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The Scottish Government does not collect or hold information on mobile broadband services and Wi-Fi on bus and coach services, which form Scotland's principal modes of public transport. These are provided either through local authorities or directly by operators on a commercial basis.

In terms of the ScotRail network in Scotland, which is managed and let by Transport Scotland, there has been a rolling programme of Wi-Fi installation on trains since December 2013. Approximately 45% of the ScotRail fleet is currently Wi-Fi enabled. The present Abellio franchise commits ScotRail to fit all of the fleet with Wi-Fi by December 2018.

CalMac Ferries Ltd, which is owned by the Scottish Government, provides public Wi-Fi on the Wemyss Bay to Rothesay route, which covers those two ports and the MV Argyle and MV Bute. The service has been available on this route since February 2015. CalMac Ferries Ltd will be providing Wi-Fi across their remaining ports and vessels and is working with the suppliers to make sure that this will happen as soon as possible. The programme of works is being developed with an anticipated completion date of spring 2016.

Serco NorthLink Ferries provide Wi-Fi on all their passenger ferries to/from Aberdeen-Orkney-Lerwick and on the Scrabster-Stromness route. Wi-Fi is also available in the ports served by NorthLink. The Scottish Government does not hold any figures on usage.

The following table sets out the non-cash departmental expenditure unused in each of the last five years:

*There was a budget overspend in 2011-12.

The non-cash departmental expenditure budget is only available for spend related to the student loans resource accounting and budgeting charge, underspend cannot be used elsewhere.

The Scottish Government maximum budget for the cost of loans in 2016-17 and each of the last five years is in the following table. The figure for 2016-17 is an initial estimate.

*Includes income contingent student loan writedown, additional budget secured at Spring Budget Revision.

**Includes £61.4 million mortgage-style loan book writedown for sale of loan book and £16.4 million for income contingent additional interest subsidy.

Based on the draft budget, the resource accounting and budgeting charge is expected to be £175.6 million in 2016-17.

The Scottish Government has modelled increasing the repayment threshold from £17,000 to £21,000. This is expected to increase the resource accounting and budgeting charge by around four percentage points.

The non-cash DEL budget for 2016-17 is £175.6 million. The budget has been adjusted downwards to reflect estimated requirements.

The Scottish Government remains committed to ensuring that producers in the developing world achieve a fair price for their goods. Through our continued partnership with the Scottish Fair Trade Forum, who have been awarded more than £1.2 million from the Scottish Government between 2007 and 2017, we are reaching more people than ever before with the message that choosing to buy Fairtrade products really does make a difference to peoples lives.

Never is this more apparent than when we hear directly from the producers themselves – and this year, during Fairtrade Fortnight, we will once again welcome producers to Scotland from as far afield as Myanmar, Nicaragua and Mauritius. It is their stories of how Fairtrade has helped them overcome hardship and poverty which will help inspire people to choose one of the 4,000 Fairtrade products now readily available in high streets up and down the country.

A full programme of the events being held during Fairtrade Fortnight to promote and encourage support for Fairtrade will be published on the Scottish Fair Trade Forum's website in the next few weeks.

http://www.scottishfairtradeforum.org.uk/newsroom/events/

Scottish Government policy on allowances reflects the recent announcement to align kinship and foster care allowances following the legal challenge to local authorities in 2015 and the agreement to provide 10.1 million a year to support this. We have agreed with COSLA to now look at the overall system and will convene a group shortly. We will look closely at the desirability and feasibility of a national scheme through this work which will report as soon as possible. The group will take into account new welfare powers accruing to the Scottish Parliament and the timescales governing the UK Government welfare reform agenda.

Following our recent announcement to align kinship and foster care allowances we have agreed with COSLA to now look at the overall allowances system and will convene a group shortly. We will look closely at the desirability and feasibility of a national scheme through this work which will report as soon as possible. The group will take into account new welfare powers accruing to the Scottish Parliament and the timescales governing the UK Government welfare reform agenda.

At this stage, the Scottish Government considers it is too early to make an assessment of the likely impact of the merger of BT and EE on the mobile telecoms market in Scotland. The increasing convergence of fixed and mobile infrastructure and services will require Ofcom to keep regulation in this area under review to protect consumers, stimulate infrastructure investment and innovation, and encourage the growth of mobile markets. In our response to Ofcom’s Strategic Review of Digital Communications, we called on Ofcom to undertake more extensive regional market analysis, which would assess the likely impacts of such mergers in Scotland and therefore help determine which remedies, if appropriate, would be most effective.