Chamber and committees

Data on complaints regarding the removal of care packages is not aggregated centrally – complaints may be made to the Scottish Government, the Care Inspectorate and individual Health and Social Care Partnerships, rather than to a single organisation.

The pandemic continues to present challenges for supported people, the social care workforce, and unpaid carers. We are working closely with Health and Social Care Partnerships to urgently address these pressures. We have made clear our expectation that disruption or removal of care packages should be avoided. Health and Social Care Partnerships have provided assurances that those care packages of most clinical urgency will continue during this difficult period.

There is not a single offence of modern slavery in Scotland. Several offences fall within the ambit of modern slavery. These offences are listed below.

On 31 May 2016, the Human Trafficking & Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015 came into effect.

The 2015 Act introduced new offences and aggravations, which apply to conduct occurring on or after 31 May 2016.

Offences that were in effect prior to the implementation of the 2015 Act continue to apply to conduct occurring before 17 December 2016.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service are able to provide statistical data from 2002/03 onwards. Table 1 details the number of accused persons reported to the Procurator Fiscal, for one or more of the offences listed below, in each financial year since 2002-03.

Table 1

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 provides local authorities with a discretionary power to set up workplace parking licensing (WPL) schemes. Section 71 of the 2019 Act defines what constitutes a workplace parking place. Customer parking at retail outlets (except parking for business customers) is not included in the definition of workplace parking and therefore those places could not be included in any local authorities’ WPL scheme.

It will be for local authorities to decide whether they wish to implement WPL locally and to shape proposals to suit local circumstances. Parking places provided for employees and business customers are included in the definition of workplace parking set out in the 2019 Act. Accordingly, employers will be liable for workplace parking for staff within the context of proposals set out by local authorities.

I have frequent discussions with Ministerial colleagues on a range of matters. We are committed to reforming council tax to make it fairer, working with the Scottish Green Party and COSLA to oversee the development of effective deliberative engagement on sources of local government funding. including Council Tax, that will culminate in a Citizens' Assembly.

Data on local authority debt are published as part of the annual Scottish Local Government Finance Statistics (SLGFS). The latest available data is from SLGFS 2020-21 which was published on 22 March 2022. Figures on General Fund debt by local authority at 31 March 2021, including figures per person, are provided in Table F of the 'Scottish Local Government Finance Statistics (SLGFS) 2020-21 - Additional Analysis - Capital' supporting excel file which can be downloaded at https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-local-government-finance-statistics-slgfs-2020-21/documents/ .

The Scottish Government is committed to understanding the health inequalities faced by people experiencing homelessness, and improving the way health and housing services work together to promote an integrated and holistic model of care.

GP registration is the main way to gain access to the vast majority of NHS healthcare services. The Scottish Government published patient registration guidance in September 2018 clarifying that patients do not require proof of identity or address to register with a general practice. The inability by a patient to provide identification or proof of address is not considered reasonable grounds to refuse or delay registering a patient.

We know that poor health is both a cause and a consequence of homelessness and that is why homelessness must be seen as both a housing and a health matter. In recognition of the need for collective responsibility across public services to prevent homelessness, we are consulting on plans to introduce new homelessness prevention duties, including on public bodies in health and social care, to ask about a person’s housing circumstances and act where a problem is identified.

The Scottish Government has not had any discussions to date, relating to the introduction of a national garden waste tax.

Decisions on local service provision and charges are for local authorities to make. However we want to make sure that the best choice for the environment is also the easy choice for households and will be consulting in May on a new set of measures to achieve our waste and recycling targets to 2025 and beyond.

The National Referral Mechanism is the UK-wide framework for identifying victims of human
trafficking and exploitation and ensuring they receive appropriate support. The NRM is
operated by the Single Competent Authority and Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority
within the Home Office.

NRM data can be accessed via the Modern Slavery: National Referral Mechanism statistics which
contains records back to 2013.

In terms of police recorded crime statistics, there is no single crime of slavery. However multiple
types of crime involve, or can involve, slavery. A list of these is provided below. Further information
on slavery related activity is also available from the Anti-Slavery Commissioner, within their
Annual Report . The data the Scottish Government receives from Police Scotland is a general count
of the number of crimes and offences recorded by the police, split by local authority. We do not receive
further details on the characteristics of these cases, including the number of victims.

Slavery or forced labour

Human organ offences

Immoral traffic

Procuration (excluding homosexual offences)

Procuration (homosexual offences)

Breach of trafficking and exploitation order

Most of these crime types fall under the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015.
This came into effect on 31 May 2016, with the first recorded crimes falling in the 2016-17 recording
year (see Table One below). Prior to this act there were no straightforward means to track crimes of
slavery.

Table 2 shows the number of Immoral traffic and Procuration-based crimes recorded in Scotland since
1999 (both of which are classified as crimes associated with prostitution). It should be noted that the
same crimes are shown in Tables 1 and 2 for Immoral traffic over 2016-17 to 2020-21. This is because
the data we hold does not identify which crimes of Immoral traffic relate to the Human Trafficking and
Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015, and which relate to earlier legislation.

Table 1 – Recorded crimes under the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015,
Scotland, 2016-17 to 2020-21

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of reported incidents of online scams, though estimates are available on the volume of police recorded fraud that was cyber-enabled over 2018-19 to 2020-21 (see the following table). Further detail is available in Table A12 of the 2020-21 recorded crime National Statistics .

As with other types of crime, not all cases of fraud are reported to the police, and cyber-enabled fraud can potentially encompass a wide range of incident types.

At least part of the increase in 2020-21 may be due to the significant impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and government instructions to limit social contact. For example, in their ‘ Crime in England and Wales : year ending March 2021’ release, the Office for National Statistics noted that an increase in fraud and computer misuse offences could reflect perpetrators taking advantage of behavioural changes during the pandemic, such as increased online shopping.

Furthermore, a procedural change was made to the recording of international crime in 2020-21, whereby cases carried out by a perpetrator who was likely to be outside the UK are now included. This change resulted in an estimated 900 additional crimes of cyber-enabled fraud being recorded in the latest year. Estimates for 2021-22 will be published later in the year as part of the 2021-22 recorded crime National Statistics.

Police recorded fraud in Scotland that was estimated to be cyber-enabled.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of reported incidents of door-to-door scams. Some information is available from a 2018-19 study into police recorded fraud in Scotland, the findings of which were presented within the Recorded crime in Scotland 2018-19 National Statistics .

This study suggested that ‘fraudulent selling’ accounts for approximately 12% of fraud crimes, equivalent to 1,160 crimes. This typically relates to where a victim has paid for a service or product (either in person or through the internet) that the perpetrator has no intention of providing. This could include through online transactions, or payments to bogus workmen. Further analysis of this group suggests that an estimated 270 crimes of recorded fraud (or 3% of all fraud) involved a perpetrator knocking on the victim’s door, taking money and not providing a service.