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There will be no impact on work to improve access to (a) stations or (b) trains by applying the financial penalties held within the SQUIRE Investment Funds to the ScotRail fares initiative. £834,000 from the Investment Fund has already been allocated for station and rolling stock improvements. As there are not currently any initiatives or projects at the developmental stage to require funding, the balance of the fund, £2.06million, is currently unallocated.

The Franchise Agreement specifically states that such funds be directed towards "qualitative respects of the Franchise Services". Use of a proportion of these funds to the benefit of Scotrails valued, existing passenger base falls within the remit of the contract.

Across the United Kingdom challenges exist in recruiting junior doctors, specifically within Psychiatry. This has resulted in an increased reliance by NHS Tayside upon locum staff to maintain its current profile of services for mental health. Workforce pressures has resulted in the introduction of a contingency plan to ensure that patient safety and safe and effective inpatient and crisis assessment services are in place across Tayside.

Service delivery in Tayside is the responsibility of NHS Tayside and the three local Health and Social Care Partnerships in Dundee, Perth and Kinross and Angus.

We would expect any proposals that would lead to service redesign to involve the Health Board to take into account of the existing Scottish Government guidance on public engagement as set out in CEL 4 (2010).

Scottish Ministers were made aware on 12 January 2017 that a contingency plan was to be implemented in the near future to ensure that patient safety and safe and effective inpatient and crisis assessment services are in place across Tayside, resulting in the closure of the Mulberry Unit, on a temporary basis.

On 1 April 2016, mental health services in Tayside became fully devolved and delegated to each of its three Health and Social Care Partnerships for Angus, Dundee City and Perth and Kinross, with the latter being responsible for the delivery of all acute and in-patient mental health services on a hosted basis.

NHS Tayside is working in partnership with its Health and Social Care Partnerships to complete the Tayside Mental Health Service Redesign Transformation Programme to ensure that sustainable mental health services, based upon patient safety and improving quality of care, is in place across Tayside. The plan is expected to be completed shortly and will be subject to full stakeholder consultation. This will include consideration of the future of the Mulberry Unit in the provision of longer term health services within Tayside.

In December 2016, the Scottish Government announced a £3 million fares initiative for 2017, which will include a free week of travel for monthly and annual Season ticket holders. Scottish Government officials agreed with ScotRail Alliance representatives the associated operational requirements and financial impacts, prior to its announcement by Derek Mackay MSP (Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Constitution) on 15 December 2016. In terms of budget implications, the funding will be provided by both Transport Scotland and ScotRail, with the majority of the costs likely to be met between April 2017 and March 2018.

The “Safer Pre and Post Employment Checks” Partnership Information Network (PIN) Policy, which covers secondary employment, places an obligation on boards, as employers, to record details of any secondary work activity undertaken by nurses. All secondary work must be agreed by the staff member’s line manager, including providing cover in other NHS boards.

The Scottish Government believes that the case for devolution is clear and has been set out in various reports, reviews and studies over recent years, including the Shaw Review and the more recent Reform Scotland report. The £100 million figure is informed by the overall scale of Network Rail’s funding and expenditure in Scotland – some £4.7 billion in the current CP5 control period. The opportunities for efficiencies will clearly be dependent on any model agreed, but include avoiding further unnecessary cost increases on major projects; reducing contributions to significant Network Rail corporate overheads; avoiding future contamination of higher costs from Network Rail’s poor financial and delivery performance in England; and further synergies in the management and development of the infrastructure of Network Rail and the operations and rolling stock of ScotRail.

We are committed to the largest road investment programme that Scotland has ever seen. By the end of this financial year (2016-17), we will have spent over £8 billion on our Motorways and Trunk Road Network since 2007, to ensure the strategic road network is safe, available for use, efficient, well maintained and allows effective movement of people, goods and services around and to and from Scotland.

Many of our projects include necessary improvements to roads that become the responsibility of the Local Authority on completion of the scheme. The spend on these roads is not captured separately and is included in the overall investment for the project.

On-Going Schemes

Since 2007, the Scottish Government has invested in a number of major roads projects, including:

In addition, the Scottish Government continues to progress the design and development of a number of schemes including the A90/A937 Laurencekirk Junction Improvement (Aberdeenshire) and the A90/A96 Haudagain Junction Improvement (Aberdeen City).

A breakdown by road and local authority area is not possible for incomplete schemes as some of the investments are of a national nature (e.g. Forth Replacement Crossing) and others span a number of local authority areas. However, analysis of spend by year, since 2007-08 can be seen in the following table. 

Figures from 2011-12 onwards exclude Cost of Capital which was abolished. Cost of Capital Figures from 2007-08 to 2010-11 are £517.8m, £546.5m, £595.5m and £649.1m respectively.

[1] Figures taken from respective January Scottish Budget Bills.

Completed Schemes

The average response time for call-outs in both Fife and Tayside in 2015-16 was around 7 minutes, against a national average of around 7.5 minutes.

Response times are monitored on an on-going basis and are affected throughout the year by a number of factors, including peaks in demand, extreme weather, and road closures as well as turnaround times at hospitals. In a potentially life threatening emergency, the ambulance service will dispatch the nearest available resource as soon as possible.

It should be noted that, while time targets are important, they are not a sign of the quality of patient outcomes.

That is why the Scottish Ambulance Service are piloting a new response model, announced in November last year. The model has been developed following the most extensive clinical review of its type ever undertaken in the UK - with nearly half a million call-outs examined. This will benefit patients in urban, rural and remote communities in Scotland.

The Scottish Government and Scottish Ambulance Service are both committed to ensuring patients across Scotland received the best care possible. That is why we have invested an extra £11.4 million in the Scottish Ambulance Service for 2016-17 which will include the recruitment of 200 extra paramedics as part of our commitment to training 1000 more paramedics over the next five years. The funding will help to improve care across Scotland.

Scottish Ministers through successful use of the Access for All fund have invested over £67 million across the Scottish network improving the accessibility to 25 stations by 2019.

This dedicated programme is complemented by wider Scottish government investment to modernise stations on the network, such as the £25m invested to transform Haymarket. All new stations, such as those on the Borders Railway or the recently opened Edinburgh Gateway are fully accessible for disabled and other passengers.

Scottish Ministers also secured over £3 million of investment to be made by Abellio ScotRail specifically to improve access to rail services for passengers. This is in addition to the £475m being used to introduce new, fully compliant accessible rolling stock as well as supporting an extensive refurbishment of trains to ensure the ScotRail fleet is fully modernised and up to the accessibility standards required.

These are all tangible improvements that make a significant contribution to the delivery of the Scottish Government's first Accessible Travel Framework which I launched last year.