Chamber and committees

Number of applications received and approved in financial year 2017-18 by local authority region:

Clubroot is an established disease in Scotland which can be a major issue in oilseed rape on Scottish arable farms. The Farm Advisory Service (FAS), funded with help from the Scottish Government, raises awareness of diseases that could impact Scotland’s crops and FAS recently published up to date advice on clubroot management.

In addition, The Scottish Government funds research on the early detection and management of the pathogen responsible for clubroot in oilseed rape, as part of the wider crop protection work carried out in the 2016-2021 Strategic Research Programme.

The Scottish Rural Development Programme 2014-20 originally assumed the need for £20 million of dedicated support for Young Farmers and New Entrants. This included an indicative budget of £6 million for the Young Farmer Start-up Grant Scheme and £2 million for the New Entrants Start-up Grant Scheme. The balance of £12 million was originally allocated to the New Entrants Capital Grant Scheme.

In 2017, I increased the overall budget to £22 million and varied the scheme split to reflect demand for the Young Farmers Start-up Grant Scheme; combining the indicative start-up budget at £14 million and allocated £8 million for capital grants. The current position is that a total of 15,225,000* has been committed to start-up applications, including 14,490,000 to Young Farmers and the budget is now fully allocated.

Similarly, the New Entrants Capital Grant Scheme is fully committed and will close to new applications on 31 August 2018.

*While the Young Farmer grant is 70,000 and the New Entrant Start-up is 15,000, it is paid in GBP sterling at the appropriate exchange rate.

There are a number of factors which have contributed to long waits for ophthalmology treatment. This includes the changing demographic with people living longer with more complex ophthalmology conditions as well as new treatments for conditions which previously could not be treated. These conditions which we now have treatment for are often sight threatening conditions which require lifelong review and consequently additional appointments.

Surgeons across Scotland are not currently meeting the professional guidance in relation to the number of cataracts procedures which should be undertaken in a standard theatre session which is a minimum of one cataract operation every 30 minutes - this includes turn over time. The ophthalmology workstream is supporting Boards across Scotland to reduce turn-around times for cataract surgery enabling increased efficiency and productivity across cataract theatre lists.

Work is underway to mitigate any risk to patients including those with long-term eye conditions, as well as enhancing existing services for the benefit of all ophthalmology patients. This includes training non-medical staff to free up time for consultants to see the patients they need to see including the upskilling of nurses to undertake intra-vitreal injections for sight threatening conditions such as wet age-related macular degeneration as well as hospital optometrists undertaking clinics for patients with chronic conditions.

Delivery of the police non-emergency 101 service is an operational matter for Police Scotland.

The national LEADER budget allocation totals £77.4m, as previously informed.

Of this, projects need to predict when the spend will be incurred, so the table below has the allocation per Local Action Group and Forecast which is the amount committed. It is normal in a Programme such as LEADER, for uptake at the start of the Programme to be slow, with local groups animating for projects, at that time. It is not until later in the Programme, that commitments are realised in to spend.

Whilst recognising that railway infrastructure works can give rise to a degree of unavoidable noise and disturbance to residents in the vicinity, the blockade works between Aberdeen and Dyce are short-term, and are on programme to complete by 20 August 2018. Network Rail has taken steps to encourage its appointed contractor for the project (Bam Nuttall Ltd) to use all reasonable diligence to control the noise emanating from the works and to take all reasonable steps to reduce the levels of noise and disturbance where it can.

The responsibility for dealing with noise nuisance complaints, including construction noise, rests with the local authority, which has a duty to investigate complaints. There is however, no statutorily defined limit for the volume of noise which constitutes a statutory nuisance. Each complaint would be for investigation by an environmental health officer. Accordingly, as there are established mechanisms to seek recourse, the Scottish Government has no plans to compensate lineside neighbours affected by the short-term works between Aberdeen and Dyce being delivered as part of the Aberdeen to Inverness Rail Improvement project.

The national LEADER budget allocation totals £77.4m (Background note contains the latest detail). There is a newly revised joint target of 20% or £15.48m towards Farm Diversification and Enterprise, merged in recognition that some expanding Farm Diversification projects are classed as Enterprise. Other Farm Diversification projects may be marked as Cooperation or Community projects on the IT system, as those classifications may be a better fit and taking these in to account will further boost the figures. For instance the Rural Youth project this week (w/c 30 July), taking place on a central Scotland farm, is classed as Community, with a project value of around £70k, predominantly benefitting the young from farms. Only the LAG areas will be able to identify Farm Diversification projects, other than true Farm Diversification and that would be a time consuming task, as there are 550 projects at or past the approval stage.

As at 26 July 2018 applicants had committed £3.673m against 50 projects which selected the project type of “farm diversification”, together with £8.4m on Enterprise, to achieve 15.61% of the joint 20% target. Some 90% of approved Farm Diversification projects are still being delivered hence the limited spend.

The number of enrolments studying medicine in 2016-17 at Scottish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the percentage share by region of domicile can be found in the following table:

Enrolments on Medicine Courses at Scottish HEIs by Region of Domicile, 2016-17

The Scottish Government has strong concerns for the proposed EU-Mercosur free trade agreement and the proposal for an increased Tariff Rate Quota for beef. The Scottish Government believes that exposing the market to large quantities of South American beef could have a damaging effect on our highly acclaimed beef production in Scotland, not only impacting on our home trade but also potentially on our current export market.

I have written twice to the UK Government on this issue expressing my concerns and stating that in the absence of any clear analysis of the impacts of an increased quota or explanation of the benefits of a deal with Mercosur, I cannot support an increased quota.