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One of the key priorities identified in Our Past, Our Future, Scotland’s revised historic environment strategy which was commissioned by Scottish Ministers, is “Delivering the transition to net zero.” Actions identified to deliver this priority include improving the delivery of heritage skills training by revising and expanding the Skills Investment Plan for Scotland’s historic environment to identify the opportunities and actions needed to create a sustainable skills ecosystem. And also improving and enhancing the research and development infrastructure for heritage in Scotland by creating new national centres for skills and innovation.

The Scottish Government delivers support for the historic environment through its sponsorship of Historic Environment Scotland. Historic Environment Scotland, along with key partners, have consulted with 340 individuals and 160 organisations as part of the refresh of the Skills Investment Plan which is due to be published in April this year. As part of this refresh, a net zero roundtable was held on the 26 October 2023 to specifically look at the priority actions needed to support a skilled workforce to deliver the transition to net zero.

On behalf of the Scottish Government, Skills Development Scotland published a new report which has assessed the known investment, the skills demand now and in the future, and current training and learning support for green skills in Scotland. This report is available at https://www.skillsdevelopmentscotland.co.uk/news-events/2023/november/90-billion-of-investment-in-green-industries-signals-need-for-net-zero-skills .

We are also continuing to effectively integrate sustainability and green skills into apprenticeships in Scotland to ensure the system remains flexible and relevant as we transition to net zero.

The Scottish Government works with the Scottish Funding Council, Colleges Scotland, and College Boards to ensure good governance.

We also engage with regional strategic boards, trade unions, student associations, and the College Development network, through the Good Governance Steering Group, to ensure the implementation of governance improvements across the sector.

Institutions have been informed of the outcome of their applications for funding from the Scottish Educational Exchange Test and Learn project, with projects already underway.

In my statement to Parliament on 5 December 2023, I reiterated my commitment to streamline funding for colleges, universities and apprenticeships. As a first step, this means bringing together funding for student support into one place and funding for apprenticeships into one place.

The Scottish Government will provide further detail shortly.

The NHSScotland Scan For Safety Programme was established to provide rapid electronic traceability for high-risk implantable medical devices; linking patients to the medical devices used in their care, thus improving patient safety and fulfilling a key theme from the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Review and a future regulatory requirement. In addition, the improved medical device data will provide a patient implant record and with appropriate safeguards provide an opportunity to improve our knowledge of real world medical device outcomes.

Implementation of NHS Scotland Scan for Safety has now been successfully completed in four specialties within two Health Boards and the Programme Team is currently engaging with the local Board teams to measure the benefits being realised in these Health Board areas. The benefits to be realised over time will cover areas such as patient safety, operational efficiency and clinical productivity. While the level of each benefit will depend on the Health Board implementing scanning technology across all affected specialties within a Board area, the Programme Team will work closely with each Board to ensure the identified benefits are maximised as much as possible between now and programme closure in March 2026.

Since the rollout of the National Inventory Management System (IMS)(a pre-cursor in supporting rollout of the Scan for Safety Programme), across all Health Boards in March 2023, data is now available across all Health Boards which suggests savings may be made regarding stock management in each Board area. This data will be validated with each Health Board as part of the Scan for Safety Programme implementation activity, due to be completed by March 2026. The level of savings (or avoidance) will vary in each Board. These benefits will be aggregated at a national level in due course and reported through to the National Programme Board as implementation progresses. Some benefits, such as the digital tracking of medical devices in the event of a recall, can only be realised and verified if a recall notice is received and this may not happen during the lifecycle of the programme.

Scottish Government are in regular dialogue with NHS Boards and senior leaders on their community nursing services, including health visiting. Scottish Government policy officials are a member of the Health Visitor Leads Network which meets bi-monthly and includes representation from all of Scotland’s territorial Health Boards. The last meeting was held on 16 January 2024.

In addition, Scottish Government policy officials are undertaking bilateral meetings with all Health Boards, between November 2023 and March 2024, to discuss their health visiting services and the outcomes of the recent Evaluation of the Universal Health Visiting Pathway:

Universal Health Visiting Pathway evaluation - phase 1: main report - primary research with health visitors and parents and case note review - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the local economic impact of road closures. The impact of closing a road due to a collision depends on the specific circumstances such as the collision location, the time of day, the duration of the closure and any diversion route.

At a more general level, the Department for Transport has estimated the values assigned to the cost of road casualties and collisions in Great Britain, for use in cost-benefit analysis of the prevention of road casualties and collisions in road schemes. This information is used in the assessment of road schemes in Scotland via Scottish Transport Appraisal Guidance (STAG) and is published in Transport Scotland’s annual Reported Road Casualties publication: https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/reported-road-casualties-scotland-2022/table-9a-b/

The Good Governance Steering Group has had oversight of the implementation of the addition of trade union nominees to college boards.

The Good Governance Steering Group is monitoring the progress of trade union nominations and the Scottish Government expects the Group to continue to keep abreast of good governance in the college sector and to inform the Scottish Government of governance issues.

The Scottish Government does not receive information on the number of people in Scotland who have loans payable to Erudio Student Loans Company.