Chamber and committees

The movement of freight is a commercial matter and the Scottish Government’s leadership in support for rail freight is outlined in our 2016 rail freight strategy, and put into practice with significant investment, a freight-first approach, and through our regulatory rail freight growth targets. The 2020 timber by rail trial in the Far North of Scotland proved the concept and provided lessons for the industry on the Scottish timber market, rolling stock/wagon capability and availability, operational considerations and the finances/economics of moving timber by rail. It is for the industry to lead on any follow up activities and Network Rail remains engaged with the industry through the Scotland Freight Joint Board and works with Freight Operating Companies and Freight End Users to enable modal shift to rail.

We recognise there is a challenge around the recruitment of teachers in certain geographical areas and in certain subjects. It is for this reason that we have manually allocated Preference Waiver Payment (PWP) probationers this year. Manually allocating PWPs will ensure those probationers are placed in the areas who have the most difficulties in securing probationers.

I recently met with Aberdeenshire Council to discuss their concerns about teacher recruitment and probationer allocations. The Council indicated that they welcomed the approach taken to probationer allocations this year, which has resulted in an increase on the number of PWPs allocated compared to last year.

The Scottish Government provides policies, frameworks and resources to NHS Boards to deliver services that meet the needs of their local population. We are providing an increased investment of half a billion for NHS boards in 2024-25, taking funding to over £14.2 billion - an increase of almost 3% in real terms. An investment of £30 million is also being provided and will target reductions to the national backlogs that built up throughout the pandemic, including audiology.

However, it is NHS Boards and healthcare professionals locally who have responsibility for service delivery and patient treatment. Therefore details of the funding NHS Boards have allocated to audiology services is held locally.

This is an operational matter for Abellio ScotRail for the year 2021-22 and for ScotRail Trains for the years 2022-23 and 2023-24. The member may wish to contact ScotRail directly.

We remain committed to reducing class contact timegiving teachers more time out of the classroom. Any changes to terms and conditions for teachers, including how this time will be used, are matters for agreement through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers.

To inform this work, we commissioned an external modelling and research exercise to help inform discussions which was published on 7 May. This contains a number of high-level future scenarios and assesses their broad compatibility with any changes to teachers’ contracted class-contact time.

These scenarios will help to facilitate our discussions with SNCT partners on how we can best deliver this commitment.

We are offering local authorities £145.5m in this year’s budget to maintain teacher numbers. This will assist in delivery in the reduction of class contact time.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on waiting times for hearing aids centrally.

Statistics on audiology waiting times are included within Public Health Scotland’s (PHS) 18 weeks referral to treatment (RTT) publication but this does not include specialty-level data. This publication is based on a dataset that collects information on waiting times for complete patient pathways from initial referral to first treatment.

The ScotRail rolling stock procurement plan has not been paused.

The Rail Services Decarbonisation Action Plan, which was published in July 2020 is currently being refreshed which will include consideration of the timescales for removal of ScotRail diesel stock.

The Scottish Government High Level Output Specification for Network Rail required Network Rail to develop a Scottish signalling strategy. This work considered the costs and benefits of ETCS carefully, but did not recommend immediate adoption in Scotland.

This is an operational matter for Abellio ScotRail for the year 2021-22 and for ScotRail Trains for the years 2022-23 and 2023-24. The member may wish to contact ScotRail directly.

This is an operational matter for Abellio ScotRail for the year 2021-22 and for ScotRail Trains for the years 2022-23 and 2023-24. The member may wish to contact ScotRail directly.