Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government provides funding to NHS Education Scotland (NES) to develop and run the National Digital Platform (NDP). The NDP supports storage, integration and interoperability of data making it easier for staff to record and share data across health and care systems.

Additionally, we provide funding to all territorial Boards to support the required investment for the six priority areas set out in our Digital Health and Care Delivery Plan: Digital Access, Digital Services, Digital Foundations, Digital Skills and Leadership, Digital Futures and Data-Driven services and Insights.

Further information on each of the six priority areas can be found here: Care in the Digital Age: delivery plan 2024 to 2025 - gov.scot

The Scottish Government works closely with the legally categorised emergency responder organisations who are responsible for assessing, planning, responding to and recovering from the consequences of emergency risks as identified in the National Risk Assessments and Community Risk Registers, including for severe storms and wildfires.

Representatives of all responder agencies are also required, by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, to meet regionally in Scotland’s 3 Regional Resilience Partnership (RRP) areas, in the North, West and East . Below that structure, 12 Local Resilience Partnerships (LRPs) are in place which apply the co-ordinated response at a local level.

The Resilience Partnerships meet to ensure there is a shared awareness of responder agency capabilities and capacities to co-ordinate a multi-agency response to any kind of emergency event. Existing plans are regularly tested in joint exercises and during real emergencies.

After any event, responder agencies, LRPs and RRPs routinely hold structured debriefs which identify lessons to be fed back into the system and improve future response. These debriefs are the responsibility of the agencies and partnerships and therefore not overseen by Scottish Government.

Wildfires are specifically an operational responsibility of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. As such, they are responsible for the initial response and for developing and deploying plans which enable them to respond as a national service with the ability to move and deploy staff and equipment as necessary. Their arrangements will link into generic police, NHS and local authority major incident plans as necessary, within the resilience partnership structures.

The Scottish Government supports this partnership activity in many ways including supporting multi-agency partnership meetings, and organising on line multi-agency learning facilities on the Resilience Learning Hub.

The Scottish Government has a centrally-managed contract with Office Papers to supply newspapers on an ad-hoc rather than subscription basis. Costs are recharged to requesting cost centres. The contract allows for newspapers to be bought according to requirement, and cancelled when not required, for example during Parliamentary recesses. Details of purchases made under the contract in the last five financial years are in the following table.

Purchases in Financial Year 2020-21 were made by the Directorate for Learning, Directorate for Economic Development, Directorate for Legal Services, Directorate for Commercial and Procurement, Directorate for Communications and Ministerial Support and the Directorate for Fair Work.

Purchases for 2021-22 were made by the Directorate for Learning, Directorate for Communications and Ministerial Support and the Directorate for Commercial and Procurement.

All purchases in Financial Years 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 were made by the Directorate for Communications and Ministerial Support.

Some units may be subscribing to newspapers using their delegated budgets. This information is not held centrally.

Prevention of theft is a matter for Network Rail and railway operators working in collaboration with the British Transport Police. The Member may wish to note that safety and security of the rail network is a reserved matter under Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998. Scottish Government officials liaise with Network Rail and British Transport Police to ensure that they are working to minimise the impact of theft on passengers and freight users.

Although widespread across all ages and demographics, data tells us that disabled people, young people (16-24), people over 75 and those on low incomes are now the most at risk of social isolation and loneliness. The Scottish Government uses the Scottish Household Survey to estimate the number of people who may be socially isolated or experiencing loneliness in Scotland, and local authority areas. The Scottish Household Survey 2022 shows that 28% of people in Aberdeenshire have social contact less than once a week. The survey provides a further breakdown by age and can be found here: Scottish Household Survey 2022: Key Findings - gov.scot.

The Scottish Government published our delivery plan for our social isolation and loneliness strategy, Recovering our Connections, in March 2023. The plan aims to better understand social isolation and loneliness, to reduce the harm caused by it and tackle this public health issue. There are a number of actions within it, including our £3.8m fund that supports 53 organisations across Scotland delivering community-led activity that responds to local needs. Ten of these organisations are tackling social isolation in rural locations, including Mearns and Coastal Healthy Living Network who are based in Aberdeenshire and offer health, wellbeing and social activities for older people.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with the Social Isolation and Loneliness Advisory Group to help us deliver this plan and collaborate on ways to tackle loneliness for those most impacted.

