I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

Following discussions with Historic Environment Scotland (HES), SPS has been granted an extension to the HMP Barlinnie public consultation on the proposed listing of buildings.

The extension has been extended until 31 May 2025 to allow SPS to fully consider the extent of the listing and accurately comment on all aspects that are material to the HES decision making process.

HES supported the request and indicated that an extension such as this is normal when considering complex cases such as HMP Barlinnie.

The Scottish Government is working with industry through the ministerially-led Construction Leadership Forum (CLF) to support the green energy transition, embracing the opportunities to grow Scotland’s economy, and as part of this work to explore natural material use. In addition, Scottish Government fund Built Environment – Smarter Transformation (BE-ST), who have undertaken extensive research into innovative construction materials.

Construction Leadership Forum

In 2023, the Construction Leadership Forum (CLF) published a report commissioned by construction innovation centre, Built Environment – Smarter Transformation (BE-ST), which identified and analysed the five highest value and highest growth low carbon energy supply chains in Scotland, and included natural construction materials. The report can be found online.

The CLF’s Transformation Action Plan was launched on 25 Jan 2024. Actions on key areas such as skills, net zero, and supply chains are now being implemented by eleven CLF working groups, overseen by a Transformation Board.

The CLF Net Zero working group, chaired by Stephen Good, CEO of BE-ST, and Gordon Nelson, Federation of Master Builders, has been meeting regularly and work is currently progressing. The group is focussed on driving a just transition to being net zero in embodied carbon, industry operations, and over asset life cycles, which was a commitment in the Construction Accord.

Built Environment – Smarter Transformation

The Scottish Government provide funding to Scotland’s construction innovation centre, BE-ST, who have undertaken extensive research into innovative construction materials.

BE-ST and Zero Waste Scotland asked the University of Edinburgh to prepare a report looking into the availability, performance, manufacturing supply chains, and market analysis of Natural Fibre and Circular Insulation options. Published in 2023, the report can be accessed online.

BE-ST have undertaken a number of other projects supporting and expanding the supply chains for natural construction materials, including:

• Sylvan Stuart Integra House: funded by BE-ST (then CSIC) with academic support from Robert Gordon University, exploring the application of (imported) blown wood fibre insulation. In order to consider this type of insulation as a valid method for Integra House, a series of blowing trials were undertaken at BE-ST to understand the potential of incorporating blown wood fibre insulation into the manufacturing process.
• MDF-R: blown-in recycled MDF (product now fully commercialised and available). Settlement testing was carried out at BE-ST to determine the optimum density with no settlement in accordance with British Standards. Testing also investigated the settlement of the installed product under vibration and the optimum density to remove the chance of settlement.
• Sisaltech: Developing Sisalwool product (product now fully commercialised and available). Product prototyping support – Sisal fibre and textile waste material blending on BE-ST’s Spike Former and Thermobonding line, with further prototype development on BE-ST’s Stonemaker casting press. BE-ST also provided consultancy on type testing, product certification and route to market.
• IndiNature: Developing the IndiTherm product (now fully commercialised and available). Product prototyping support – Hemp fibre blending on BE-ST’s Spike Former. BE-ST also provided consultancy on type testing, product certification, and route to market, and supported the certification process with an equipment loan to IndiNature, who have been supported financially through Zero Waste Scotland and the Scottish National Investment Bank.

Through its International Development Fund, the Scottish Government has over the last year, following work with our partner countries, launched new programmes with a heavier focus on investment in health, education, equalities, and renewables, underpinned by and guided by our core Principles. We also launched two new major Climate Justice Fund programmes in 2023.

The Scottish Government separately provides funding to support Human Rights Defenders. The Scottish Government established the Scottish Human Rights Defender Fellowship in 2018 as a temporary relocation programme to support international human rights defenders at risk as a direct result of their work. The Fellowship – and Scotland – has welcomed 19 human rights defenders from 16 different countries, two of whom have been from our partner countries Malawi and Zambia.

The Scottish Government does not hold all data in a way that can meet this request. The Scottish Government can provide you with a breakdown of its annual spend on contingent workers by Directorate, but is unable to provide this by Project and/or Contract name as it cannot be consistently categorised in this way.

