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The Scottish Government has spent:

• £150,490 in 2014-2015
• £484,474 in 2015-2016
• £471,864 in 2016-2017
• £1,281,302 in 2017-2018
• £3,762,056 in 2018-2019

These figures relate to central funding to support the development and implementation of Scotland’s cyber resilience strategy and associated action plans. Since 2017, resource for these purposes has come from both the Scottish Government and the UK National Cyber Security Programme, funding from which has been made available to devolved administrations.

These figures do not include total spending on cyber resilience by the Scottish Government, its agencies and the wider Scottish public sector as part of operational delivery of digital public services, as this information is not centrally held.

The period of five years specified in the question predates the commitment to deliver the Scottish Government’s £600 million Reaching 100% (R100) programme. Our £400 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme has continued to deploy over the period since R100 was first proposed.

The R100 programme itself, as I have previously advised colleagues across Parliament, is in the final stage of the public procurement process, with final tenders received being evaluated at this time and, as such, no funding has been issued to contractors at this stage.

The procurement has been split into three lots – North, Central and South – with the South lot being allocated a budget of up to £133 million to deliver for the people of the South of Scotland.

The amount awarded from the Climate Challenge Fund to organisations since the start of the financial year 2016-17 is as follows:

The Scottish Government does not hold data on how many town or city centres have free Wi-Fi connections available.

Scottish Government analysis in 2017 of towns and settlements with populations greater than 14,000 found that businesses in each of these do offer free public Wi-Fi to some degree (e.g. cafés, hotels, supermarkets, bars or shopping centres) in addition to where some local authorities fund free public Wi-Fi. Further provision of free public Wi-Fi is available from transport operators such as Scotrail in over 50 railway stations, on trains on all rail routes and from some bus companies on some routes. In addition to this, 100% of libraries in Scotland have free public Wi-Fi available.

All regulation and legislation in relation to all telecommunications, including access to broadband and mobile data services, are reserved to UK Ministers under the provision of the Scotland Act 1998.

100% of public libraries in Scotland offer free Wi-Fi. This is as a result of Scottish Government making £1m of investment between 2015 and 2018 through the Public Wireless Programme.

“Forging our Digital Future with 5G: A Strategy for Scotland” was published on 26 August 2019 and is available on the Scottish Government’s website at the following link: http://www.gov.scot/ISBN/9781839600371 .

At this time, and in light of the Members Bill currently in development by Emma Harper MSP, the Scottish Government has no plans to include measures to tackle sheep worrying in forthcoming legislation.

Scottish Water has committed to initially installing 1 tap in each local authority area. Beyond that, Scottish Water is open to discussions with councils and communities to identify the best places for further refill points.