that disabled people have an increased range of housing options and reducing the requirement to make changes to homes as needs change.

Local authorities as the strategic housing authority are responsible for assessing affordable housing needs in their area and setting out their plans to meet these requirements in their Local Housing Strategy and Strategic Housing Investment Plan.

Local authorities are required to set targets for the delivery of wheelchair accessible housing across all tenures as part of their Local Housing Strategy. The target should be informed by evidence of what is required locally.

The allocation of housing in the social rented sector lies directly with individual landlords. Local authorities and housing associations are responsible for allocating social housing, including applications on medical grounds, and how they do this is set out in their allocation policy. Decisions to allocate housing will be based on an assessment of the individual’s housing needs against the landlord’s published allocation policy.

Disabled people have priority access to our Low Cost Initiative for First Time Buyers which help people on low to moderate incomes buy a home. We recently widened eligibility to the Open Market Shared Equity scheme to ensure as many people as possible can benefit.

The Resource Spending Review included commitments to hold the total public sector pay bill (excluding Local Government) at around 2022-23 levels whilst returning the overall size of the public sector (excluding Local Government) broadly to pre-COVID-19 levels. The overall aim was to ensure sustainable public bodies.

Following further analysis and engagement, our proposal on how we achieve sustainable public bodies evolved and in the 2023-24 Budget, we set out that it is for individual public bodies to locally determine the target operating model for their workforces and to ensure workforce plans and projections are affordable in 2023-24 and in the medium term. This approach recognises the accountability of public bodies to deliver efficiently and effectively within their budget and that budget allocations reflect our priorities.

Our Public Sector Pay Strategy for 2023-24 published on 22 March 2023, recognises that pay and workforce must, more than ever, be explicitly linked to both fiscal sustainability and to reform, to secure the delivery of effective public services over the medium term. It set out that bodies may need to consider the size and shape of the workforce to ensure affordability, alongside opportunities around, for example, digital reform, revenue generation, estates rationalisation and improved procurement and that where a reduction in workforce is required, we would expect this to be through natural turnover wherever possible given our on-going commitment to No Compulsory Redundancies. There are no centrally set targets.

The Public Sector Geospatial Agreement, or PSGA, as its commonly known is a 10 year agreement between the Cabinet Office and the Ordnance Survey. The Agreement sets out Ordnance Survey’s public task and also provides the licence mechanism through which OS data is made available, and the basis on which the Scottish public sector may access the data.

In 2020 The Cabinet Office and the Scottish Ministers agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to extend the PSGA to cover Scottish Public Sector Bodies with a view to replacing the existing member licences under the One Scotland Mapping Agreement and the Greenspace Scotland Agreement with the Member Licences under the proposed PSGA. Scottish Public Sector Bodies played an extensive role in the development of the PSGA including defining the specification of the datasets that were captured and developed over the first 3 years of the PSGA as part of the National Geospatial Database. As such, the PSGA reflects the requirements of the public sector across Scotland, England and Wales.

The Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) provides access to premium geospatial data, and facilitates the free sharing of data and outputs between members, which will enable efficient evidence-based decision-making across the Public Sector. Over the 10 year contract period starting from May 2020, PSGA is likely to provide Scottish Public Sector organisations with £30 million in savings.

The transition from the One Scotland Mapping Agreement to the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement resulted in an initial cost saving of around 30% to all Scottish PSGA member organisations, with a prime example of this being NHS boards costs which dropped from £700K in 2019/2020 to £472,500 in 2020 / 2021. ?Further to this, Ordnance Survey costs have been front loaded for the first 5 years of the agreement. What this means in reality is that from years 6 through 10, members will have no Ordnance Survey (OS) data costs to pay and for those years and will only pay contribution towards other components of the PSGA agreement such as Aerial Photography, Web Service costs etc. In monetary terms this equates to a £15 million saving to Scottish Public Sector members over the final 5 years of the agreement.

A major part of the PSGA agreement is the ongoing Governance review process, this is where monthly meetings with the Devolved Administrations and the Geospatial Commission look at the key performance indicators (KPI’s) of the agreement ensuring Ordnance Survey continue to meet their obligations and commitments under the agreed contract. The Scottish Geospatial Management Board also meet quarterly to ensure the PSGA continues to represent value for money and continues to provide robust data to Scottish members to support policy and ongoing Public Sector business requirements. This is also an opportunity for Scottish members to address any future or priority data requirements with Ordnance Survey. There is also a quarterly Board of Commissioners meeting where Scotland along with the other devolved administration are represented, with a view to shaping the strategic direction of the agreement going forward at a UK level.

The PSGA also offer substantial operational benefits to Scottish members such as collaboration, meaning procurement is handled centrally thus releasing the resourcing burden on the 80 Scottish member organisations. In terms of Data Access the agreement provides new and easier ways to access data through premium web services such Europa and OS National Geographic Database (OS NGD) API, thus lessening the burden on Scottish member organisation to manage the data locally. The agreement also provides data access at full GB coverage as opposed to just Scotland, this is extremely useful when collaborating with other devolved administrations or any cross border initiatives. Data Sharing within the PSGA makes it easier to share robust definitive Ordnance Survey data or derived data products between Scottish members that support and underpin key policy and business initiatives. This was essential during the recent Covid pandemic and fundamental to how the Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and the Scottish Public Sector delivered our National response to the pandemic. Key initiatives such as Lock Down mapping, Covid Testing centres , Health and Social initiatives and National Resilience all relied heavily on Data Sharing between the Scottish Public Sector. The PSGA also included Support in terms of interoperability between important National and Local Government datasets due to the consistent high quality base date being provided the Ordnance Survey. Scottish PSGA members can also access Technical Support through the agreement, with four dedicated technical Ordnance Survey staff available to assist and support Scottish members needs if required at no additional cost.

CalMac ferries continue to plan recruitment around the latest delivery date provided for the MV Glen Sannox and recruitment is currently ongoing. The recruitment process is continually monitored to ensure any risks and issues are identified and managed. Recruitment plans are also continually updated to reflect required changes.

Publication of information about the Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry’s costs is a matter for the Inquiry. The Inquiry has decided to provide quarterly reporting of its costs on its website at https://www.covid19inquiry.scot/inquiry-costs .

The Scottish Government have engaged with the Bank regularly throughout the recruitment process for a new CEO including over the last few weeks.

Scottish Government Ministers and officials meet regularly with David Lonsdale, the Director of the Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC), through engagement with the SRC but also through other means such as the Scottish Government Retail Industry Leadership Group (ILG) - of which Mr Lonsdale is a member. The most recent engagement with the Director of the SRC was held on 22 March 2023. The Scottish Government greatly values regular updates, intelligence and input from the Scottish Retail Consortium which is informing rationale for it’s overall response to the cost crisis and challenges facing Scotland’s retail sector.

Freight works on a commercial basis so the decision to move products by rail is a decision for the customer and its logistics provider.

However, I can confirm that a dedicated express rail logistics service is currently running into Scotland. This service which runs between Birmingham and Mossend, started with a trial period on 17 October 2022 followed by a full operational service running five nights a week from 9 January 2023, is operated by Varamis Rail.

Since the establishment of Research Data Scotland (RDS) at the end of 2021 my officials have had ongoing engagement with RDS.