Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has no plans to create through its agencies a capital funding stream for community services and community spaces. It is for agencies to determine how best to apply allocated funding from Government, including capital and some of them do fund community oriented activity and infrastructure. Examples would include South of Scotland Enterprise Agency, Transport Scotland and Forestry and Land Scotland.

ScotRail novated several contracts for the provision of Ticket Issuing Systems, across all retail channels, to ensure continuity of service and a smooth transition from Abellio ScotRail to ScotRail Trains Limited.

At this time no definitive timetable for a future procurement exercise has been agreed. ScotRail Trains Limited will work with its holding company, Scottish Rail Holdings, to ensure services are procured as required to meet ScotRail’s needs going forward. I will raise this matter directly with SRT when we next meet.

In answer to part (a), information on spending on the Lord Advocate’s reference to the Supreme Court was published on 22 September, at: www.gov.scot/publications/independence-referendum-supreme-court-referral-legal-costs .

In answer to part (b), as is usual for any Bill, when independence legislation is introduced in Parliament the Financial Memorandum accompanying the Bill will set out a detailed estimate of costs arising from the Bill, and the Parliament will have opportunity to scrutinize this.

For the final part of your question I refer you to the answer to your previous question, S6W-11224 on 1 November 2022. 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 .

The Promise made it clear that adoption has an important role in providing a permanent, loving nurturing home, and that an adoption placement should not be the conclusion of the help available to adoptive families.

The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 gives adoptive families the right to request support from their local authority that best meets the needs of their family at a time that is right for them. A local authority who is approached is required to carry out an assessment and provide assistance to address any needs identified.

The Scottish Government provided £98,000 in 2022-23 for Adoption UK Scotland’s Therapeutic Education Support Services in Adoption (TESSA) programme which provides support to adoptive families.

We have also committed to providing £500 million in Whole Family Wellbeing Funding, over the course of this Parliament, to help transform services that support families, include those who have adopted children and young people, to ensure that they can access the support they need, where and when they need it.

Veterans who have left the armed forces within the past two years are a priority access group for the Low Cost Initiative for First-Time Buyers (LIFT) shared equity schemes, which includes the Open Market Shared Equity and New Supply Shared Equity schemes.

Information on how many people have been helped through the Help to Buy (Scotland) scheme can be found under the Monitoring Information Report heading here: https://www.gov.scot/policies/homeowners/help-to-buy/

Payment of the real Living Wage has always been central to our Fair Work First approach; the policy has been applied to some £4bn of public sector funding since 2019.

As committed to in the Bute House Agreement, we will introduce a requirement on public sector grants to pay at least the real Living Wage, and provide appropriate channels for effective voice, subject to limits on devolved competence. Ministers will confirm the detail of the conditionality in the coming weeks.

Fair Work is more important than ever, and we will use all the levers we can to drive fair work practices. Public sector funding should leverage wider benefits, support the development of a sustainable economic recovery and a successful wellbeing economy. One example will be the future civil engineering framework (£600m over four years) that includes a requirement to pay at least the real Living Wage.

Fair Work, including fair pay, is vital in tackling the cost crisis, in-work poverty and child poverty.

The Scottish Government allocates a budget of £70,000 per annum to the Ready Scotland campaign, comprising a website, social media, radio and digital advertising. If required spend is likely to exceed this figure, facility exists within the relevant Scottish Government Directorate to increase the available funding.

This £70,000 budget has been in place each year since 2019-20. The actual amount spent on the Ready Scotland campaign in each financial year fluctuates markedly due to the variable number of Amber or Red weather warnings each year which require a campaign activation.

The costs in the table show the actual spend at financial year end. In the case of 2022-23 the total costs is shown as the actual spend at 31 October 2022. 

Annual budgets continue to be set through the annual parliamentary budget Bill process and the annual budget will be based on the latest fiscal information to support our priorities across Scotland.

The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting islands investment and will continue to review this as part of that annual budget process.

As outlined in the response to question S6W-10712 , £300,000 had been allocated to the delivery of the Islands Bond in the 2022-23 Financial Year. This funding will support the delivery of projects that will, in turn, influence the development of our Addressing Depopulation Action Plan.

The Islands Bond was a capital funding commitment. In this context, it is important to highlight that our capital allocations have been significantly restrained as result of the UK Government’s own spending review. The impact of this is that the Scottish Government received £175 million less than we had expected. The capital allocations that Scottish Government are receiving are flat, and will fall over the course of the next few years. As such, we must prioritise as best we can within that context.

However, it is important to understand that the Islands Bond was not the sole intervention aimed at supporting our island communities. This financial year, the Scottish Government has announced a £4.45 million funding package to help improve infrastructure on Scotland’s islands.

This capital investment is supporting all six island local authorities to fund the improvement, creation or safeguarding of locally developed infrastructure projects that align with the Strategic Objectives of the National Islands Plan.

The largest single award for 2022-23 will support a major new nursery development on mainland Orkney, benefitting all of Orkney’s islands. This project is linked to population retention and growth, whilst also addressing child poverty and providing practical training opportunities for employment in an industry facing severe shortages locally.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-10773 on 
23 September 2022.

As committed to in our Programme for Government, the Public Health (Restriction of Promotions) Bill will be introduced to the Scottish Parliament in the 2022-23 parliamentary year.

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