The Scottish Government will publish its pay policy alongside its draft budget, following the publication of the UK Government spending review.

All bodies listed in the attached link are required to follow the Scottish Government’s public sector pay policy:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Government/public-sector-pay/staff-pay/public-bodies-covered.

Registers of Scotland (RoS) delivers customer-focussed registration and information services that create value for Scotland. Operating as a trading fund since 1996, the fees paid by its customers must be sufficient to cover its expenditure, including cyclical downturns in the property market, compensation payments under the keeper’s warranty, and investment in the business.

The financial arrangements for RoS are set out in section 9 of Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000. This provides that the sums received by the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland are to be retained and applied to meet expenditure on the keeper’s functions, such as to maintain and improve the registers under the keeper’s control. In doing this, the keeper must operate within financial objectives set by Scottish Ministers, who also set the statutory fees that can be charged by RoS.

As an accountable public body, RoS lays its audited annual report and accounts before the Scottish Parliament. Their framework document and corporate plan are also held in SPiCe.

The annual retained profit and/or loss levels since RoS became a trading fund are displayed in the following table.

Scottish Ministers' pay policy for 2016-17 which will be published alongside the draft budget. A range of options to provide some flexibility for employers to address local issues in their pay systems, whilst maintaining affordability, are being considered.

The length and cost for projects of any delay will only be known when contracts are signed.

As I advised Parliament on 9 September 2015, the Scottish Futures Trust has submitted proposals for changing the hub model to the Office for National Statistics, which has indicated that it hopes to respond to these proposals in the course of November 2015.

The public sector will hold a 20% stake in hub projects, split evenly between the Scottish Futures Trust and the procuring authority. The public interest will be represented by the Scottish Futures Trust on the boards of directors of the project companies established to deliver hub projects.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S4W-27757 on 27 October 2015. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S4W-26462 on 31 July 2015. There will be no change to the delivery or staffing of soft services under the revised hub structure.

The intention is that all hub design-build-finance-maintain projects signed after the introduction of ESA10 in September 2014 will transfer to the new structure. Details about all projects in the hub programme are available on the Scottish Futures Trust website at: www.scottishfuturestrust.org.uk