Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government publish official statistics on the prison population on an annual basis. The most recent annual statistics were published on the 23 June 2022 covering the financial year 2020-21 [1]. The official statistics provide information on the average daily remand population, and the number of individuals held on remand over the course of the financial year. A summary of time held by legal status (untried, convicted awaiting sentence, and sentenced) is also provided.

The annual statistics are a compilation of data collected over the full financial year from the Scottish Prison Service prisoner records system. To produce the statistics, the data needs to be processed into a longitudinal analytical dataset. This process has not yet commenced for 2021-22, so the Scottish Government does not currently hold the data requested.

[1] Justice Analytical Services, Scottish Prison Population Statistics 2020-21

https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-prison-population-statistics-2020-21/ .

The Scottish Government has no plans to widen the statutory remit of the Care Inspectorate to include working with other public bodies to take assets into public ownership. However, we intend to strengthen the Care Inspectorate’s enforcement powers. This will include the introduction of enhanced fitness of provider requirements and financial sustainability monitoring to act as an early warning system for the deterioration of service quality or failure. These will enable the regulator to more quickly take action on poor performing services, and drive up the consistency and quality of care expected across all social care services in Scotland.

The National Care Service will allow us to improve standards across the whole of the social care sector. The current model of securing care services will be replaced by a model of ethical commissioning and ethical procurement.

As part of this the entire adult social care workforce experience fair work, introducing national pay bargaining to deliver more equitable terms and conditions. The National Care Service will design its services locally to ensure individual needs and local circumstances are taken into account. This will include continuing to work with specialist charity and third sector providers of care services.

The Scottish Government introduced the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill to the Scottish Parliament on 20th June 2022. As part of the approach to the National Care Service, ethical commissioning and ethical procurement will be used to shape all commissioning and procurement decision making.

Local bodies will be required to have a strategic plan, setting out their arrangements and vision for how services will be provided, this will include an ethical commissioning strategy in relation to those services.

Company law and corporation tax are reserved to the UK Government. This means the Scottish Government has no powers to legislate in these areas or to discriminate against firms who take tax avoidance measures that UK rules allow.

The Scottish Government supports measures to ensure that businesses pay a fair amount of tax, such as the development of international, multilateral measures to combat tax avoidance and protect national tax bases. We believe that businesses have an ethical obligation to deal openly with their tax affairs and to avoid engaging in artificial arrangements simply to reduce their tax liabilities.

The dataset on which these statistics is based does not record details of pay or contractual status.

The definition of employment used in school leaver destination statistics includes: those who consider themselves to be employed and in receipt of payment from their employers.

Although responsibility for forensic testing falls within the remit of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), the Scottish Government continues to work closely with SPA and other partners in the criminal justice system to ensure that testing capacity is resilient and able to meet demand in the longer term. To assist with the development of a longer term solution, Craig Naylor, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS), has agreed to undertake an urgent review, which will concentrate on the end to end processes for obtaining, analysing and reporting drug driving blood sample results - and identify solutions to capacity in the longer term. We would expect its findings to also consider any investment that will be needed to meet future demand. HMICS plan to complete the review by the end of the year.

The delivery of Keep Well health checks are no longer centrally overseen by the Scottish Government. It is up to local NHS Health Boards with their area practices to decide on administering these checks. The Community Links Worker programme has now been rolled out to practices particularly in deprived areas and offers support to individuals experiencing for example financial, housing and social isolation concerns. The Links Workers can refer back to GPs for a clinical assessment including for liver disease should any concerns arise.

The Scottish Government fully supports the enforcement efforts of Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) in tackling the scourge of drug driving to help make Scotland’s roads safer. However, it is for the Procurator Fiscal’s office to confirm the position on any other crimes which are being impacted by capacity issues in forensic testing.

With regard to testing for drug driving, while this falls within the remit of the SPA, it should be noted that more than 5,600 drug driving tests have been conducted in Scotland since new legislation was introduced in 2019. We have sought and received assurance that urgent action is underway to address the capacity issues in relation to drug driving in both the immediate and longer-term.

A total of 15,976 (31.5%) 2020-21 school leavers were in employment 9 months after the end of the school year. This included (a) 9,010 recorded as being in full-time employment (17.8% of all school leavers) and (b) 2,564 recorded as being in part-time employment (5.1% of all school leavers). A further 381 were confirmed as being in employment but the nature of that employment (i.e. whether part-time or full-time etc.) was not known. The remainder recorded as being in employment were engaged in a Modern Apprenticeship, or were self-employed.

The dataset used to produce Summary Statistics for Follow-Up Leaver Destinations does not hold information on the number of school leavers on (c) zero-hours contracts, or on the sector in which school leavers are employed.

The Bus Partnership Fund supports the development of permanent bus priority measures to tackle the negative impacts of congestion on bus services. The Fund requires grant-holders to be working towards a Bus Service Improvement Partnership (BSIP), as defined in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019.

BSIPs are a new type of statutory partnership between local transport authorities and bus operators. BSIPs enable local transport authorities to work with bus operators and others to improve bus services in their area by developing a Plan and Scheme(s) to implement changes, with a voting process to ensure sufficient support from operators. BSIP schemes must include either measures or facilities from authorities to support services and mandatory standards to be complied with by operators. The link between the fund and BSIPs is to ensure that the measures sought by councils are relevant to the needs of services and passengers across their network.