Chamber and committees

NHS Scotland recorded 1,857 admissions due to assault by a sharp object in financial year 2008-09. Over the same period, there were 3,688 acute occupied bed days across NHS Scotland associated with assault by a sharp object.

The Serious Organised Crime and Procurement Sub-group is leading the work to limit access to public sector contracts from organised crime groups.

In addition to this work, there are a number of other initiatives being taken forward under the Deter strand of the Serious Organised Crime Strategy to help businesses and local authorities to protect themselves from becoming victims of serious organised crime through enhanced collaboration and information exchange.

These initiatives include a range of presentations being delivered by the SCDEA Interventions team to COSLA, local authorities and business organisations aimed at increasing awareness and reducing the threat to legitimate business from serious organised crime. Strathclyde Police are also in the process of signing a number of information sharing agreements with the local authorities within their force area to improve information flow around organised crime groups and their ability to target the public sector.

The Serious Organised Crime Taskforce will keep these issues under review, to ensure that we are continually improving our ability to increase awareness across Scotland and prevent public sector contracts being awarded to organised crime groups.

Work is currently ongoing to identify a method of linking the e-Procurement and Criminal History databases in a way that is both secure and appropriately transparent. In addition to this work, representatives of the Serious Organised Crime and Procurement Sub Group are planning to meet with members of the Dutch authorities to share best practice and learn from their experiences of the administrative approach that they have adopted in relation to serious organised crime and public sector procurement in the Netherlands.

The Scottish Intelligence and Co-ordination Unit (SICU) has now been established and will become the recognised single point for the co-ordination and sharing of intelligence and information on serious organised crime groups across Scotland.

In addition to the work of the SICU, individual police forces across Scotland are working closely with individual local authorities to assist them in ensuring that they are minimising their risk of exposure to organised crime groups when seeking potential contractors.

The Scottish Government itself is firmly committed to ensuring that public contracts are awarded to legitimate businesses and has made it a condition of contract that those providing private security services directly or indirectly to it achieve Approved Contractor Status from the Security Industry Authority. The authority is the body responsible for regulating the private security industry across the UK, and must be satisfied that a company and its directors meet its fit and proper organisation/person tests before conferring Approved Contractor Status on a company. We have also communicated this across the wider public sector in Scotland with a view to encouraging other public bodies to adopt this policy.

The Serious Organised Crime and Procurement Sub Group provides regular progress updates to both the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and to the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce.

Initial collaborative work has been undertaken between the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency and the Scottish Procurement Directorate to assist with the identification of those sectors of public procurement which are most vulnerable to exploitation by Serious Organised Crime Groups. This initial work still requires further development and the findings from this work will be reported once they are available.

In addition to this ongoing work, the SOC Taskforce Information and Research Plan includes work to develop our longer term understanding of how to better assess the vulnerability of business sectors to infiltration by Serious Organised Crime Groups drawing on methods and evidence from other jurisdictions.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The information requested is not held centrally.

Statistics on the number of antisocial behaviour orders issued to adults and under 16s between 1 October 2004 and 31 March 2008, by local authority area, can be found on the Scottish Government website at www.scotland.gov.uk.

Local partners have in place their own robust performance management systems to assess the impact of their efforts to reduce antisocial behaviour (ASB). In addition, there are national partner-led approaches such as the Scottish Policing Performance Framework, which collates information on ASB from all police forces.

The Scottish Government focuses its attention on achieving national outcomes rather than monitoring the use of measures within the Act. The effort to achieve these outcomes is captured in the Single Outcome Agreements (SOAs) prepared by the 32 Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) in Scotland. Action to reduce ASB is well represented in SOAs.

In publishing Promoting Positive Outcomes, the new antisocial behaviour framework, the Scottish Government committed to provide an annual report to parliament on progress towards implementation. We are collaborating with partners to develop a new voluntary performance framework, aimed at supporting the work of CPPs to achieve national outcomes. Progress on this will be included in the first annual report which is due in the autumn.