Chamber and committees

Records show that a notice under section 18 of the act has been issued on two occasions, one in May and one in November.

None. The staffing of individual schools is a matter for local education authorities as employers and consequently the Scottish Executive has not engaged in discussions with Scottish Borders Council about this issue. However, officials wrote to all local authorities on 19 December 2005 notifying them of the funding that will be available for additional teachers in 2006-07 and 2007-08, as well as clarifying that expenditure on teachers’ salaries was exempt from the efficiency savings identified in the 2004 Spending Review.

Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd (HIAL), as the licensed operator of its 10 airports, is responsible for meeting UK Civil Aviation Authority and Department for Transport regulatory, and all statutory, requirements relating to its duties as the licensee of these airports. HIAL is also accountable via its Board of Directors to the Scottish ministers for the operation and management of its business.

We have no information pertaining to advice that may have been circulated by the Metropolitan Police Service to Scottish police forces. Police forces may co-operate when dealing with freedom of information requests in the interests of efficiency and consistency. This is an operational matter.

This information is not held centrally.

The following table provides information on the percentage of offenders convicted of a crime of indecency who were reconvicted for any crime within one year.

Offenders Released from a Custodial Sentence or Given A Non-Custodial Sentence, 1999-2002, Whose Index Conviction¹ was for a Crime of Indecency: Percentage Reconvicted² Within One Year.

	Percentage Reconvicted2 within 1 year:
	1999	2000	2001	2002
All crimes of indecency3	11	10	12	12
Crimes of indecency with a child victim4	12	11	13	12
Other crimes of indecency3,5	8	9	11	12

Notes:

1. For each offender in the cohort, this is the conviction which resulted in a non-custodial sentence being served or the one which had originally led to a custodial sentence being served.

2. Reconvictions for any crime or offence in the Scottish Offenders Index.

3. Excluding prostitution offences.

4. Only those crimes of indecency which by definition had child victim(s): defilement of a girl under 13, defilement of a girl under 16, person with custody and care of girl and causing her seduction; lewd and libidinous practices. 

5. The Scottish Offenders Index does not otherwise hold information on victim characteristics so no data are available on how many persons were convicted of other types of crime, e.g. rape or indecent assault, which involved child victims.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) to respond. His response is as follows:

The information is not available in the format requested.

A recent Sex Offenders Audit conducted by SPS and local authorities identified that there were 459 offenders who had been convicted of a sexual offence and held in custody on the 18 May 2005. Of these, 10 were on remand, 444 had been assessed for the risk of re-offending and the remaining five were subsequently risk assessed.

These risk assessments were conducted over a period of time, as some offenders had been in custody for a number of years.

Following risk assessments, the SPS, in partnership with local authority criminal justice social work services, formulate a plan to manage the risk posed by the individual offender.

The Executive holds many documents which in some way relate to the subject of Scottish independence, but no central tally of the number has been compiled.

We have made no inquiries. Ministers have consistently made clear that if anyone has credible and reliable information regarding alleged criminal activity, it should be passed to the police.

In the absence of credible and reliable information, the Scottish Executive has no reason to take legal advice on these allegations.