Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise are working together through Scottish Development International to attract inward investment to Scotland. Over the last year 55 inward investment projects have been attracted to Scotland and 354 for 4 of the last 5 years. The 2016 Ernst and Young Attractiveness Survey on inward investment to the UK has shown that Scotland is the 2nd most attractive location for Foreign Direct Investment outside of London. With 79% of investors citing the Single Market as an important factor in their decision to locate in Scotland the UK Government's hard approach to Brexit puts this at risk.

Attracting inward investment is becoming increasing competitive on a global basis and it is important we prioritise and co-ordinate our efforts and resources to increase our success rate. To that end we look to match Scotland’s capabilities, assets and resources with the global market opportunity through our sectoral approach. In particular, we are increasing the co-coordinated efforts of our One Scotland approach in the technology and Financial and Business services sectors in California and London given its global hub position.

One of the key factors for an entrepreneur moving to a new country is the presence of a strong, supportive ‘ecosystem’ enabling them to easily access the help they need to grow and develop their business. Through Scotland CAN DO (www.cando.scot), the Scottish Government has been focussed on ensuring that just such a network is in place, with a range of support available from initial advice and signposting to mentoring and networking and a variety of funding options. This support spans public, private and third sector partners who are jointly committed to helping Scotland become the most entrepreneurial society in the world.

Skills Development Scotland, Scotland’s national skills body, provides online advice available to individuals and employers via the My World Of Work careers web service, the OurSkillsforce employer web service and apprenticeships.scot

My World of Work offers a unique mix of tools, features and job information and provides careers advice to users, including matching users skills, interests, education and experiences. It also shows how users can work towards their career of choice.

OurSkillsforce helps employers to find and access national and local support. It includes free advice, skills planning, HR support, funding and information to help businesses engage with education.

Furthermore, apprenticeships.scot is now established as the national website dedicated to supporting employers to recruit apprentices. The site allows employers to post apprenticeship vacancies, and provides wide ranging information on the different types of apprenticeships and their benefits.

SDS promote these online services through a number of ways including initiatives such as the MyWoW Ambassador Programme and MyWoW Live, a set of interactive activities designed to inspire young people’s interest in careers in STEM.

Domestic violence is completely unacceptable and the Scottish Government believes that a zero tolerance approach to it is the right approach for Scotland to take and is investing significant levels of funding as well as bringing forward new legislation to tackle it.

We are investing £24 million over 2015-17 from the Equalities portfolio to support a range of projects and initiatives – this continues to support a range of front line specialist services working with women and children who have experienced domestic abuse. In 2015, we announced an additional dedicated £20 million over 2015-18 from Justice budgets to be invested in a range of measures to tackle all forms of this type of violence.

We are implementing Equally Safe, Scotland’s strategy to tackle all forms of violence against women and girls. This aims to prevent violence from occurring in the first place, build the capability and capacity of mainstream and specialist services to support survivors and those at risk, and strengthen the Justice response to victims and perpetrators. Equally Safe delivery plans will come forward later this year.

We will introduce legislation in this Parliamentary year to create a specific offence of domestic abuse that will cover not just physical abuse but also other forms of psychological abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour that cannot easily be prosecuted using the existing criminal law. Creation of this new offence will bring clarity for victims so they can see explicitly that what their partner or ex-partner has done to them is wrong and can be dealt with under the law. Justice agencies are already showing strong leadership in this area; Police Scotland have established a National Domestic Abuse Taskforce to target the most prolific perpetrators, and the Crown Office have a dedicated National Prosecutor for Domestic Abuse.

