Chamber and committees

The expansion of Hospital at Home is already supporting Boards maximise capacity to meet demand and helping more people receive care at home or as close to home as possible, where clinically appropriate – which is relieving pressure on the front door of our A&Es. Early feedback from NHS Boards indicates good progress is being made in terms of increasing Hospital at Home capacity in key areas.

The Scottish Government has allocated (a) £42m in 2019-20, (b) £42m in 2020-21 (c) £52m in 2021-22 (d) £63m in 2022-23 (e) £61m in 2023-24 and (f) £88.5m in 2024-25 to local authorities through the general capital grant to invest in flood protection and resilience measures.

Guidance on this issue is contained within the Supporting Transgender Pupils In Schools Guidance. This is available from Supporting transgender young people in schools: guidance for Scottish schools - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Scottish Government has ambitious plans to make it easier for people to walk, wheel and cycle for everyday journeys, with record levels of investment over this Parliament and significantly ahead of anywhere else in the UK. Our biggest focus is on delivering physical infrastructure on the ground. But we also have important programmes to support people to change behaviours and choose active travel, and to access a range of bikes, including adapted bikes. At present, and over the course of next year, to make sure that people in Scotland get maximum benefit from that investment, Transport Scotland is transforming the delivery models for active travel interventions across the infrastructure, behaviour change and access to bikes programmes. This will see the end of some long-standing programmes, funded on a year by year basis, and a shift towards funding and control moving to local authorities, as the strategic transport authorities for their area, and regional transport partnerships.

Part of the Active Travel transformation process has involved the Smarter Choices Smarter Places programme closing, but behaviour change projects remain a high priority in our Active Travel programme. We are developing a new system of funding for 2024-25, and Local Authorities, Regional Transport Partnerships, and the third sector Active Travel Delivery Partners are all involved in the design of that solution and we continue to see a vital role for our delivery partners in turning our record investment into the transformative change we all want to see.

The figures quoted in these questions are both correct. The first figure of sites sampled from 2013-14 to 2019-20 is from a published assessment, and the second figure is from the number of sites visited within the raw data that has been published to date (2013-14 to 2021-22).

The Scottish Government microplastics monitoring programme began in the winter of 2013, and has undertaken annual surveys since that time. The sample sites are distributed throughout the 11 Scottish Marine Regions and the Offshore Marine Regions. Not all Regions were sampled in every year and the number of sampling sites visited also varied between years.

In reference to question S6W-23231, the microplastics in surface water assessment in Scotland’s Marine Assessment 2020 used data from 2013-14 to 2019-20. For this assessment data from 398 sample sites were included. This assessment can be viewed at https://marine.gov.scot/sma/assessment/microplastics-surface-water

The raw data from the monitoring programme is publicly available but not all of this data is yet included in published assessments. In reference to question S6W-23887, the number of sites sampled up to and including 2021-22 is 479. The dataset can be viewed at https://data.marine.gov.scot/dataset/dataset-sources-sinks-and-hazards-micro-plastics-scotland%E2%80%99s-seas-2013-present/resource#{query:{from:400},view-grid:{columnsWidth:[{column:!season,width:157},{column:!date_deploy,width:149}]}}

Data for 2022-23, and the current sampling year of 2023-24 have not yet been published. Once raw data has been collected it needs to undergo quality control and processing before it can be used and published. The 2022-23 data is currently undergoing this process. The 2023-24 data collection season has not yet concluded, and the processing will commence when the data for the whole year is complete.

Writing the national Good Food Nation Plan required an extensive internal drafting process, co-ordinating input from across multiple areas of government. This is the first iteration of the Plan and so there was a large amount of feedback on the initial draft, which we had to carefully consider and incorporate.

It is our intention to publish the draft national Good Food Nation Plan for consultation shortly.

This has been the most challenging budget for Scotland since devolution. The UK Government’s Autumn Statement was very disappointing and cut the Scottish Government’s capital allocation by over 10%. This means the Scottish Government faces tough choices on where to allocate the budget available. Previously, budget allocations for Agricultural Transformation Fund (ATF) were allocated to the Sustainable Agriculture Capital Grant Scheme (SACGS) 2022, to support the purchase of low emission slurry spreading equipment and slurry store covers and to the Agri-environment Climate Scheme (AECS) in 2023 to support the extension nationally of the slurry storage option. In the financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24, the demand for support through the Sustainable Agriculture Grant Scheme (SACGS) was around £3m and £2m respectively, which was lower than anticipated and, subsequently, the budget for both years was under-committed. Given this position, it is anticipated that the proposed budget of £3m for financial year 2024-25 should be sufficient to cover demand for slurry storage options, accordingly, there should be no impact on farmers and crofters who wish to apply for installing or upgrading slurry storage facilities.

Arrangements for the 2024 round of the Agri-environment Climate Scheme (AECS) are being finalised following the UK Government’s very disappointing Autumn Statement. An announcement on this matter will be made shortly when AECS 2024 opens for applications.

We have been supporting the Scottish Prison Service and other partners in delivering an improvement in the GEOAmey contract that has resulted in early positive signs, with a slowdown in staff attrition and improved staff numbers.

The Criminal Justice Board has been engaged with issues relating to the contract and, as Teresa Medhurst, the Scottish Prison Service Chief Executive, stated at the Criminal Justice Committee in November 2023, all options remain under consideration in relation to prisoner escort arrangements in Scotland.

The Scottish Prison Service will continue to monitor the performance of the contract carefully to ensure target thresholds are met, so we can have a level of service which meets the needs of our justice system.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-24135 on 16 January 2024. 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 .