Chamber and committees

Förde Reederei Seetouristik GmbH & Co. KG chose not to follow up their initial interest and bid for the tender of the Northern Isles Ferry Services contract, following their own internal commercial decision making process.

All financial information, including details of Serco NorthLink Ferries operator return was provided as part of the operators annual outcome statements to Audit Scotland ahead of the publication of their October 2017 report.  
https://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/report/transport-scotlands-ferry-services.  

All revenue, operational costs and subsidy payments are strictly controlled and monitored by Transport Scotland on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis.

All financial information, including details of Serco NorthLink Ferries operator return was provided as part of the operators annual outcome statements to Audit Scotland ahead of the publication of their October 2017 report.

The same approach applied to the operator of the Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Service.

The timeline for the tender and delivery of the new contract is currently on schedule. Subject to the conclusion of the on-going Judicial Review appeal and associated complaint lodged with the European Commission, we anticipate that the outcome of the tender procedure for the Northern Isles Ferry Services will be announced in August 2019.

The procurement process for the Northern Isles Ferry Services contract is progressing on schedule and within budget. Tenders received on 29 April from CalMac Ferries Ltd and Serco Ltd are currently being evaluated. Subject to the conclusion of the on-going Judicial Review appeal and associated complaint lodged with the European Commission, we anticipate that the outcome of the tender procedure for the Northern Isles Ferry Services will be announced in August 2019.

The total cost to Transport Scotland of undertaking the procurement process is estimated to be approximately £700,000.

The Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office (CSO) funds health and social care research in Scotland. Since 2014, CSO has directly issued the following grants (elements of which include research on long-term health conditions) that were not preceded by an open competition:

The University of Edinburgh for the Scottish Genomes Partnership – a pan-Scotland initiative involving a partnership of Scottish Universities and NHS co-funded by the Medical Research Council (£2 million) and CSO (£4 million) from March 2016 to end February 2020 for the development of genomic medicine research and collaboration with Genomics England on the 100,000 genomes programme.

The University of Glasgow for the Precision Medicine Ecosystem - a pan-Scotland initiative designed to accelerate the development of precision medicine. £4 million of funding was provided from January 2016 to March 2017 for core informatics development and for 2 exemplar projects in Pancreatic Cancer and Multiple Sclerosis.

The University of Aberdeen to provide core funding for the Health Economics Research Unit (£835k p.a.) and the Health Services Research Unit (£887k p.a.) to support research in these disciplines with an agreement to fund both until end March 2021.

The Universities of Stirling and Glasgow Caledonian to provide core funding for the Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit (£732k p.a.) to support research in these disciplines with an agreement to fund until end March 2021.

We are committed to tackling inequality and improving access to affordable, healthy and sustainable food for all. We are supporting communities to respond in a way that promotes dignity and helps to move away from emergency food aid as a primary response. And we continue our support for FareShare to redistribute high quality surplus food to community food providers.  

We want everyone in Scotland to eat well and have a healthy weight. It is not acceptable that significant inequalities exist between our most and least deprived communities and that people living in poverty have poorer health outcomes. Our ‘Diet and Healthy Weight Delivery Plan’ aims to significantly reduce diet-related health inequalities. Our actions on public health are complemented by wide-ranging action to address the root causes of poverty and inequality, including promoting the living wage, and by embedding a rights-based approach in the design and delivery of our new Scottish social security system.  

We also want to take decisive action to tackle the overall environment that makes it difficult to make the right food choices, which is likely to help improve diet and weight across all communities. Promotions can encourage people to buy things they don’t need, overlooking cheaper, healthier alternatives, or to buy more than they need in order to obtain a discount. We are currently considering the responses to our consultation on restricting the promotion and marketing of foods with little or no nutritional benefit.  

Ministers remain committed to the reality of Scotland as a Good Food Nation. The Programme of Measures published in September 2018 provided evidence of the wide range of work already underway to deliver this. Our ambitions include that people from every walk of life take pride and pleasure in, and benefit from, the food they produce, buy, serve, and eat, and that everyone in Scotland has ready access to the healthy, nutritious food they need.

The Freedom of Information (FoI) acts provide for access to information held by public authorities and Trade Unions and Staff Associations are not generally covered by these acts. The decision to add the Police Federation of England and Wales to FoI legislation was made by the Home Office and there are currently no plans to add the Scottish Police Federation to the Scottish FoI legislation. Data Protection legislation does apply to the Scottish Police Federation and a link is attached below to their Privacy Statement, which explains how they processes personal data: https://spf.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/SPF-Data-Protection-Privacy.pdf .

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-14631 on 6 March 2018. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The role of National Coordinator for Chronic Pain was a legacy post recruited to facilitate the territorial Health Boards’ Service Improvement Groups between 2014-2016. During 2018-19 the hours of this post reduced from 0.4 (whole time equivalent) to 0.2. The service level agreement for this post has not been renewed for 2019-20.

The National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain does not have any salaried employees. Scottish Government officials provide policy support as part of their duties.