Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that rape victims are able to access justice through our legal system. It is the case that crimes such as rape and domestic abuse are under-reported when compared to other types of crime and that an efficient, victim-centred legal process has a significant role to play in encouraging more victims to come forward.

The Scottish Government has significantly reformed the criminal law to modernise the law on rape and sexual assault including providing a wider definition of rape and a statutory definition of consent defined as “free agreement” through the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009. Next year, the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016 will, once in force, require judges to give specific directions to juries in sexual offence cases concerning circumstances where there is a delay by the alleged victim in reporting the offence, and where the alleged victim does not physically resist their attacker or the alleged perpetrator does not use physical force to overcome their victim.

In recognition of the vital role that support services play in helping victims to come forward and engage with the legal process, the Scottish Government has invested record levels of funding in the violence against women and girls agenda including providing an additional £1.85m (2015-18) to Rape Crisis Scotland to enhance the capacity of RCS’ advocacy support project and £69,000 (2016-17) to deliver the Support to Report scheme, which offers 24 hour on-call advocacy support to women and men reporting rape in Glasgow, East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire.

Occupational Segregation is an area in which we are determined to make progress. We are taking action through Developing the Young Workforce agenda and the Scottish Funding Council. In addition to that we continue to support a range of actions including on family friendly flexible working, high quality and flexible childcare and funding for Equate, Career WISE and Close The Gap.

On 26 October 2016 I announced funding for the first stage of work to support women returners, awarding nearly £50,000 to Equate Scotland. Their Women Returners Project will help retrain women who have taken career breaks and get them back into work.

In addition to this Skills Development Scotland’s Equalities Action Plan for Modern Apprenticeships in Scotland sets out our aims to support more young people from diverse backgrounds to take up a Modern Apprenticeship There are gender-specific objectives in the Equalities Action Plan for Modern Apprenticeships to:

Reduce gender stereotyping and gender segregation in career choices and occupational routes chosen by young people in education

Reduce gender segregation in Modern Apprenticeship frameworks

Apprenticeship areas where there are gender imbalances, for example in science, technology, engineering and maths and in childcare related apprenticeships will be tackled by the plan

The information requested is given in the table entitled Business Pledge – Statistical overview – August 2016, a copy of which has been placed in the Scottish Parliament’s Reference Centre (Bib number 57653). This material is updated and published on a quarterly basis. There is currently 296 companies listed on the Pledge website.

An inter-operator, multi-modal smart card system is being made possible. The Scottish Government is promoting one compatible system across all modes, the "ITSO" system. Using one compatible system means integration can be delivered as each transport mode implements its co-ordinated plans.

The Scottish Government remains committed to the vision that all journeys on Scotland’s bus, rail, ferry, subway and tram can be made using a single type of smart ticket, the saltirecard system. Good progress is being made to deliver this vision, which is summarised by transport mode below.

Rail - The entire ScotRail network is now equipped for saltirecard season tickets and Super off-peak tickets between Glasgow and Edinburgh, with more ticket types on saltirecards being launched throughout 2016 and 2017. The smart rail products will also be able to be loaded on to the National Entitlement saltirecard and other bus operators' saltirecards. The Multi-operator city scheme bus tickets will be able to be loaded on to the ScotRail smartcards.

Subway - Smart tickets are already in use on the Glasgow Subway, and it will be possible to use the same smartcards on both the Subway and ScotRail.

Ferries - The Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services Contract that was awarded recently requires that saltirecard smart ticketing will be available for all foot passengers.

Bus – More than 1.3 million smart concessionary travel saltirecards have been issued which are used across bus operators throughout Scotland. The Scottish Government's concessionary travel schemes currently generates 35% of all bus journeys and uses the smart saltirecard.

Through partnership agreement, bus operators have committed to launch city and surrounding area multi-operator saltirecard commercial smart ticketing. Aberdeen and Dundee city schemes were launched this year, with similar schemes in Glasgow and Edinburgh being launched in 2017. Major Scottish bus operators have agreed to work to deliver the vision of compatible smart ticketing across all modes in Scotland with a programme that dovetail’s with ScotRail’s plans. They have also committed to accept a national pay-as-you-go e-Purse carried on the saltirecard, similar to some of the Oyster card functions in London.

The terms and conditions of employment of staff is a matter for individual universities as autonomous institutions. However, the Scottish Government would encourage every university to adhere to the principles of fair work, set out in the Fair Work Framework, published in April 2016. Ministers commitment to this was further highlighted in the Interim Letter of Guidance issued to the Scottish Funding Council on 29 September 2016.

The Scottish Government, through the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), has invested in excess of £4 billion in the higher education sector in the last four years. A further £1 billion is being invested in 2016-17, with core research funding maintained at a level of £232 million in 2016-17, representing a continued key investment in Scotland’s future.

We have also established a Strategic Funding Group, consisting of Principals nominated by Universities Scotland, the SFC and Scottish Government officials to consider how increased excellence and equity can be achieved by the higher education sector in future.

We welcome the publication of ‘Scotland Leading the Way: a National Blueprint for IBD in Scotland’, published in 2016 by Crohn’s and Colitis UK with support from the Scottish Government, which recommends the use of faecal calprotectin testing (FCP) as an option to support clinicians in ensuring timely referral for IBD diagnosis. This recommendation is supported by current clinical evidence of the value of FCP in preventing the need for more invasive investigations for people with a diagnosis of IBS. We will continue to work with C&CUK to engage with NHS boards and encourage improvements as set out in the Blueprint.

The Remote Outpatient Care (ROC) scheme has been developed between NHS Highland and third sector organisations, and was trialled in NHS Highland and NHS Tayside areas. Best practice recommendations related to e-health tools are contained within ‘Scotland Leading the Way: a National Blueprint for IBD in Scotland’, published in 2016 by Crohn’s and Colitis UK with support from the Scottish Government. ROC has been highlighted within the Blueprint as an example of an innovative solution which can support people with IBD.

The Scottish Government does not itself conduct scientific research. However, the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) of the Scottish Government funds health research projects directly through a competitive process to assess applications generated by the research community in Scotland. Applications are accepted for research across any health-related discipline or area, including mindfulness cognitive behavioural therapy and inflammatory bowel disease.

CSO also contributes about £10million annually to the Department of Health National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) that allows researchers based in Scotland to apply through a competitive process for funding via the majority of the large NIHR research programmes that together cover a similar wide spectrum of health-related research.

The Scottish Government, through the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), has invested in excess of £4 billion in the higher education sector in the last four years, and will invest over £1 billion in 2016-17. This sustained investment since 2012-13 also means that the SFC is now supporting more funded places (full-time equivalents) than it did in that year.

Source: SFC

We have established a Strategic Funding Group, consisting of Principals nominated by Universities Scotland, the SFC and Scottish Government officials to consider how increased excellence and equity can be achieved by the higher education sector in future.