Chamber and committees

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Interim Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The following table provides the number of SPS issued mobile phone handsets that have been confiscated at HMP & YOI Grampian, each month, since implementation in July 2020:

We committed in our 2018-19 Programme for Government to invest up to £5 million over a three year period to support 2,000 women who have had a career break to return to the workplace. This commitment and the scale of ambition built on the learning from our 2017 pilot Women Returners Programme.

An initial Programme commenced in late 2020 which offered immediate support to women during the pandemic. Within the three month period of delivery it attracted twelve projects offering support to over 450 women. This included projects such as HRC Recruitment which provided employability workshops combined with menopause support and mental health fitness coaching to women over 50 years old.

The programme for government published in September 2021 committed to continuing the programme. SDS are delivering the programme this year on behalf of Scottish Government backed with up to £2 million. Bids from prospective providers are currently being assessed. Women will be given support to enable them to apply for jobs or take part in activity such as further training that suits their own personal needs, timescales and circumstances for returning to work.

Home owners are responsible for the costs of on-going work needed to protect and preserve their own property, which includes the costs for the fire alarms to meet the new standard. We have provided £0.5 million additional funding for Care and Repair Scotland to provide help installing alarms for older and disabled homeowners on low incomes. We have also provided £1 million to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to provide alarms for owners who are considered most vulnerable to the risk of fire. Local authorities also have broad discretionary powers to provide advice and support to owners.

The Scottish Government has undertaken a comprehensive awareness raising campaign across a range of channels including TV, Radio and digital to ensure people are aware of the new legislation and encourage compliance. This includes material to support third sector stakeholders and messaging on the importance of using reputable tradespeople, including signposting to local government Trading Standards.

The Strategic Framework within Scotland’s Scams Prevention, Awareness and Enforcement Strategy, published in 19 March 2021, focusses on prevention, disruption, awareness, education and enforcement. This is intended to help all consumers with practical steps they can take to recognise common scam tactics and avoid the risk posed by this criminal activity.

Further advice can be obtained from https://consumeradvice.scot/ , which is a free consumer helpline funded by the Scottish Government.

We are aware that, following our successful public awareness campaign, there is significant public interest in carrying out work to comply with the new standard for fire alarms in all Scottish homes. It is, therefore, possible, that some retailers will have short term supply issues. However, we have been assured by manufacturers that there is a sufficient supply of alarms available to meet the expected demand by 1 February 2022, when the new standard comes into force.

The Scottish Government understand the important role sport plays in communities, bringing people together, and contributing to a sense of local belonging and inclusion. Through the Programme for Government we have committed to double investment in sport and active living to £100 million a year by the end of the Parliament ensuring more people can enjoy active lives as we recover, improving physical, mental and social health.

We will work with sport scotland, and wider partners to understand how best to increase investment in physical activity and sport, while ensuring we address inequality of access. We will continue to work with sport scotland and wider partners to understand how best we can ensure opportunities are available for everyone.

Our National Agency for Sport, sport scotland, invests in and supports more than 50 Scottish Governing Bodies of sport (SGBs) to develop their sport-specific pathways, including pathways for participants with disability. The Equality Standard for Sport is a shared approach by all UK sports councils to help address the inequalities that exist within the sector. sport scotland has focused on supporting Scottish Governing Bodies of Sport to progress against the Equality Standard and implement the action plans that are developed through this.

More recently, sport scotland published their new equality? outcomes for 2021-25. These new equality outcomes are person centred and look to address inequalities and ensure everyone has the opportunity to take part in sport and physical activity.

Scottish Disability Sport is the Scottish Governing and co-coordinating Body of all sports for people of all ages and abilities with a physical, sensory or learning disability. Scottish Disability Sport have developed an Activity Inclusion Model (AIM) which is being used widely across Scottish sport to ensure inclusive sport to strategy, education and participation.

The Scottish Government are aware of the continued disruption as a result of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the significant impact on the sport and physical activity sector particularly, on disability sport. The Scottish Government and sport scotland worked with local and national partners across Scotland to ensure people with a disability were considered in any return to sport plans.

During the lockdown period , Scottish Disability Sport developed a suite of online projects and programmes to meet the identified needs of volunteers, coaches, participants and athletes to maintain engagement and support wellbeing .

The commitment to invest in access to school counselling services across education in Scotland was announced in our 2018/19 Programme for Government.

