Chamber and committees

A collaborative approach including stakeholder engagement was undertaken by Jacobs in taking forward the work to consider the roles and responsibilities of the bodies within Scotland as part of its review of transport governance structures. Transport Scotland published a report in July 2019: national-transport-strategy-transport-governance-working-group-report.pdf .

Stakeholders engaged in this process included: the National Transport Strategy (NTS2) Roles and Responsibilities Working Group; the Society of Chief Officers in Transportation in Scotland (SCOTS); Regional Transport Partnership (RTP) leads; Transport Scotland and Scottish Government modal policy leads; and public transport operators.

In July 2019, the Scottish Government launched a consultation on the draft National Transport Strategy for Scotland including two questions relating to transport governance regarding democracy, decision-making and delivery. Trade unions had the opportunity to provide a response to the consultation and one trade union, ASLEF, did so and 1, 221 responses to the consultation were received in total.

The file including consultancy requirements for the independent review has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre under BIB number 62666.

The contract between Transport Scotland and the appointed consultant, Ernst & Young, is valued at £156 000 exclusive of VAT.

As I noted in my statement to Parliament on 24 June, a single NHS Board first discovered in December 2020 that a small number of women who had subtotal hysterectomies had been wrongly excluded from the cervical screening programme and subsequently developed cervical cancer. All affected individuals or their families were directly contacted on 15 April 2021 by their NHS Board.

An Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA) was published on 10 December 2020 in our 2020 consultation report on proposals for a licensing scheme and planning control areas for short-term lets in Scotland. The ICIA can be found at: Short-term lets – licensing scheme and planning control areas: consultation analysis - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Scottish Government has had no approach from either Sector regarding increasing the numbers of spoken language interpreters.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) is the national, strategic body that is responsible for funding teaching and learning provision, research and other activities in Scotland's colleges and universities. It’s budget provides investment in Scotland's colleges and universities to support the development of well-educated, highly-skilled people and to enable sustainable, inclusive economic growth through enhancing skills and securing world-class research and cutting-edge innovation.

Scottish universities are autonomous institutions therefore it is for the individual universities to decide how to distribute the places it receives between faculties, what courses to offer, and how many of the total funded places will be available on each course.

Network Rail is currently assessing the options identified for delivering the required capacity enhancements and journey time savings between Aberdeen and the central belt. When the most effective options have been selected in alignment with available funding, it will then be possible to compile a detailed plan for delivering the project and to spend the remaining budget .

The Scotland Government no longer require social care staff (in line with the general population) to self-isolate if they are double vaccinated, symptom free and return a negative PCR test. As an additional protection social care staff are also asked to undertake daily LFD testing for ten days following covid exposure.

More information can be found at the following link:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) – exemption of fully vaccinated social care staff from isolation: information for providers - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

On Friday 3 September 2021 a QR code was included as part of the vaccination status letter. People travelling abroad can request their vaccination status online via NHS Inform or call the Freephone Helpline.

The Scottish Government is aware of the paper published by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) on the use of rubber granulates in artificial sports pitches. Also that ECHA, through its EU REACH process, has placed some restrictions on the use of rubber granules in the EU.

We recognise the impact the deliberate introduction of these granules has on the natural environment and that the EU restrictions might have an impact on the supply of rubber granules.

Our National Agency for Sport, sport scotland, will be participating in a UK Sports Agency meeting in September where the use of the infill will be discussed.

Jackie Ballie MSP (Scottish Labour- Dumbarton): To ask the Scottish Government how much has been spent on fuel for ministerial cars in each of the last five years.

The following table provides a breakdown of fuel expenditure for the Government Car Service since 2016.