Chamber and committees

The Case for Investment for Clyde Metro is being led by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), supported by Glasgow City Council, with Transport Scotland providing a project assurance and support role.

This key stage of the development process, which will include consideration of access improvement to Glasgow Airport, will inform decisions around network selection, phasing and implementation. This work is already underway and progressing in earnest with completion currently anticipated by early 2027.

Further details on the progress of the Case for Investment stages can be obtained by contacting SPT directly at [email protected].

Ofqual regulates qualifications, examinations and assessments in England. Its findings relate to the SQA Level 1 Health and Safety in a Construction Environment qualification delivered in England which was withdrawn by SQA in April 2019.

SQA made the Scottish Government aware of the issue through its regular governance channels when it first arose in 2019 and have regularly updated the Scottish Government on developments throughout the process.

SQA formally notified the Scottish Government of the final and published version of the Undertaking given by the SQA to Ofqual on 11 October 2024.

Ofqual regulates qualifications, examinations and assessments in England. Its findings relate to the SQA Level 1 Health and Safety in a Construction Environment qualification delivered in England which was withdrawn by SQA in April 2019.

SQA is an executive Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), established under the Education (Scotland) Act 1996. As a NDPB, SQA is responsible for making its own operational decisions. I have asked the SQA to write to Mr Rennie setting out the measures taken and communications with stakeholders related to the undertaking.

The 2024-25 Scottish Budget delivers a competitive non-domestic rates regime including the lowest poundage in the UK for the sixth year in a row, and a package of reliefs worth an estimated £685 million. As at 1 June 2024, over 20,000 properties in the Clackmannanshire, Fife, Perth and Kinross, and Stirling council areas benefited from one or more non-domestic rates reliefs, worth almost £84 million.

The Scottish Government is committed to working in partnership with business and industry to deliver a just transition for Scotland’s valued oil and gas sector, which recognises the declining nature of the North Sea basin and is in line with our climate change commitments.

NHS Grampian was allocated funding to support additional orthopaedic activity at Woodend Hospital as part of our £30 million investment in planned care.

Activity levels will increase over the coming months and the Scottish Government will work closely with the Board to support delivery.

The capital funding position remains challenging and infrastructure projects remain under review. The Scottish Government is assessing the full implications of the UK Autumn Budget and also await the outcome of the UK Government’s Spending Review in 2025. Full consideration will be given as to which projects are affordable and deliverable and can be included within our revised infrastructure investment plan pipeline.

We are working with all health boards to develop a whole-system NHS infrastructure plan which will reflect needs across Scotland and support continued safe operation of existing facilities, as well as determination of longer term investment priorities.

Across Scotland, safety cameras are deployed through the Scottish Safety Camera Programme primarily where they have the greatest potential to reduce injury collisions and where there is evidence of both collisions and speeding. This is in accordance with criteria contained in the Scottish Safety Camera Programme Handbook. This can be viewed at: https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/scottish-safety-camera-programme-handbook/.

An annual site prioritisation process is undertaken each year to determine new safety camera sites across our road network and to maximise the casualty reduction potential of the Programme. This national exercise acts to ensure the right camera technology is in the right place at the right time. It involves a range of partners including the three regional safety camera units, all thirty-three road authorities and Police Scotland, and acts to identify potential new camera sites which meet the minimum criteria, while at the same time assessing the performance of existing enforcement strategies.

In 2019, the site at Cumbernauld Road, Riddrie was assessed to have good speed compliance and no evidence of injury collisions with speed as a causation. A decision was taken to make this site dormant through the process set out within the Handbook. This process allows for a thorough assessment of improvements in driver behaviour over a 3 year period. In 2022, a further assessment confirmed that there had been a sustained improvement in driver behaviours during the three year dormancy period and the decision was taken to remove the site from prioritised enforcement.

As part of the annual site selection process, if this location was identified again as meeting minimum site selection criteria to redeploy, this site would be considered for reinstatement.

The Scottish Government is committed to evidence-based policy making. National Mission activity undertaken to date has been based on the evidence available and informed by people with lived and living experience, as well as the National Mission’s Clinical Advisory Group and National Mission Oversight Group.

For example, our approach to setting up the UK’s first Safer Drug Consumption Facility has been based on evidence from 300 existing safer drug consumption facilities already in operation around the world.

To ensure that our future strategic plans are evidence-based, they will be informed by the National Mission evaluation due to be published in 2026.

We will ensure that any new approaches to reducing deaths and harms is accompanied with evaluation as a matter of course, such as the Safer Drug Consumption Facility (The Thistle Service), which is due to open in the near future.

A full evaluation of the Thistle Service will be carried out, details of the evaluation package will be made available shortly but it will use a range of data to examine the impact of the facility on health, social, community, environmental, and economic outcomes.

Tackling alcohol related harm remains a priority for Scottish Government, and we are treating our policies to reduce alcohol and drug deaths as twin public health issues in Scotland.

We are working to ensure that people who experience harms as a result of alcohol use receive the same quality of care and support as people who experience harms as a result of drug use. We work closely with Alcohol and Drugs Partnerships and regularly monitor services through the annual ADP survey. The most recent one, reflecting activity for 2023-24, was published on 12 November 2024 and notes the following on data surveillance.

Almost all ADP areas reported having specific groups or structures in place at ADP level to inform surveillance and monitoring of drug harms or deaths. All but two (93%) of ADPs reported having a drug death review group and 77% reported having a drug trend monitoring group or early warning system.

Fewer ADPs reported groups relating to alcohol, with a quarter (27%) reporting having an alcohol death review group and 30% reporting having an alcohol harms group.

A third of ADPs reported having other structures in place for informing surveillance, which included multi-agency groups working on drug death prevention and action plan groups, wider public health monitoring which included drug and alcohol harms and sudden death groups whose remits include both drug death reviews and suicides reviews. Several ADPs indicated that alcohol harm and death review groups are currently in development.

It is our expectation that future Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) funding letters will ask ADPs to undertake local alcohol death review. This message will also be reinforced in our National Specification for treatment of drug and alcohol misuse in Scotland, which is currently in development and will build on the recommendations of the forthcoming UK Clinical Guidelines for Alcohol Treatment.