The Scottish Government are investing £128 million in 2017-18 in Territorial Boards in supporting delivery of service reform. NHS Ayrshire & Arran will benefit from this investment, which clearly demonstrates our commitment to protecting frontline services and supporting reform. NHS Ayrshire & Arran’s budget allocation for 2017-18 includes an uplift of 1.5% - £10.0 million - which protects the underlying budget in real terms. In addition, NHS Ayrshire and Arran will receive a share of £50 million of additional parity funding, which will ensure that all NHS Boards, for the first time, are no further than 1% from their target share of funding. As with all NHS Boards, we will work with NHS Ayrshire & Arran to deliver savings to ensure public money is being used effectively and for the benefit of patients, and every penny of these savings will be directly re-invested in the front-line budget.

Latest cancelled operations figures for the month of 31 January 2017 shows that in NHS Ayrshire and Arran nearly 1,947 operations were carried out with only 9 operations cancelled due to capacity or non-clinical reason - a rate of 0.5% Most cancelled operations continue to be due to clinical reason or patient cancellations. The Scottish Government continues to work to support health boards to manage their capacity planning to keep cancelled operations to a minimum. Decisions to cancel a patient's operation is never taken lightly, any postponed operations will be rescheduled at the earliest opportunity. The Scottish Government has also already announced a £200 million investment to create six new elective treatment centres which will carry out procedures like hip, knee and cataracts operations. These centres will allow people to be treated more quickly for planned surgery to help the NHS meet increasing demand from a growing elderly population and reduce the number of operations cancelled.

The Scottish Government specified that the new franchise (from April 2015) operate a delay/repay scheme to compensate passengers appropriately when there are significant delays or cancellations.

In the financial year to date, the total amount of delay-repay recompense paid out has already been reported as being £587,527 (for periods 1-9 of the 2016-17 financial year).

The last few months have seen a consistent improvement in performance, from 89.5 percent for the year ended mid-October (end-period 7), to 90.1 percent for the year ended the start of February (end-period 11).

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-06120 on 24 January 2017. 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 provisions in this area have not yet been fully implemented. The Scottish Government will consider evaluation requirements in due course.

The growth of the internet has transformed the way we do business, socialise and provide key services. It also offers significant opportunities for those with criminal intent. With 80% of cybercrime preventable by getting the basics right however, it is essential that we all take steps as individuals and businesses to ensure that we take appropriate steps to minimise the risk and safeguard online information and processes. This can be achieved through patching, good password and access control management and regular system backups.

The Scottish Government published 'Safe, Secure and Prosperous: A Cyber Resilience Strategy for Scotland' in November 2015 which sets out 4 priority themes, 2 of which are: awareness raising; and education, skills and professional development. The strategy is being taken forward with key partners through the establishment of a National Cyber Resilience Leaders Board. Some of the work already taken forward includes the development of a toolkit to help businesses get the basics of cyber resilience right and awareness raising workshops across Scotland. A Digital Scotland voucher scheme supports businesses to improve their knowledge, understanding and strategy towards handling cyber security and protecting valuable information. Awards of up to £1500 are available to businesses in Scotland to help them check their current systems meet Cyber Essentials UK Government Standard.

It is not possible to accurately quantify possible losses for a number of reasons such as non-reporting of incidents but available data suggests that 50% of the worst breaches were caused by inadvertent human error and that cybercrime costs UK businesses £34bn per year.

As set out in our draft Energy Strategy innovation is key to underpinning a stable, managed energy transition in ways that are capable of reaching all communities and to drive the local energy system. Local authorities are best placed to understand what innovation would suit their area and what is required to meet their low carbon commitments.

A number of urban renewable energy initiatives, including intelligent street lighting, have been explored through a feasibility study by the Scottish Cities Alliance, the findings from this will be available to Local Authorities once the study has finalised.

We are encouraged that there are Scottish companies Scottish companies competing in this area and advise that if they have not done so they seek assistance from our enterprise agencies; Scottish Enterprise, or Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

The Scottish Government does not accept the claims made by the President of the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The key risk to Scotland’s economy and the public finances stems from a hard Brexit which could reduce Scotland’s GDP by £8 billion per year and cost the country 80,000 jobs after
10 years, compared to remaining in the EU.