Seòmar agus comataidhean

A question arose about how we improve the interconnectedness or joined-up delivery of some of our housing policies and about how housing connects with other services. When your namesake, Professor Maclennan, came to the committee, he said that housing departments tend not to co-ordinate with other policy departments. Is that something that you recognise from your long experience—15 years, as you mentioned a minute ago—and, if it is, how do we improve on that to ensure that we get joined-up policy development and delivery?

Before anyone else comes in, is the £4 million for all 32 local authorities, or is it for only the five local authorities that you are working closely with?

How would the committee or others see that wider influence in the housing programmes that will emerge in the remainder of the current parliamentary session?

Thank you, convener and good morning, Deputy First Minister and colleagues.

I have a couple of questions about the reaching 100 per cent programme and another about city and region growth deals. R100 has been a hugely successful programme that the Government introduced in 2017, I think, to try to get 100 per cent of properties in Scotland on broadband digital connectivity. I note that the connectivity element of the spend profile falls off slightly to £33 million. Is that an indication that the Government thinks that we are nearing the end of the requirement for connectivity spend for the R100 programme?

Would we, in this committee or in other committees of the Parliament, be able to see something like that a couple of times a year, perhaps, so that we can see how progress has been made and give the deals democratic accountability? There is substantial investment by the Scottish Government—the Ayrshire growth deal, for example, is worth £100 million—but there is no formal scrutiny process in Parliament for it, that I am aware of, and I would certainly value one.

Okay, thank you for that. I will come to project gigabit in a wee minute.

The areas that the R100 programme cannot reach—very rural locations, single properties and so on—rely on the voucher scheme for access. However, I am worried by the number of inquiries that I still get from people who live remotely and cannot access mainstream R100, so to speak. They include people in East Ayrshire, for example, who rely on the voucher scheme. Does the Government think that a subsidy of £5,000 is enough to enable single-property outliers, for example, to get connected? I am sure that other members get inquiries from people in the more rural parts of their constituencies on whether they can access superfast broadband in that way. I would like to hear your views on whether the Government thinks that the voucher scheme is still delivering what was intended.

I can see Colin Cook looking; he has kindly answered many questions from me on this subject at the Public Audit Committee and others. Looking ahead to project gigabit and other matters, does the Government see new opportunities to develop and progress Scotland from the average 30 megabits per second speed that we currently deliver through R100? Germany is sitting at an average speed of 100 megabits and Iceland is at 250 megabits, but a gigabit is much faster than that. Are there opportunities for further progress on that during the next session of Parliament?

I am thinking of delivery of access and data on the road and rail networks, in town centres and in stadia, where lots of people put demand on data services and data access. The stories that I hear tell me that when you are in a stadium, you can never get a connection, but that is possible in countries where there has been investment. Do you see project gigabit covering such places and delivering faster data and connectivity in places such as the transport network, in the future?

On the rail network issue, I know from my trips around Europe to watch Scotland play last summer that data connectivity in trains, particularly in Germany and Belgium, is fantastic—data access and speeds are incredible. As you probably know, it is not quite there in Scotland. Is there an intention to make improvements in that area?

My other question is on city region and regional growth deals. If you have seen the evidence that has been given to the committee, you will know that some projects have fallen off the growth deal, in particular in Ayrshire, where a couple have dropped off. Generally speaking, when that happens in a growth deal, what happens to the money? Is it pulled back into Government or are local authorities allowed to keep it and repurpose it for new programmes?

Ultimately, who will assess the effectiveness of the programmes that come out of the growth deals? We, in Scottish Parliament committees—the Public Audit Committee or others—get a glimpse from Audit Scotland almost annually about how they are performing. Where is the reporting line and scrutiny for the whole growth deal process? Does reporting go to Government officials? Could there be a bigger role for parliamentary committees in scrutiny of the progress of growth deals in the areas that members represent?