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Following the Scottish Government’s announcement of the proposed solar deployment ambition for Scotland in October, we are now working with industry and community stakeholders to agree a suitable level of community benefit for large scale solar projects. As a result, we will now publish our final Solar Vision with the Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan in Summer 2024.

We intend to publish the draft Bioenergy Policy Statement for consultation in the new year, and before the end of February 2024.

Responsibility for the recruitment of CAMHS staff lies with NHS Boards. In the NHS Recovery Plan 2021-2026 , the Scottish Government committed to provide sufficient funding for around 320 additional staff in CAMHS by 2026, with the potential to increase capacity for CAMHS cases by over 10,000. This commitment refers to Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) staff.

Scottish Government has contracted AssistFM to map existing breakfast provision. This mapping is expected to be completed in Spring 2024. There are no plans to publish it separately, as this work is just one of the elements which will inform policy on school breakfasts, and a plan for breakfast provision, designed around the needs of children and families.

British Transport Police Authority (BTPA) who determines the budget of the BTP force advises that there has been no reductions in funding. Scottish Government would not accept any diminution of services provided by BTP on the Scottish rail network.

The Scottish Government remains committed to developing plans to deliver free breakfasts to all primary and special school children. Work is underway to map existing breakfast provision which is expected to be completed in Spring 2024. This will inform policy on school breakfasts, and a plan for breakfast provision, designed around the needs of children and families.

British Transport Police Authority (BTPA) publishes its Annual Reports which cover the policing of the railways in each financial year. No direct financial support is provided to BTP by the Scottish Government, because its costs are met by charges levied against the rail industry, which is supported by the funding allocated to it by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government remains absolutely committed to the founding principles of the NHS. As is the case across the UK, hospitals in the independent sector were contracted to provide additional capacity for NHS priority patients throughout the pandemic. NHS Scotland makes limited use of the independent sector, in contrast to the position in NHS England.

Our National Treatment Centres (NTCs) Programme is the single biggest increase in planned care capacity ever created in NHS Scotland; these centres are planning to deliver over 20,000 additional planned care procedures by 2024-25.

NHS Scotland’s Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) is also playing a central role in working with Health Boards to ensure that they are able to continually identify new ways to increase capacity, and to respond to demand through service innovation and redesign.

CfSD’s clinically-led Specialty Delivery Groups (SDG) have supported several new and innovative pathway developments, many of which are now being successfully scaled up across Scotland, including Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT), Patient Initiated Review (PIR) and Enhanced Recovery after Surgery (ERAS). These improvement programmes will support delivery of the targets and provide sustainable solutions for the future.

The Scottish Government rightly made the decision to freeze some fares as part of its response to the cost of living crisis, however this is simply no longer sustainable.

Caledonian Sleeper fares will increase by 8.7% from 1 January, excluding seated tickets. Similarly, from 1 April 2024, all ScotRail fares will also increase by 8.7%, including season tickets and flexi-passes which have been frozen since January 2022.

We know that any increase is unwelcome for passengers, therefore we have kept the rise as low as possible to maintain the attractiveness and affordability of rail as a travel option. That is why we are extending our ScotRail peak fares pilot for a further three months until June 2024.

The timing of the ScotRail fares increase has been moved away from January, when personal budgets are often more stretched than other times of the year, to April bringing it into alignment with the financial year.

The basis of the increase has also been moved away from the use of RPI six months prior to January, to one based on CPI 12 months prior to April.

Fares remain, on average, lower than across the rest of Great Britain.

Electricity and heat capacity data broken down by local authority area are publicly available on the Scottish Energy Statistics Hub. Data tables can be found at the bottom of the following pages. Local authority data can be accessed by clicking the ‘Local authority’ tab above each data table.

Electricity: https://scotland.shinyapps.io/Energy/?Section=RenLowCarbon&Subsection=RenElec&Chart=RenElecCapacity

Heat: https://scotland.shinyapps.io/Energy/?Section=RenLowCarbon&Subsection=RenHeat&Chart=RenHeatTech

The external costs associated with the production and publication of the Building a New Scotland paper, ‘Social security in an independent Scotland’, are set out in the following table: