Chamber and committees

As the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Programme is delivered locally by NHS boards, annual costs for delivering the programme are not held centrally.

As information on the diagnostic outcomes for babies can take some time to be established, annual data is not available immediately. A further annual report for 2009-10 has, however, been requested and will be published in due course.

The Government will publish the final Scottish sensory impairment strategy in the summer of 2013.

The draft Scottish sensory impairment strategy will be issued for consultation before the end of this year.

Yes.

The guidance has no statutory basis. However, Scottish ministers are able to issue guidance in many areas where appropriate, including ways in which to help ensure that public bodies have good decision making processes.

The Accounts Commission audits the performance of local authorities whilst the Auditor General audits the performance of most other public bodies in Scotland - the audit includes consideration of the relevant bodies' systems and processes.

The available information is given in the following table.

People Convicted¹ in Scottish Courts, 2010-11

Note: 1. Where main offence.

People are counted once for each occasion on which they are proceeded against. If more than one proceeding is disposed of on the same day, each occasion will be counted separately. Where a person is proceeded against for more than one crime or offence, only the main charge is counted. The main charge is the one receiving the severest penalty if one or more charges are proved. If more than one charge receives the same (or a combined) penalty, then the main charge is the one judged by the police (who provide the information) to be the most serious.

In 2010-11, the number of people who were in receipt of passported benefits and were granted legal aid under the following categories was:

(a) Advice by Way of Representation for a criminal trial: 25,283, and

(b) Criminal legal aid in summary criminal cases: 25,957.

1,688 people in receipt of passported benefits were granted criminal legal aid in solemn criminal cases by the Scottish Legal Aid Board between November 2010 and April 2011. Until November 2010 the decision about whether to grant criminal legal aid in solemn cases rested with the courts. There is no data available prior to that date.

As Advice by Way of Representation (ABWOR) is used primarily for guilty pleas, few, if any, recipients will have cases which resulted in acquittal.

However, in relation to criminal legal aid, records from the Scottish Legal Aid Board (the board) indicate that:

For solemn cases:

Following a trial, 590 cases involving criminal legal aid are recorded as either not guilty or not proven. This figure represents 5.4% of solemn cases.

For summary cases:

Following a trial, 3,221 cases involving criminal legal aid are recorded as either not guilty or not proven. That figure represents approximately 6.6% of summary legally aided cases, but does not include those who pleaded guilty at the outset and were awarded Advice by Way of Representation (ABWOR). If ABWOR is included in the base then the figure becomes 3.8% of all legally assisted summary cases.

These figures are based on the information provided by solicitors to the board, when submitting their accounts, and their accuracy cannot be fully verified.

The available information is contained in the following table.

The latest year for which this analysis is available is 2009-10. Analysis relating to 2010-11 will be published within the Reconviction Rates in Scotland statistical bulletin on 25 September 2012.

Individual Offenders with a Charge Proved for a Crime/Relevant Offence¹ in 2009-10

Notes:

1. Convictions for crimes or common assault, breach of the peace, racially aggravated conduct or harassment, firearms offences or social security offences. Excludes convictions outwith Scotland.

2. Includes a small number of cases where the type of court is not known.

3. These figures have been derived from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors and time lags with data entry and processing. The data are quality assured as far as possible and regularly updated, so that further analysis at a later date will generate revised figures.

The funding available to implement the sensory impairment strategy has yet to be finalised.