Chamber and committees

The Turnaround Director of Ferguson Marine, updated the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee on the delivery timetable for vessels 801 and 802 on 30 September 2021. The delivery date for MV Glen Sannox remains the same as was reported in the Turnaround Directors June 2021 update to the committee, between July 2022 and September 2022.

No visits have been made to night club premises on this topic. Discussions on vaccine certification have been, and continue to be, conducted with sector representatives remotely, the latest of which took place with Ministers on 12 October 2021.

Following previous calls from stakeholders, I carefully considered the position and concluded that there was no way to reopen, or widen out grounds for appeal for the 2020 appeals process in a fair and equitable manner to all learners.

This decision was announced via a parliamentary question on 21 June 2021 and can be found at: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers/question?ref=S6W-00913 .

The EHRC’s findings refer to historic omissions at the SQA. Learners can be assured that SQA complied with its equalities duties regarding the awarding of National Qualifications over the last two years including those relating to the 2020 appeals process.

This information is not held centrally.

SEPA’s Waste Data Flow website contains data on the amount of waste prepared for reuse by each Local Authority.

From 2017 to the end of 2021 we have received a total of £194.8m in EU Exit preparation consequentials.

Spend, both in preparation and post-EU Exit, has been on staff supporting activities such as legislative preparations, and supporting stakeholders and partners, including businesses, cultural bodies, higher education institutes, local government and the third sector.

We have consistently targeted our spending responsibly and appropriately to mitigate against the negative impacts of exiting the EU and we have allocated our spend to deal with the concurrent impacts of Covid and EU exit.

We currently have no plans to amend the existing waiting times standards although recovering our NHS and improving waiting times for patients is a top priority for this Government.

In response to the pressures on NHS services caused by the pandemic the NHS Recovery Plan was launched on 25 August 2021. The Plan which is backed by more than £1 billion of investment, sets out the Scottish Government’s key headline ambitions and actions to be developed and delivered now and over the next 5 years. While recovery is the immediate task, the Plan is fundamentally about ensuring that the process of recovery focusses on alternative pathways of care that allow people to be treated sooner and closer to home .

Through the £463 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) programme we delivered fibre broadband to over 951,500 premises across Scotland with over 841,600 of those now capable of accessing superfast speeds of 30 Megabits per second (Mbps). Of these, over 27,000 fibre connections have been delivered in North Ayrshire.

Through the Reaching 100% (R100) programme we will build upon this by delivering universal access to superfast broadband, regardless of remoteness or rurality – including rural communities in North Ayrshire.

Through a combination of the £600 million R100 contracts, the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (R100 SBVS) and continued commercial coverage we will ensure that anyone who wants a superfast connection of 30Mbps and above by the end of 2021 can have one.

The report Making Things Last: A Circular Economy Strategy for Scotland set out that the reuse economy in Scotland has a yearly turnover of at least £244 million, supports over 6,000 jobs, reuses 89,000 tonnes of material annually, and provides opportunities for individuals to obtain high quality products at considerably lower cost than new. This data came from a baseline report( https://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/research-evidence/scottish-reuse-mapping-sector-analysis-report ) which was used to inform support for reuse.

Zero Waste Scotland operate the Revolve certification scheme for second hand stores and internal analysis by them indicates that, based upon totals reported by the Revolve Network, the weight reused has more than doubled between 2017-18 and 2019-20.

The Scottish Government operates 144 public facing websites.

The Scottish Government does not hold data regarding the average speed of broadband in homes in rural North Ayrshire.

However, independent analysis site Thinkbroadband shows that, as at 19 October 2021, the average download speed for properties in North Ayrshire was 56.7Mbps.

Further information can be found at www.thinkbroadband.com.