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By the end of the last financial year (31st March 2016) the Scottish Government had invested £20.8 million in loan support in Glasgow Prestwick Airport. The breakdown of this investment by year is £4.5 million invested in 2013-14, £6.3 million invested in 2014-15, and £10.0 million invested in 2015-16.

We expect all loan funding will be repaid, plus interest.

Scotland has lower female inactivity and unemployment rates and a higher female employment rate than the UK as a whole. However, we recognise more can be done.

Through our Labour Market Strategy we are continuing to support and encourage people into the labour market, to reduce unemployment and increase employment. Our approach is to create an economy that supports a sustainable working population and that can retain and attract new talent, to meet our wider economic and social ambitions.

Alongside this, the Scottish Government has set out new commitments to; establish a Council for Women and Girls, deliver a programme for women returning to work following a career break and supporting the newly created working group to look at pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the workplace. On top of this we have announced a funding package of £200,000 which will enable organisations like Women’s Enterprise Scotland, Investing Women and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce to tackle the gender gap within enterprise growth. This is very much in line with The Scottish Government’s committed to promoting a can do culture of entrepreneurship across all of society.

The Minister for Transport and the Islands recently met with the CEO of Seatruck to discuss the issues around staff pay on the freight vessels currently operating on the Northern Isles ferry service. Following a constructive meeting, further work will be undertaken by Seatruck and Transport Scotland to try and resolve the current situation.

The Minister has also written to the UK Government to ask them to take action on the National Minimum Wage and seafarers. Scottish Ministers are currently considering all available options and legal implications to promote fair work practices, including collective bargaining and payment of the National Minimum Wage and, where possible, the Scottish Living Wage in their contracts.

The Minister for Transport and the Islands most recently met with STUC and a number of transport unions, including the RMT, on Thursday 10 November 2016, where the issue was discussed. Work is being taken forward to try and resolve the current situation.

We have published statutory guidance “Addressing Fair Work Practices, including the Living Wage, in Procurement” which sets out how public bodies should encourage contractors to adopt fair work practices, including the Living Wage for workers engaged on delivering public contracts. Individual public bodies are responsible for their own procurement activity and effective contract management and monitoring should be undertaken to ensure that fair work practices, including the Living Wage, continue to be applied throughout the duration of contracts.

The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 requires public bodies with an annual regulated procurement spend of £5m or more to produce a procurement strategy setting out, amongst other things, a statement of their general policy on the payment of a living wage to people involved in delivering public contracts. These bodies will be required to produce a report at the end of their financial year 2017-18 outlining whether their procurement activities complied with the strategy, and where they did not, how they intend to ensure compliance in the future.

The Scottish Government is exploring all options and will table specific proposals in the coming weeks to protect Scotland’s interests and keep us in the Single Market, even if the rest of the UK decides to leave.

The Ernst & Young (EY) Attractiveness Surveys provide data on the number of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects and associated planned jobs, note that the investment value is not reported. Table 1 provides the FDI projects and planned jobs figures for 2011 to 2015. The latest published figures are for the 2015 calendar year.

Table 1: Number of FDI projects and planned jobs, Scotland, 2011 to 2015

Source: Ernst & Young Attractiveness Surveys

Our trade and investment strategy published in March this year set out a comprehensive action plan to boost Scotland’s export activity and to make it clear that Scotland is open for business, including with the rest of the UK. Scottish Development International currently has sufficient resource within the UK to deliver that. The opening of an innovation and investment hub in London will play a crucial role in promoting Scottish goods and services to existing and new customers and markets in London and beyond.

In light of the findings of the Audit Scotland report, the SFC is currently working with the sector to establish the up-to-date maintenance requirements of the colleges' estate.

The distribution of funding to individual colleges is an operational matter for the Scottish Funding Council. I have therefore asked the Chief Executive to respond.