Chamber and committees

A total of £70,443,984 has been allocated through the Freight Facilities Grant (FFG) since its introduction in 1997. Of this the spend on rail projects was £44,708,510, or 63% of the FFG budget. The spend on water projects was £25,735,474 which equates to 37% of the budget.

Traffic monitoring is undertaken after a facility funded under the grant scheme becomes operational.

Transport Scotland requires applicants to provide a return of traffic passing through the grant-aided facility. Transport Scotland will require verified tonnages reports from the applicant, in cases where the applicant is required to provide evidence to corroborate the traffic the documentation required will be agreed prior to the award of grant.

Monitoring will cover an agreed period of time to allow the required environmental benefits from the grant to be accrued by the applicant.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-34203 on 27 February 2025. 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

As Scottish Government functions have increased and matured, the volume and complexity of outsourced work has also evolved. This work is procured and we are now utilising the third iteration of a framework providing Legal Services to the Scottish Government and the wider public sector. The figures provided in the table set out how much the Scottish Government has spent through those frameworks and the breakdown of costs to each legal firm. We do not centrally gather information on the department spend as there is no business requirement to do. We have interpreted the question as legal costs incurred for outsourced legal work.

The Scottish Government has spent the following amount in relation to judicial reviews. We are unable to provide a breakdown by case name due to GDPR considerations. Some case names will be in the public domain because the judgments have been published with the full name. However, some cases have been name anonymised and others will not be in the public domain due to being disposed of without a judgment.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6W-35156 on 27 February 2025. 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

Further to my answer on 31 January which laid out in detail the First Minister’s plans for NHS Scotland renewal, I can confirm this will be further expanded with the publication of our operational improvement plan in March.

This plan will build on the work that has been conducted with Health Boards over the past year to improve hospital flow and reduce delays. It will set out whole system improvement action to ensure people receive the right care in the place, recognising that acute hospitals are not always the best place for patients or their families.

As part of this plan Hospital at Home will be expanded to at least 2,000 beds, by December or sooner, and will expand and coverage of treatment people can expect to receive at home and will reduce the number of people needing to be admitted to hospital.

By summer 2025 there will be direct access to a front door frailty service in every hospital with a core emergency department, to ensure people living with frailty get access to the right, specialist care for their healthcare need which will reduce the chance of a prolonged hospital stay and lower the chances of a care home admission.

A vast amount of work has already been undertaken in 2024 to date through the Collaborative Response and Assurance Group, including work with Health and Social Care Partnerships with high levels of delay to understand the challenges they are facing and support them to deliver the changes, a national media campaign highlighting the positives of Home First, and promotion and maximising of good practice such as the Discharge without Delay programme.

I am confident that with all the new measures we have laid out we will continue to see an improving picture on the level of delays across the country and that people will have access to high quality care, in the setting that is right for them.

Good progress is being made towards the current target to restore 250,000 hectares of degraded peatlands by 2030, with - 75,000 hectares restored to date.

Recent years have seen strong increases including, in 2023-24, over 10,000 hectares restored in a single year for the first time. We will again restore over 10,000 ha in 2024-25.

Through the Scottish Budget 2025-26 we will invest £35.5 million towards peatland restoration. With this funding the ambition of the Peatland ACTION partnership is to restore at least 14,000 hectares next year.

The funding will also enable the Peatland ACTION partnership to invest in designing a large number of new projects for future years. This will ensure the sustainability of the sector, allowing us to be more responsive to funding and continue to accelerate the programme’s success towards our 2030 target.

To date, no applicant has applied for a grant under the Freight Facilities Grant with the specific purpose of supporting the transition to greener technologies such as alternative fuels.

Freight Facilities Grant (FFG) was introduced in recognition that taking freight off roads and moving it by rail or water can have environmental and wider social benefits but can be more expensive.