Chamber and committees

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

Emergency Response Training is compulsory for all SPS operational staff. This training provides staff with the skill to perform immediate care, until the arrival of medical help, to aid any person, or persons, who become injured or suddenly ill. All prisons are operationally staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

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

The decision to remove any individual in our care from association is always done in accordance with Rule 95 of the Prisons and Young Offenders Institutions (Scotland) Rules 2011.

An individual may only be removed from association and accommodated in a Separation and Reintegration Unit (SRU) where the Governor is satisfied that it is appropriate for maintaining good order or discipline; protecting the interests of any person; or ensuring the safety of others.

Individuals are only removed from association on a temporary basis and a management plan should always be devised, at the earliest possible opportunity, in order to support reintegration.

As part of the normalisation routine, people held in SRUs are afforded the opportunity to engage in outside exercise, education and the use of other SRU facilities including gym areas, when available.

Additionally, people held in SRUs retain their entitlement to access family visits, phone calls and mail correspondence.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government as the responsibility for delivering prisoner healthcare, including GP services, rests with local NHS Boards.

The report Women's Service and Pathways Across the Forensic Mental Health Estate has been prepared by the Forensic Mental Health Services Managed Care Network working with NHS Boards. It will be published in due course by the Forensic Network.

The Independent Review of Forensic Mental Health Services in Scotland is undertaking a wide-ranging review of the delivery of forensic mental health services and must take account of existing pieces of work, including this report.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information at present. As stated in the answer to S5W-20884 on 30 January 2019, the Scottish Government are currently working with the Scottish Prison Service to develop a shared approach to publishing the data captured by the operational database (as well as the range of historical data held) and making more data and information accessible to users.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

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

SPS publishes the average number of Purposeful Activity (PA) Hours per week, per convicted prisoner, as part of our Key Performance Indicators as reported in our Annual Report and Accounts.

In 2018-19 the average number of PA hours undertaken per convicted person in our care, per week, was 20 hours.

SPS does not publish figures in relation to the number of PA hours undertaken on a daily basis. The number of PA hours available for delivery fluctuate over the course of a working week and generally reduces at weekends.

Average PA hours by prison, per week, per convicted person in SPS care for 2018-19 is detailed in table 1, below:

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

The quote provided was made specifically in relation to HMP Barlinnie, not the wider SPS estate.

On Friday 1 November 2019 HMP Barlinnie was operating at 144% capacity. HMP Barlinnie has been routinely operating significantly above its intended capacity for some time and this has had a notable impact upon the operation of the prison.

Where any prison routinely operates above capacity then this inevitably impacts upon the ability to provide an enhanced regime. HMP Barlinnie’s building design also inhibits open association and in order to ensure the safety of all those in our care, out of cell activity therefore requires more structured delivery than at other prisons.

The Committee for the Prevention of Torture’s (CPT) report highlighted that in other Scottish prisons visited, people held on remand were provided with opportunity for out of cell activity which exceeded two hours per day.

More than £400 million has been invested in the DSSB programme, which has provided access to fibre broadband to over 940,000 premises to date - over 100,000 more premises than originally estimated - with over 90% of those premises capable of accessing download speeds of at least 24 Megabits per second (Mbps).

Higher than anticipated take-up of services has resulted in funding being returned to the DSSB contracts across Scotland - including the recently announced £3 million for the Highlands & Islands contract - extending coverage even further.

As this is a national programme, it is not possible to provide a geographic breakdown of funding. However, to date, 9,983 premises on the Orkney Islands have been supported, and areas such as Holm and Tankerness will benefit from this additional investment.

The question S5W-20884 does not relate to data on the hours spent by remand prisoners engaged in purposeful activity.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information and, as stated in the answer to question S5W-20603 on 9 January 2019, hours of purposeful activity is not available broken down by sentence type. Data is not collected in that format by SPS. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The deployment of Scottish police officers to other UK police forces, on Mutual Aid, is an operational matter for the Chief Constable. The police force requesting Mutual Aid pays the supplying force on a cost recovery basis and Police Scotland utilise the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) "Guidelines on Charging for Police Services: Mutual Aid Cost Recovery" (link below) when working with other forces to agree funding for Mutual Aid deployments.

https://www.npcc.police.uk/documents/PoliceCertificates/NPCC%20Guidelines%20on%20Charging%20for%20PS_MA%20April_2019.pdf .