Chamber and committees

ScotRail is to undertake the procurement. The timescales for replacement and the exact type of train to replace the HST Fleet are dependent on the outcomes of the procurement.

The Scottish Government’s recently concluded £28.75 million Scottish 4G Infill investment programme and the UK Government’s ongoing Shared Rural Network programme have, and are continuing, to deliver widespread improvements to mobile connectivity across the whole of Scotland.

The Scottish Government continues to engage with BT Openreach and the mobile network operators to improve phone connectivity across the country, which includes access on train routes in the Highlands and Islands region. However, policy relating to telecommunications, including mobile communications, is reserved to the UK Government.

ScotRail will introduce a range of new discounted fares, including a 20% reduction in weekly, monthly and annual season ticket prices, 12 flexi tickets for the price of 10 and super off peak fares following the end of the year long extended trial removing peak fares for passengers from October 2023 to October 2024.

The Scottish Government funds the Scottish Book Trust (SBT) to deliver the SBT Reading Schools programme and therefore SBT is responsible for setting the criteria for core, silver and gold accreditation.

Reading Schools encourages a whole-school approach to establishing a healthy reading culture in schools across Scotland. The Reading Schools Accreditation framework details the key areas considered crucial to building and sustaining a whole-school reading culture and are mapped against How Good Is Our School? 4. In order to be accredited, a school must provide evidence of how they have achieved the standard described under each of the key areas. Schools retain their accreditation for three years, before being required to evidence further developments to sustain reading culture.

The SBT Reading Schools Framework can be accessed online here: https://www.readingschools.scot/framework

ScotRail matches its resources to best meet passenger needs during expected grow in demand, for example when special events are happening.

ScotRail advises that it added extra carriages for travelers attending the Largs Viking Festival at the weekend of 31st August and 1st September 2024 and maintained an hourly service to Largs on 7th September. Extra carriages were added to services ran on Sunday the 8th September to provide better capacity.

As with any litigation, the details of any settlement are confidential to the parties involved in that litigation. The Scottish Ministers however can confirm that the total costs incurred by the Scottish Ministers in relation to the cases of McMaster & Others v the Scottish Ministers and MacKay & Another v the Scottish Ministers is £1,033,302.75.

As part of the 2023-24 COVID-19 and flu winter vaccination programme NHS Scotland delivered over 3.57 million winter vaccines, including 1,387,766 COVID-19 vaccines, 1,647,596 adult flu vaccines and 538,580 child flu vaccines. Uptake dropped across almost all groups, but remained strong in the highest risk groups, with over 85% of care home residents and almost 85% of those aged over 75 vaccinated for both vaccines, the groups mostly likely to be admitted to hospital with these illnesses. We continued to surpass the World Health Organisation’s flu target of 75% uptake for those aged 65 and over, achieving 79.8%.

The primary aim of the vaccination programme remains the prevention of severe illness and the vaccine offer is to those most likely to directly benefit from vaccination, particularly those with underlying health conditions that increase their risk of hospitalisation. The data from last winter’s programme shows that uptake remained strong within these eligible groups and meets the primary aim of the winter programme.

There were however certain groups where uptake was far lower than expected, for both COVID-19 and flu, notably pregnant women, frontline health and social care workers and those at clinical risk, although uptake in those with a weakened immune system was better than for more general at risk conditions.

The emergence of the new, and theoretically more dangerous variant BA.2.86 in late summer 2023 resulted in us deciding to pull forward the programme to protect those at higher risk. We appointed those at higher risk into all and any spare appointments at the start and middle of the programme, meaning that those at lower risk, who had been prompted to book, found it hard to find spare appointments until November and December. It is difficult to quantify, but we believe that some individuals may have not come forward due to this difficulty.

The Scottish Vaccination and Immunisation Programme (SVIP) has already undertaken various pieces of work to understand why overall uptake has decreased and we have incorporated that learning into our planning for this winter campaign. Communicating why annual revaccination (or bi-annual in the case of COVID for higher risk groups) remains necessary and important is key, as is reiterating the value of these vaccines, and the real health risk to some people in contracting these viruses over the winter period.

We will continue to work closely with Public Health Scotland and the NHS Boards to ensure the successful delivery of Scotland’s vaccination programmes.

Scottish Ministers honoured the commitment to treat sympathetically the compensation claims of the tenant farmers in the court actions of McMaster & Others v Scottish Ministers and Mackay & Another v the Scottish Ministers. Settlement terms are confidential to the parties involved in a litigation and should not be disclosed.

The Mixed Tenure Improvement Service is delivered by the City of Edinburgh Council using powers as set out in the Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004. Any concerns with the scheme would need to be raised with the Council.

Tackling the climate emergency is one of this Government’s key priorities and we are committed to ensuring that those who may be impacted by the transition to net zero are involved in designing how we manage it.

Our Public Engagement Strategy for Climate Change, published in September 2021, recognises our commitment to a participatory approach where people can actively shape just, fair and inclusive policies that promote mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change.

Heating our homes and workplaces causes around 20% of our carbon emissions, so we cannot achieve net zero without improving energy efficiency and ending our use of gas boilers. We recently consulted on proposals for a Heat in Buildings Bill, receiving over 1600 responses. We will ensure that our proposals are affordable for homes and businesses, and take account of responses to the consultation.

Scottish Government are continuing to work with our partners COSLA and Scottish Refugee Council on the implementation of the actions set out in the Delivery Plan. There are no plans to cancel other actions.