Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has made £36 million available through our Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) to community groups, rural businesses, and other eligible applicants looking to undertake renewable energy projects across Scotland.

As Scottish Government funding is allocated each financial year, this figure is based on funding made available from financial years 2016-17 to 2019-20.

On 29 August 2019, the Scottish Government announced a new Strategic Partnership between the Scottish Government, including Transport Scotland, Scottish Power Energy Networks and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, that is intended to ensure that Scotland has access to a world-leading electric vehicle charging network and the electricity network needed to support it. The £7.5 million project is currently in development and it is anticipated that the knowledge and evidence they generate will be of benefit to both Scotland’s urban and rural communities.

We have provided over £30m in grant funding to all 32 of Scotland’s Local Authorities since 2012 to help establish a comprehensive electric vehicle charging network of over 1,000 charge points. Funding is distributed to local authorities based on a methodology agreed with COSLA. That methodology takes into consideration the areas with greater demand for new charging infrastructure, areas where there was pressure on existing charging infrastructure or areas of strategic importance to ensure adequate geographical coverage of charging infrastructure.

70% of publicly available charge points on the ChargePlace Scotland network are out with Scotland’s large urban areas with 40% of the ChargePlace Scotland network serving small towns and rural areas.

The Scottish Government has spent:

• £150,490 in 2014-2015
• £484,474 in 2015-2016
• £471,864 in 2016-2017
• £1,281,302 in 2017-2018
• £3,762,056 in 2018-2019

These figures relate to central funding to support the development and implementation of Scotland’s cyber resilience strategy and associated action plans. Since 2017, resource for these purposes has come from both the Scottish Government and the UK National Cyber Security Programme, funding from which has been made available to devolved administrations.

These figures do not include total spending on cyber resilience by the Scottish Government, its agencies and the wider Scottish public sector as part of operational delivery of digital public services, as this information is not centrally held.

Scottish Government is continuing to prioritise its extensive programme of surveillance, monitoring, research, and rapid action to help reduce the spread and impact of Phytophthora ramorum on larch. Slowing down the spread is achieved through the felling of diseased larch trees and movement controls to reduce the spread of the disease.

The process followed when tackling Phytophthora ramorum on larch is the same within public and private woodland but depends on location:

• Within the designated “Management Zone” in the South-West of Scotland, where infection and death of larch is already widespread, land managers can request a permission to cover felling operations related to any larch which they wish to remove. In addition, the movement of all potentially infectious material outwith the Management Zone is controlled.
• In the rest of Scotland, once an infection has been confirmed, the land manager will be served with a Statutory Plant Health Notice, requiring the felling of the infected larch stands as well as all larch in a surrounding buffer area. All infected timber from outside the Management Zone must be sent to an approved facility for processing.

These processes are consistent with the Ramorum (on larch) Action Plan for Scotland, and have been agreed with the members of the Scottish Tree Health Advisory Group.

The amount awarded from the Climate Challenge Fund to organisations since the start of the financial year 2016-17 is as follows:

The period of five years specified in the question predates the commitment to deliver the Scottish Government’s £600 million Reaching 100% (R100) programme. Our £400 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme has continued to deploy over the period since R100 was first proposed.

The R100 programme itself, as I have previously advised colleagues across Parliament, is in the final stage of the public procurement process, with final tenders received being evaluated at this time and, as such, no funding has been issued to contractors at this stage.

The procurement has been split into three lots – North, Central and South – with the South lot being allocated a budget of up to £133 million to deliver for the people of the South of Scotland.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on how many town or city centres have free Wi-Fi connections available.

Scottish Government analysis in 2017 of towns and settlements with populations greater than 14,000 found that businesses in each of these do offer free public Wi-Fi to some degree (e.g. cafés, hotels, supermarkets, bars or shopping centres) in addition to where some local authorities fund free public Wi-Fi. Further provision of free public Wi-Fi is available from transport operators such as Scotrail in over 50 railway stations, on trains on all rail routes and from some bus companies on some routes. In addition to this, 100% of libraries in Scotland have free public Wi-Fi available.

All regulation and legislation in relation to all telecommunications, including access to broadband and mobile data services, are reserved to UK Ministers under the provision of the Scotland Act 1998.

100% of public libraries in Scotland offer free Wi-Fi. This is as a result of Scottish Government making £1m of investment between 2015 and 2018 through the Public Wireless Programme.

“Forging our Digital Future with 5G: A Strategy for Scotland” was published on 26 August 2019 and is available on the Scottish Government’s website at the following link: http://www.gov.scot/ISBN/9781839600371 .