Chamber and committees

I met with the Payment System Regulator in December 2018 and intend to meet with Which? in the near future, to discuss their continuing campaign to protect free ATM access, among other issues, and will encourage them to continue their efforts to safeguard essential banking services currently available to all members of society.

I welcome the measures being introduced by LINK in April this year, which will go some way to ensuring that remote, vulnerable and less well-off parts of the country maintain access to essential ATM services, especially while communities across Scotland are facing the threat of further bank branch closures. I would urge Link and the PSR to monitor the impact of these changes as they are introduced and to take further action if required to protect the network.

Access to cash and the ability to deposit cash remains a key issue, particularly for small businesses and rural communities. It is clear that there will be a continuing, long-term need for access to cash banking services in Scotland.

Since this subject was debated in September 2018, I have written to both LINK and the Payment System Regulator, seeking their assurances that no ATM in a vulnerable community closes until a new operator is found and that communities are not left without free access to cash.

The number of Japanese domiciled enrolments at Scottish Higher Education Institutions for the last 5 years have been provided in the following table.

Japanese Enrolments at Scottish Providers

SDI has 35 international offices (36 including Glasgow) - 26 of these are physically located within either a British Embassy, Consulate or High Commission.

This is an operational matter for Scottish Enterprise.

I have passed your query on to Steve Dunlop, the Chief Executive, and asked him to respond to you directly.

Latest figures for productivity in Scotland will be released on 6 February 2019.

Between 2007 and 2017, Scotland’s productivity has increased by 5.7% in total, or 0.6% per year on average. This compares to a UK increase of 1.9% in total, or 0.2% per year on average.

The productivity gap with the UK, which stood at 9.1 percentage points in 2007, is now less than 2 percentage points in the latest year.

The Scottish Government will continue its focus set out in the Economic Strategy to increase competitiveness while tackling inequality in order to create sustainable, inclusive growth.

Our 2018 Programme for Government has mental health at its very heart. It contains a package of measures to support positive mental health and prevent mental ill health, and is backed by £250 million of additional investment. There is a clear focus on children and young people’s mental health, and particularly on preventative approaches and early intervention. We want our young people to get the right help at the right time.

On 19 December 2018, we published our delivery plan detailing how we will deliver on these commitments. That includes focused action on improving access to care for specialist mental health and an investment of £4 million in 80 additional CAMHS staff.

From 2016-17 to 2019-20 we are investing an additional £150 million in mental health services, including £54 million to help boards improve their CAMHS and Psychological Therapies performance.

From this package we are providing NHS Forth Valley with a total of £2 million for workforce capacity building and workforce development. We are providing NHS Fife with a total of £2.4 million.

We will continue to work closely with all NHS Boards, both directly, and via support provided by the Healthcare Improvement Scotland Mental Health Access Improvement Support Team (MHAIST), to deliver sustained improvements in access to CAMHS.

From January 2019, MHAIST will support all NHS Boards to identify areas for improvement by expanding the provision of improvement support for every Board. Improvement activity will be overseen by a new Mental Health Delivery Board, chaired by the Minister for Mental Health.

The following figures are from activities reported within the published 2017-18 Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts and rounded to the nearest £million The list provides details of ‘projects’ as requested and as such excludes other capital expenditure budgeted items such as grants and loan schemes (including Housing, Regeneration and loans to farmers). In addition, details of capital expenditure performance for other public bodies, e.g. Executive NDPBs, are reported within their own accounts publications.

In terms of budget management, final budgets are agreed with the Scottish Parliament each year at the Spring Budget Revision and the figures below represent the underspends against these budgets – the nature of budgeting for capital projects means that costs are often managed over more than one year and the Scottish Government’s in-year budget management processes are designed to ensure that budget and costs flexibility is effectively managed within overall capital budget parameters.

A dispute arising from servitude law (access rights) is a civil matter.

The Scottish Government encourages individuals to find a resolution to a problem out with a court, where possible such as the use of a mediation service which can help to bring the parties in a dispute together and arrive at a satisfactory conclusion for both parties. Any costs associated with the use of this service would normally be considerably less than raising a court action.

If mediation is not an option or fails to resolve the issue then taking the matter to court is the only recourse. General support and advice services such as Citizens Advice or Shelter Scotland may be able to give some initial advice on the specific circumstances.

In addition, the Scottish Legal Aid Board provide Advice and Assistance (A&A). This is available subject to a financial eligibility test, on any matter of Scots law for various forms of legal advice and assistance short of representation in court. It can include advice on whether there is a legal case to take forward, advice on options to proceed, negotiating a settlement, or writing letters on the applicant’s behalf.

If court action is raised then the circumstances of the dispute and the individual may qualify for legal aid assistance. Further information on legal aid eligibility can be found at: https://www.slab.org.uk/Online_calculators.html .

HMRC are responsible for publishing non-savings non-dividend (NSND) income tax outturn for Scotland. The data are published around 15 months following the end of the tax year, primarily due to the time Self-Assessment taxpayers have to complete their tax returns following the end of any tax year. Therefore, the latest available data is for 2016-17, and we expect 2017-18 data to be available in Summer 2019.

The outturn data for 2016-17 reported that there were over 2.2 million Basic Rate taxpayers, 294,000 Higher Rate and 13,300 Additional Rate taxpayers in that year. HMRC did not publish revenue by band at that time, but did publish an estimate for total Scottish NSND income tax receipts in 2016-17 of £10.7 million.

In addition to the partners referred to in the answer to S5W-19894, the Scottish Crofters Federation, Forestry Commission Scotland and the Scottish Rural Colleges are also involved in the development of the Sea Eagle Action Plan.

The plan is a working document being developed and used by stakeholders to inform their work on the project. It has been shared amongst members of each stakeholder organisation and can be made available to other stakeholders wishing to be involved in sea eagle management if they contact Scottish Natural Heritage.

The stakeholder group is also planning to publicise its work through the development of a question and answer document which will cover the main actions being delivered through the plan. This document is expected be published in Spring 2019 and will be available on the Scottish Natural Heritage website.

There are no plans to consult formally beyond the stakeholder group. However, anyone who is interested in the plan is welcome to contribute their thoughts to any of the stakeholder bodies represented on the group.