The Scottish Government provided guidance ( https://www.gov.scot/publications/guidance-education-authorities-establishing-access-counselling-secondary-schools/ ) and agreed a set of aims and principles with local authorities ( https://www.gov.scot/publications/delivery-of-access-to-counsellors-through-schools-aims-and-principles/ ) to support delivery of the commitment.

Our local authority partners have confirmed that access to counselling support services through secondary schools is now in place across Scotland. It was up to local authorities to determine how they would deliver the commitment to best suit the children and young people in their area.

The Just Transition Plan for energy will be an integral part of the Energy Strategy Refresh which is due for draft publication in Spring 2022.

The Scottish Government has committed to establishing a £10 million fund to allow companies to pilot and explore the benefits of a 4 day working week. The pilot will allow us to develop a better understanding of the implications of a broader shift to a 4 day working week across the economy, and aims to represent a broad cross-section of businesses and organisations spanning the Scottish economy, including those who would find the move to a four day work week more challenging.

There has been extensive engagement with individual businesses registering an interest in participating in the pilot and with business representative organisations. Discussions have also taken place with academic experts and organisations regarding the promotion of flexible working. All this engagement is currently informing the careful and rigorous design of the pilot and it is anticipated that a timetable for implementation will be announced later this year.

The Scottish Government recognises the disparity between men and women in leadership roles in sport. We will continue to work with sportscotland and wider partners to understand how best to identify future leaders and support their development through programmes of educational learning, mentoring and experiential opportunities.

Our National Agency for Sport, sport scotland, run a number of programmes to encourage women into leadership roles. These include the Scottish Sporting Leaders Programme which helps improve the leadership skills or increase the leadership capability of staff within the sporting sector throughout the country. Each cohort will include a mix of delegates from local and national partners. The programme is open to women and men, with women being 54% of the participants across the four cohorts to date.

In addition to these national programmes, the SGBs and local partners in which sport scotland invest operate a range of programmes relevant to their specific context to support women into leadership roles in sport.

The Scottish Government also provide funding to the Scottish Sport Association to ensure there is enhanced governance through increased diversity, skill-base and competence of SGB boards via their On Board for Sport (OBfS) programme.

In order to gain a better understanding on how to support women into leaderships roles, sport scotland are convening a session on 5 October with around a dozen women who have progressed a coaching or leadership career in sport. This will be an open conversation to learn from the challenges and successes these women have faced in their careers, and to discuss what they would like to see to support more women to progress into coaching and leadership positions in sport in Scotland.

The 2021 Programme for Scotland announced a short-life Business Purpose Commission for Scotland to promote more purposeful businesses and better corporate governance.

The Business Purpose Commission is tasked with considering whether there would be benefits to a distinct agenda for Purposeful Business in Scotland, and how business and government can better embed this to become a leading Purposeful Business nation. It aims to shed light on purposeful business in Scotland, to gather an evidence base identifying champions of the issue in Scotland and to generate new ideas of ways to drive change towards purposeful business policies and practice in Scotland, whether through advocacy, influence, or policy.

The current membership of the Commission is as follows. A small steering group of around 7 people will be drawn from the Commission’s full membership of around 25:

Co-Chairs

Colin Mayer CBE, Professor of Management Studies, Saïd Business School, The University of Oxford/ Academic Lead, The Future of the Corporation Programme, The British Academy*

Amanda Young, Global Head of Responsible Investment, Aberdeen Standard Investments*

Commission

Stephen Boyd, Senior Economic Policy Officer, Scottish Government*

Sarah Davidson, Chief Executive, Carnegie Trust UK

Patricia Findlay, Professor of Work, Employment and Organisation, University of Strathclyde*

Crawford Gillies, Chair, Edrington

Alison Graham, Company Secretary, Baillie Gifford

Jamie Grant, Owner & Director, Glen Lyon Coffee

Poonam Gupta OBE, CEO, PG Paper Company Ltd

Dr Ifeyniwa Kanu, CEO & Founder, IntelliDigest

David McNeill, Director of Development, Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations

Jamie Maxton, Head of External Relations (Scotland), SSE Renewables

Andrew Murphy, Group Operations Director, John Lewis Partnership*

Paula Murphy, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer, Wood Group

Brie Read, Entrepreneur and Founder, Snag Tights

Clare Reid, Director of Policy and Public Affairs, SCDI*

Dr Lesley Sawers OBE, Non-Executive Director, Crosswind Developments

Ian Walker, Global Programme Lead, Essential Surgery, Janssen*

Scott Wilson, Executive Director – Development, Robertson Group

Eliot Wishlade, Director, Ove Arup & Partners Ltd

* Members of Steering Group