Seòmar agus comataidhean

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-01514 on 6 August 2021. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government is able to provide details of contracts awarded by itself to third sector organisations however, without disproportionate time, cost and extensive review of many thousands of individual contractual agreements we are unable to provide data for other Public Bodies.

The data provided has been taken from Public Contracts Scotland (PCS), the Scottish Government's advertising portal. The data provided start from 2010 (when PCS was established), and are reliant on suppliers self-selecting their third sector status.

Details of contracts-frameworks awarded by the Scottish Government to third sector organisations are contained in the following table:

There was 117,857 scheduled sailings to the Western Isles between October 2010 and June 2021, of which 8,076 were cancelled and 8,581 delayed.

A table has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib Number 62561) that provides a breakdown by individual routes serving the Western Isles.

The Scottish Government are fully committed to maintaining life line ferry services across the Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services (CHFS) network. When periods of inclement weather are anticipated CalMac will seek to try and flex the scheduled ferry service timetable to provide sailings in advance of, or following any disruption to the timetabled services, to try and minimise the impact on communities.

The dental sector has been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Pre-COVID levels of patient volume are currently not achievable within the current framework of infection, protection and control (IPC) measures.

The Scottish Government has recently announced a 50 per cent increase in free PPE to dental practices and new funding of £5m to support improved ventilation facilities in dental surgeries. Both these measures are intending to increase the productivity of practices, enabling them to see more patients, within the current set of IPC constraints.

We can also confirm that we are working closely with UK partners as part of the review of IPC Guidance as we emerge from this pandemic. The intention is to ensure that as soon as it is safe to do so dental services can resume normal levels of activity.

Transport Scotland is aware of the ferry services model in British Columbia, Canada. This will be included as part of international benchmarking element of the ongoing review of tripartite arrangements in place in Scotland.

Transport Scotland (TS) have weekly discussions with CalMac Ferries to identify where improvements can be made to enhance the resilience of the services across the Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Service (CHFS) which includes those services to the Western Isles. This includes searching for opportunities to charter additional tonnage for the fleet.

Ministers are pleased that following successful berthing trials the MV Arrow has been chartered. This will bring additional capacity on the Ullapool – Stornoway service by allowing CalMac to free up the MV Loch Seaforth to let more passengers and their vehicles travel. It will also increase freight capacity.

The provisional findings of an independent review of governance arrangements for Scottish Government lifeline ferry services are scheduled to be delivered around the end of the year. We will take time to fully consider the output of the report including further engagement with key stakeholders if necessary to reach the appropriate decision for our island communities.

The Scottish Transport Statistics report an increase in car use from 35,362 to 36,747 million vehicle kilometres driven in Scotland between 2016 and 2019. We do not yet have these figures for 2020, which will have been impacted by the Covid-19 restrictions. This happened alongside significant population and economic growth. During this time period, Scotland’s population grew by almost 60,000 and the country’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 3.6% in real terms.

Transport is Scotland’s highest carbon emitting sector, and the largest source of transport emissions is cars. This is why in the Climate Change Plan Update (published December 2020), we committed to reduce car use in Scotland by 20% by 2030. This is monitored as part of the Climate Change Plan monitoring and evaluation framework , which the Scottish Government reports on annually.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to significant uncertainty for transport, with future trends and people’s work and lifestyle choices difficult to forecast at this point in time. Subject to this uncertainty, we will publish a route-map that sets out how we will meet this target by the end of this year. This is a cross-government and sectoral effort – not all the policy levers and answers rest in transport.

The most direct levers on the attractiveness of buying or running a petrol or diesel car – fuel duty and vehicle excise duty – are reserved to the UK Government. Additionally, transport demand derives from other factors – where people live work, learn and access goods and services are all key to their need to travel. Meeting the commitment will involve reducing people’s need to travel with more local access to goods and services, digital connectivity and flexible and remote working approaches.

Asylum is a matter reserved to the UK Parliament. This includes the provision of asylum accommodation, which is delivered by the Home Office through contracts with private sector companies, known as Asylum Accommodation and Support Services Contracts (AASC). In Scotland this is being delivered by Mears Group, who operate the mother and baby unit in Glasgow.

Scottish Government officials have no direct role in the delivery and management of the Home Office’s Asylum Accommodation and Support Services Contract. We have made it clear that the Scottish Government's preference would be for asylum accommodation to be delivered by the public sector or the third sector.