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Development of the Rural Payments and Services website is part of a wider programme of work to deliver improvements to the way in which rural payments and inspection services are provided, and also to implement reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. The total programme expenditure as at 31 March 2015 was £90 million, which includes the IT system, staff training, and stakeholder engagement and communication. Costs are monitored through programme governance and as part of routine Scottish Government financial controls.

We recognise that the new Rural Payments and Services (RPS) system has not been operating at the performance level we desire and have been working hard to resolve the issues raised by our customers, including making a number of changes to fix known defects. Customer issues and enquiries are a normal feature in the launch of a new IT system and new Common Agricultural Policy programme. We have received one formal complaint; in addition, we are in constant dialogue with all of our customers on matters related to the RPS system and the single application form process and shall continue to keep in regular contact with them.

As of 13 May 2015, 6,103 single application forms have been started and 3,516 have been completed using the Rural Payments and Services website.

As of 13 May 2015, 2,545 paper single application forms have been received.

All patient falls are reported on our adverse event reporting system Datix.

Table 1 reports all falls reported by severity and year for Royal Victoria Building (wards 70-75):

496 patients had more than one fall.

One complaint by a relative was made regarding a patient fall.

NHS boards use incident management systems to record the details of any fall occurring within their estate and these details include the time, location and the extent of any harm suffered. Each board will have a different way of then collating and managing these data.

The Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) includes falls as one of the four harms it is seeking to improve within the Scottish Patient Safety Index. The SPSP has a bundle approach which covers a range of interventions to minimise/prevent a fall from occurring and which is being tested within pilot wards across NHS boards. Process and outcome measures are currently collected and reported through SPSP as part of this pilot project.

The Scottish Government met with Scottish Power Energy Networks (SPEN) and Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission (SHE Transmission) on 23 March 2015 to discuss progress on plans regarding seeking Ofgem funding to reduce the visual impact of existing transmission lines in national scenic areas.

SPEN are currently setting up a stakeholder group – Visual Impact of Existing Wirescape (VIEW). It is intended that this group will provide independent advice to facilitate a proposed project around Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park (encompassing the Loch Lomond national scenic area and Trossachs national scenic area).

Invitations to join the stakeholder group have been issued to a number of organisations, including: Loch Lomond and The Trossachs Community Partnership, Historic Scotland, The John Muir Trust, Scottish Borders Council, Scottish Natural Heritage, The Scottish Campaign for National Parks, SHE Transmission and the Scottish Government.

The first meeting of VIEW is due to be held in the coming weeks.

SHE Transmission is continuing to develop proposals and identify projects.

The data held centrally on recorded crime is based on an aggregate count of crimes and offences recorded and cleared up by the police. Dog thefts would be recorded in the statistics as a crime of theft, however it is not possible to separately identify the number of thefts which related specifically to dogs.

Action to tackle crime is the responsibility of Police Scotland; however, the Scottish Government can and will help to ensure that stolen dogs can be more easily returned to their rightful owners.

We have long recommended in our Code of Practice for the Welfare of Dogs that microchipping is an effective method of identifying animals that can help re-unite dogs with owners where the dogs have been lost or stolen.

On 4 March 2015 I announced that microchipping of all dogs will be made mandatory in Scotland from April 2016, after it was overwhelmingly backed in a public consultation.

The Scottish Government and its public and private sector partners are investing over £410 million in our Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme (DSSB) which, alongside commercial deployment by BT and other operators, will deliver fibre broadband access to 95% of premises in Scotland by 2017-18.

Most of the funding for this programme is not allocated to specific local authority areas, but to the national programme as a whole. In addition to the national funding, 14 local authorities provided supplementary funding to maximise coverage in their own areas. In Lothian, these local authorities are Midlothian, which contributed an additional £0.5 million, and West Lothian which contributed an additional £2.5 million.

All local authorities will be upgraded within the life of the DSSB programme. This table shows the percentage of premises in the three Lothian local authorities expected to have access to fibre broadband at the conclusion of the DSSB programme, compared with commercial deployment alone.

We have also established Community Broadband Scotland (CBS) – a £7.5 million initiative that is supporting the development of community-led schemes in those areas that are unlikely to have a superfast solution delivered commercially, or by the DSSB programme.

CBS is engaged with communities in East Lothian (Humbie, Lammermuir, East and West Salton, Bolton and Haddington), and has awarded a total of £169,000 to date. CBS is also working with the community of Cousland in Midlothian and has awarded £5,000 to date.