- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
Submitting member has a registered interest.
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Current Status:
Answered by Ivan McKee on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what steps are being taken to maintain transparency in the process of issuing compulsory purchase orders.
Answer
The Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) (Scotland) Act 1947 governs the making and confirmation of compulsory purchase orders (CPOs). It sets out requirements relating to the issuing and publication of notices regarding the making of a CPO, its submission to Scottish Ministers for confirmation, opportunities to object to it, and as regards the decision on whether to confirm a CPO. Guidance on the process is contained in Circular 6/2011: Compulsory purchase orders: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-planning-series-planning-circular-6-2011-compulsory-purchase-orders/.
In addition, the Scottish Government publishes a register of CPOs submitted to the Scottish Ministers for confirmation since 2012, which is updated quarterly. The current register, published in December, includes CPOs received up until the end of October 2024: https://www.gov.scot/publications/compulsory-purchase-order-register/.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Ivan McKee on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how much it has spent on software subscriptions in each of the last five years, broken down by (a) software type and (b) provider.
Answer
Modern software subscriptions are usually multi-year deals to spread cost and maximise the return on investment. Most agreements include elements of support and integration costs. As the Scottish Government has over 400 validated instances of software, to extract annual costs for every software subscription or agreement could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Complying with this request would breach the upper cost limit of £600 due to the analysis of significant amounts of data split by supplier and type in a 5-year period between 2019 and 2024.
However, working within the upper cost limit, we are providing details of spend on major elements of software to provide illustrative costs of delivering shared services for the Scottish Government and 50+ public bodies. Please note that the annual figures provided may be averaged over the length of the contract and may also include bundled support and integration costs.
Platform Vendor | Description | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 (YTD) |
| | | | | | |
Microsoft | Operating Systems and Office Automation | £4,802,814.62 | £5,377,328.98 | £5,906,993.62 | £6,155,453.76 | £6,269,397 |
Oracle | Finance and HR Services | £419,148 | £197,534 | £1,549,368 | £1,271,426 | £1,428,049 |
Objective | Electronic Records Management | £315,449 | £550,171 | £272,920 | £0 | £0 |
vmWare | Server Virtualisation | £2,012,155 | £2,012,155 | £1,959,804 | £1,959,804 | £1,959,400 |
Okta | Cloud Identity Platform | £520,950 | £520,950 | £520,950 | £799,727 | £799,727 |
zScaler | Secure Edge Technology and Cloud Firewalling | £214,426 | £214,426 | £503,461 | £1,005,142 | £1,005,142 |
Mitel | VoIP Telephony Services | £201,445 | £272,617 | £262,167 | £259,519 | £91,262 |
| | | | | | |
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Ivan McKee on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what renewable energy systems, such as solar panels or heat pumps, are installed across its buildings, and how these contribute to the overall energy efficiency of the estate.
Answer
There are 6 buildings with Solar PV, 1 building with an air source heat pump, 2 buildings with biomass heating.
The solar PV provides approximately 5% of each of the building’s total electricity use.
The air source heat pump replaced a gas boiler.
The biomass boilers replaced gas and oil heating at rural locations.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Ivan McKee on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what targets it has set for improving the energy efficiency of its buildings, and by what date it anticipates that these will be achieved.
Answer
The Scottish Government is committed to supporting the delivery of national emissions reduction targets, directed by our new Carbon Management Plan. As part of ongoing maintenance and upgrades within our buildings, we aim to incorporate energy efficiency improvements alongside these works wherever possible.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Ivan McKee on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether it has terminated any software subscriptions in the last five years and, if so, for what reason.
Answer
The Scottish Government have terminated software subscriptions for several operational reasons. These include non-renewal on contract expiry, replacement with more modern services and the loss of business requirement to run the software.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 20 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Kaukab Stewart on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how it is addressing the aging population in rural areas and the potential impact on healthcare services.
Answer
The Scottish Government recognises the positive contribution older people make to their communities. We aim to enable better access to services for older people as and when they need them, and to ensure people are financially secure and supported as they age.
Our 2021 Population Strategy sets out our ambition that as Scotland’s population lives longer - which is to be celebrated - that people are healthy and active, while ensuring the long-term sustainability of our public services.
An example is NHS Education for Scotland's National Centre for Remote and Rural Health and Care, launched in October 2023. The Centre is working with Health Boards and Health and Social Care partnerships to drive improvements in sustainability and the capability of rural and island primary and community care services, aligned to the specific needs of communities.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 20 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what specific actions are being taken to address any health inequalities in rural areas as part of its overall healthcare strategy.
Answer
The Scottish Government recognises that healthcare services should be planned and developed to meet the needs of patient populations and communities, including those in our rural areas.
In order to tackle the decline in Scotland’s population health and widening of health inequalities, the Scottish Government (SG) is developing a Population Health Framework (PHF), to take a cross-government and cross-sector approach to improve the key building blocks of health including: good early years and education; good work and income; healthy places; and equitable health care.
Health Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships are responsible for the diverse needs of their populations and plan their service provision according to that need. Officials engage with Health Boards and HSCPs on a regular basis to review health outcomes.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many surgical procedures have been cancelled in each of the last five years due to a lack of post-operative beds, broken down by NHS board.
Answer
The number of cancelled operations under ‘non-clinical/capacity reasons’ is the most granular level of detail that’s provided from PHS’s website, breakdown as follows:
| 12 month to March (Financial Years) |
NHS Board | Apr-23 | Apr-22 | Apr-21 | Apr-20 | Apr-19 |
NHSScotland | 6049 | 6544 | 4960 | 2572 | 7501 |
NHS Ayrshire & Arran | 375 | 399 | 231 | 85 | 658 |
NHS Borders | 194 | 216 | 166 | 38 | 151 |
NHS Dumfries & Galloway | 390 | 352 | 253 | 104 | 306 |
NHS Fife | 339 | 407 | 274 | 97 | 365 |
NHS Forth Valley | 375 | 156 | 154 | 36 | 227 |
NHS Grampian | 598 | 871 | 713 | 496 | 899 |
NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 987 | 1189 | 980 | 565 | 1145 |
NHS Highland | 397 | 478 | 468 | 226 | 738 |
NHS Lanarkshire | 392 | 332 | 220 | 91 | 572 |
NHS Lothian | 1440 | 1499 | 782 | 502 | 1657 |
NHS Orkney | 0 | 0 | 120 | 64 | 84 |
NHS Shetland | 69 | 37 | 20 | 2 | 30 |
NHS Tayside | 116 | 188 | 228 | 95 | 324 |
NHS Western Isles | 20 | 16 | 9 | 15 | 30 |
NHS Golden Jubilee | 357 | 404 | 342 | 156 | 315 |
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-32702 by Neil Gray on 9 January 2025, whether it will review its coding practices to allow for the identification and recording of incidents involving e-bikes, and, if so, what the timeframe is for implementing this change.
Answer
Scotland uses the ICD-10 classification for coding diagnoses. Public Health Scotland understand that no changes or updates for any codes in ICD-10 are planned, as work is currently focused on implementation of ICD-11, which in Scotland is likely to be around 2029-2030. It is also understood that there is currently no reference to e-bikes in ICD-11.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 17 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Ivan McKee on 28 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how the usage of electric and hybrid vehicles in its fleet aligns with its emissions reduction targets.
Answer
The Scottish Government is working towards our commitment to phase out petrol and diesel cars from our fleet and phase out the need for any new petrol and diesel light commercial vehicles.
The adoption of electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to replace internal combustion engine vehicles aligns with, and supports our decarbonisation policies and targets. Presently, 82% of our overall fleet are zero or ultra-low emission vehicles.