Chamber and committees

To date, £12,351,185 of capital investment has been awarded via the Scottish Government’s Islands Programme across 61 projects and 50 islands.

2021-22

The 2021-2022 Islands Programme was delivered through the Islands Infrastructure Fund and was allocated £5 million. The final amount awarded to capital projects was £3,901,192.

2022-23

The 2022-2023 Islands Programme was allocated £4.45 million. The allocation was awarded in full.

2023-24

The 2023-2024 Islands Programme was allocated £4 million. The final amount awarded to capital projects was £3,999,993.

Establishing hydrogen transport infrastructure is critical to achieving the ambitions set out in our Hydrogen Action Plan. The Scottish Government is working with key European partners to assess options and opportunities for the development of transport infrastructure to enable the export of hydrogen from Scotland.

Scottish Government is engaging with National Grid on the Project Union initiative exploring the phased repurposing of the UK’s natural gas National Transmission System (NTS) to create a UK hydrogen backbone carrying 100% hydrogen. Decisions on the future of the Gas Grid are a reserved matter and are expected to be made in 2026 by the UK Government. We continue to routinely engage with UK Government on a range of hydrogen policy matters including Transport and Storage Hydrogen Business Models.

We are also working with industry and the development agencies on the development of a Hydrogen Sector Export Plan (HSEP) that will set out the steps needed to realise Scotland's export potential – including in relation to the development of critical infrastructure to support the transport of hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives. This is expected to be published this year.

Alongside electrification, hydrogen will be a key part of the net zero journey, particularly in transitioning many hard-to-abate sectors such as industry. The Scottish Government is developing a place-based, industry specific Just Transition Plan for the Grangemouth industrial cluster, as we committed to doing in our 2023 Programme for Government. The Plan will outline the strategic long-term future of the industrial cluster and a range of possibilities for operations at Grangemouth in 2045, including low-carbon hydrogen manufacture, carbon capture and storage, as well as wider Just Transition outcomes for the workforce, community and surrounding environment.

Beyond this, we have produced a detailed report on the distillery sector which can be found here .

We are engaging closely with the Cromarty Hydrogen Project (Storegga) 10.6MW and Scottish Power Whitelees Project 7.1MW both of whom are targeting industrial heat as an offtake for their renewable hydrogen and were successful in their applications for support from the UK Government via the first allocation round of the hydrogen production business model.

In addition, the Scottish Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (SIETF) has match-funded support grants for feasibility and engineering studies which can allow industrial manufacturers to investigate how they could use hydrogen to decarbonise their operations.

We are building the evidence base to help support hydrogen off-take across multiple sectors in Scotland, examining both hydrogen production and demand across Scotland’s geography through a number of key reports, such as ‘Hydrogen demand in Scotland: a mapping of industrial and transport applications’ which can be found here and a detailed report focussing specifically on the distillery sector which can be found here .

The Scottish Government and our Enterprise Agencies support hydrogen developers and businesses across Scotland to grow a pipeline of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen production projects in Scotland and secure the accompanying supply chain opportunities. Over fifty hydrogen production projects are at varying stages of development amounting collectively to more than the 5 GW’s of hydrogen production capacity we hope to have operational by 2030.

We are engaging closely with the Cromarty Hydrogen Project (Storegga) 10.6MW and Scottish Power Whitelees Project 7.1MW both of whom are targeting industrial heat as an offtake for their hydrogen and were successful in their applications for hydrogen business model support from UKG in the first round allocation (HAR1). We provided letters of support for a further 10 projects in Scotland that applied for the UKG’S HAR 2 round.

Alongside Scottish Enterprise, we are developing a Scottish Hydrogen Innovation Network (SHINE). SHINE will provide an entry point for Scottish and European companies to access Scottish research and development centres in academic and commercial settings. The resulting innovations will increase the competitiveness of hydrogen technologies and enable collaborative partnerships.

The formal project launch of SHINE will take place at All-Energy on 16 May 2024 with the SHINE website to be launched preceding All-Energy.

A cyber threat actor was able to gain unauthorised access to NHS Dumfries and Galloway's infrastructure during a targeted and sustained cyber-attack. As the member will understand,NHS Dumfries and Galloway's IT infrastructure contains information that includes patient's medical information.

The latest update to Ofcom’s Connected Nations report shows that full fibre coverage across Scotland now currently stands at 58%, which represents an increase of 5 percentage points – around 138,000 premises – over the previous three months. This means that over 1.57 million homes and businesses in Scotland can now access a full fibre broadband service.

While most of this full fibre deployment has been delivered commercially, the over-£600 million that the Scottish Government is investing in the Reaching 100% (R100) programme is ensuring that homes and businesses in some of Scotland’s harder-to-reach communities are also benefitting from future-proofed full fibre digital connectivity.

Where it is not possible for an operator to reach agreement with landlords, they can seek to have one imposed by the courts. The UK Government has recently reformed the Electronic Communications Code to make this process easier and we are working with operators to understand any issues, so that we can press the UK Government if further reform is needed.

While the Scottish Government is funding build through the R100 contracts, it is doing so through a gap funding model, whereby it is subsidising our delivery partner, Openreach, to extend its own commercial network across Scotland. As you will know, all regulation and legislative competence in the area of telecommunications is wholly reserved to UK Ministers and the UK Parliament under the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998. As such, the Scottish Government has no mechanism for intervening on any commercial decisions a telecoms operator chooses to make, such as how much they charge for installation, services etc. Responsibility for commercial matters of this nature ultimately rests solely with Ofcom in its capacity as the UK’s telecoms regulator.

Firstly, I would reiterate that violence against women is a fundamental violation of human rights and is totally unacceptable.

It is also important to highlight that the Lanarkshire division within Police Scotland play an important local role in preventing domestic abuse and safeguarding women and girls. This is reflected within the Local Policing Plan which has a particular focus on Gender Based Abuse.

I would also advise that the Lanarkshire Division are currently collaborating on a pilot project with partners from Women’s Aid and Lanarkshire Rape Crisis to establish a crisis centre supporting women and children fleeing domestic abuse. I would hope we might be able to say more about that at an appropriate point.

Finally, I would add that over £1.4m of the Scottish Government’s Delivering Equally Safe Fund has been allocated in grant funding this financial year in Lanarkshire. This includes funding to a range of organisations such as Motherwell & District Women’s Aid and Liber8 who support women affected by gender-based violence.

The information requested is not held centrally. The Scottish Government does publish annual Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics, which include domestic and international aviation, but it is not possible to break these down by scheduled or non-scheduled flight, or by the type of engine powering each aircraft. Therefore, it is not possible to determine emissions from private jets.