For details of newspapers purchased, I refer the member to the response provided to S6W-33494 on 31 January 2025.

Newspapers are taken for current awareness; to help identify and monitor local and regional issues; and to support policy and operational delivery.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government supports local authorities to deliver infrastructure and behaviour change projects that deliver on modal shift outcomes and a range of benefits for physical and mental wellbeing.

In 2024-25, £35 million has been allocated for the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund (ATIF) Tier 1 funding. This investment, delivered by block grant, gives local authorities the autonomy to support the design, development, and delivery of active travel infrastructure measures across all 32 Local Authorities in Scotland, including in rural locations. £10 million has been allocated for ATIF Tier 2 fund for construction ready projects delivered by Local Authorities and Regional Transport Partnerships.

Also in 2024-25, £46.7 million of funding has been allocated for the Sustrans Places for Everyone programme, delivering high quality infrastructure across Scotland, and £15.85 million for the continued development of the National Cycle Network in both rural and urban areas.

In terms of support provided to local authorities for behaviour change measures that improve the uptake of walking, wheeling, and cycling, £4.5 million has been allocated to the Local Authority Direct Award (LADA) in 2024-25, and £1.7 million for the Bikeability programme.

The Regional Transport Partnership-led People and Place programme is £19m for 2024-25 is designed to build on the partnership working of RTPs and local authorities to work together and identify key priorities for improving the opportunities for more people to make more of their everyday journeys by walking, wheeling or cycling.

The efforts of these programmes and infrastructure delivery will lead to positive health outcomes through increasing the number of people choosing walking, cycling and wheeling in Scotland for everyday journeys. This is why active travel is a key Strategic Delivery Outcome in the Physical Activity for Health Framework published on 4 October 2024. The outcome aims to see multiple sectors working collaboratively on action that prioritises active travel infrastructure and supports and encourages active travel behaviour.

My officials continue to engage with local authorities, Public Health Scotland and Active Scotland to identify synergies and opportunities to strengthen the links between active and sustainable interventons and health outcomes.

A key way in which Scottish Government is looking to expand home healthcare services in rural areas is through the expansion of Hospital at Home.

Hospital at Home is a short-term, targeted intervention that provides a level of acute hospital care in an individual’s own home that is equivalent to that provided within a hospital.

There is strong clinical evidence for Hospital at Home, which has improved patient outcomes such as being able to manage their own care, being more independent and being able to keep their care package whilst receiving care. The service also reduces admissions to nursing homes and reduces the likelihood that patients will be living in residential care in the months after being in hospital.

All hospital at home services capture patient feedback via Care Opinion (www.careopinion.org.uk) as well as locally developed feedback forms. That information is used to understand the impact of their service and inform improvement.

Every Health Board in Scotland operates a Hospital at Home service for adults, including some of the most remote and rural areas of the country. Between April 2023 and March 2024 Hospital at Home Older People’s services treated 14479 patients. Specifically, services in Western Isles treated 383 patients and Oban treated 91.

Further expansion of the service was set out in the 2025-26 draft budget statement where set out plans to expand the number of Hospital at Home beds to at least 2,000 by December 2026.

Current Public Health Campaigns targeting rural communities:

1. Right Care Right Place (increasing awareness of, and encouraging the public to use, appropriate health services).

• Purchased media space for this campaign includes community radio running in a number of rural locations that network radio does not reach, including Argyll FM, Caithness FM, Radio Skye, Radio Wester Ross, Radio Nevis (Fort William) and Shetlands (SIBC). Network radio advertising space has also been purchased for this campaign to ensure reach of the public Scotland wide.
• Campaign paid-for media also includes a print content partnership in a press pack which includes local publications such as Ellon Times, Buchan Observer, East Fife Mail, Berwickshire Advertiser and Ayrshire Post.

The mobile data used in terabytes (Tb) on the Scottish Government’s account as part of our mobile voice and data contracts is shown below. This data is only available from August 2020, it is not possible to separate the associated mobile data costs by department from the overall spend.

January 2024 to December 2024 - 82.59Tb

January 2023 to December 2023 - 94.87Tb

January 2022 to December 2022 - 97.77Tb

January 2021 to December 2021 - 125.07Tb

July 2020 to December 2020 - 39.99Tb