Chamber and committees

The Community Hub project in Fife commenced in 2015. The first year consisted of a training year for the new GP Fellows (qualified GPs) to furnish them with additional skills followed by two years of guaranteed employment in the "hub" located at the Queen Margaret Hospital.

The Fife pilot has centred on better management of patients with frailty in the community, building on the expertise developed by the newly trained GP fellows. Community Health and Wellbeing Hubs are being developed across Fife and the three GP fellows have during their time in post helped to shape this service model working alongside other primary and secondary care doctors.

The ethos of the Hub is to improve coordination of health and social care systems, reduce duplication and simplify access to services. By teams working together more efficiently patients are experiencing more rapid local access and improved joined up care. An improvement in the interface and clinical pathways supporting older people being cared for at home or nearer to home in Fife has already been observed.

An expansion of the community hub project into old age psychiatry is currently being considered.

Fair Start Scotland is Scotland’s devolved employability support service and is designed to offer support on a voluntary basis to help people, including those who are further removed from the labour market, who want help to find work and stay in work.

The Scottish Government has proactively published information on its devolved employability services since December 2017. Today we are publishing information on the first six months of operation of Fair Start Scotland, which shows a total of 4,978 people have started on Fair Start Scotland during the period 3 April to 28 September 2018.

The publication outlines the number of starts and referrals to the service. It also provides further information on the transitional services introduced in April 2017.

We will continue to publish statistical data relating to Fair Start Scotland on a quarterly basis.

The Scottish Government will assess proposals from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service against the criteria which have been published on the Scottish Government’s website at:

http://www.Scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Justice/policies/police-fire-rescue/fire/HQ-location

I can confirm that after rigorous evaluation it is our intention to award the ScotRail franchise to Abellio ScotRail Limited. The franchise will be of ten years duration with a break point exercisable on the fifth anniversary of its commencement. The new franchise will commence on 1 April 2015.

In its concluding report, published on 1 July 2014, the Trident Commission estimated the annual net present value of the UK Government’s proposed Trident renewal plans to average £2.9 billion per year. Scotland’s population share of this equates to around £240 million a year at 2012 prices.

The total lifetime costs of the Trident successor programme are calculated to be around £103 billion in cash terms at 2012 prices, with annual costs peaking at around £4 billion a year by the mid-2020s. Scotland’s population share of those total costs equates to around £8.6 billion over the project’s lifespan.

87.9 per cent of 2012-13 school leavers in Fife sustained a positive destination in March 2014, similar to the previous year but higher than for 2007-08, when only 83.4 per cent of school leavers in Fife were in sustained positive destinations.

Those resident in, or representing rural villages, can contact their local authority direct, or the relevant prescribed person in their local authority area, to request inclusion in community payback initiatives.

Section 227ZL(1) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 requires local authorities to consult, on an annual basis, with prescribed persons about unpaid work and other activities undertaken by offenders subject to a community payback order in the local authority’s area. The persons and classes of person are prescribed in the Community Payback Orders (Prescribed Persons for Consultation) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (S.S.I. 2011/1).

In most cases local authorities consult widely and beyond the minimum of the prescribed persons and the ‘Community Payback Order – Scottish Government Summary of Local Authority Annual Reports 2012-13’ provides further detail on the types of consultation activities undertaken.

First of all, we recognise that there is a problem. The Trussell Trust reports that there is a fivefold increase in people who use foodbanks, compared with the previous year and we know from the report that we published in December 2013 that benefit changes and delays are a major cause of this increase.

It is simply unacceptable that so many people should have to rely on emergency food provision in our rich country.

The Scottish Government announced £1 million for an emergency food action plan to help combat food poverty. This includes £500,000 for a new Emergency Food Aid Grant Fund.

We will, as a government, continue to help the most vulnerable where we can but it is only with the full powers of independence that we can build a fairer welfare system and properly tackle complex issues such as food poverty.

The Scottish Government keeps human trafficking legislation under regular review in dialogue with key stakeholders, in particular police and prosecutors. Trafficking is an international and cross border crime and a partnership approach is the most effective way to tackle it. In December 2013, the UK Government published a Draft Modern Slavery Bill and we are working with them to explore the potential for that Bill to cover Scottish interests. We have encouraged relevant Scottish organisations to consider and comment on the Bill. In addition, we have brought forward provisions for a human trafficking statutory aggravation, which are contained in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill currently being considered by the Scottish Parliament.

Only permanent positions part time (15-30 hours per week – 0.5 full time equivalent) or full time (30 hours or more per week) are eligible for regional selective assistance funding. The minimum conditions period for jobs created under aid for job creation rules are three years for small and medium-sized enterprises and five years for large businesses. These have to be certified by an independent accountant. Zero-hours contracts and/or seasonal contracts terminated before the qualifying period are not eligible for this assistance.