The table containing the breakdown of expenditure by Directorate on contingent workers was too large to be incorporated into the PQ response. This has therefore been recorded as bib 65692 held in The Scottish Parliament Information Centre. To note, this data has been extracted from a different system to that which retains records on contingent worker numbers and cannot be viewed as inter-related, due to the dependency on different hierarchical structures and definitions of contingent worker. This data does not provide a comparable view of the costs attributable to the contingent workforce listed Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot

The Scottish Government implemented an Oracle Cloud enterprise resource planning system in Autumn 2024, replacing our legacy HR and Finance systems. Though the data capture of contingent workers remains an area requiring some further development, the implementation of a combined HR and Finance system will improve the data we hold on workforce costs.

The Scottish Government has prioritised a reduction in the contingent workforce such as contractors and consultants, as it has reduced its workforce size. This approach has been in partnership with recognised Trade Unions. The number of contingent workers is now 39% lower than in March 2022.

Social Security Scotland has the capacity to identify the number of distinct recipients removed from the client count for Adult Disability Payment in a given time frame. Social Security Scotland do not hold the breakdown of such data by cause of removal.

Social Security Scotland will continue to review and prioritise any new statistics produced and will take account of users’ needs when developing future publications, in line with Code of Practice for Statistics.

The latest Adult Disability Payment official statistics publication can be found at: Social Security Scotland - Statistics. The next release of Adult Disability Payment statistics, covering the period to the end of January 2025, is due to be published on 18 March 2025.

Public bodies and organisations operating in Scotland can be affected by a wide range of law in both devolved and reserved areas, with differing statutory mechanisms for enforcement. The Scottish Ministers may, in some cases, be subject to statutory duties to issue guidance to affected organisations and groups. However, other public bodies will have a statutory roles in regulating enforcement and issuing guidance about areas of law, including those reserved to the UK Parliament.

For payments made by the Scottish Government to public bodies and publicly funded organisations in Scotland, the Scottish Government expects those bodies to comply with the full range of legal obligations imposed on them by all relevant legislation. This includes duties under the Equality Act 2010, where key provisions on matters such as discrimination and the various protected characteristics, including sex, are reserved, or under health and safety workplace regulations, which are also reserved.

Local Government funding allocations are routinely published in Local Government Finance Circulars. The allocations in question are available at:

2013-14 - Circular 2/2013

2014-15 - Circular 2/2014

2015-16 - Circular 2/2015

2016-17 - Circular 1/2016

2017-18 - Circular 1/2017

2018-19 - Circular 4/2018

2019-20 - Circular 2/2019

2020-21 - Circular 4/2020

2021-22 - Circular 5/2021

2022-23 - Circular 1/2022

2023-24 - Circular 3/2023

2024-25 - Circular 2/2024

2025-26 - Circular 1/2025

Delivering high quality endoscopy is a priority of the NHS Scotland clinical and service teams.

The Scottish Government commissioned the National Endoscopy Programme Team, with the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD), and Scottish Government officials routinely monitor Health Board performance against the eight key diagnostic tests, including upper endoscopy, lower endoscopy, colonoscopy, cystoscopy, which are used for the diagnosis and surveillance of gastrointestinal problems such as ulcerative colitis and intestinal polyps.

The National Endoscopy Programme Team also supports on-site visits to all Boards to identify local issues, offer Boards support to develop Demand, Capacity, Activity and Queue (DCAQ) information/capacity planning, and promote alternatives to traditional endoscopy such as CytoSCOT, where clinically appropriate.

In addition, CfSD’s Gastroenterology Specialty Delivery Group (SDG) is working to develop national pathway recommendations for gastroenterology diseases such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Irritable Bowel Disease. These pathways will reduce unwarranted variation by standardising service provision and pathways on a best-of-class and once-for-Scotland basis wherever possible.

Performance data relating to the number of waits for one of eight key diagnostic tests is published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) on a quarterly basis. The latest publication provides data up to 31 December 2024 and is available here: Diagnostic waiting times - Waits for key diagnostic tests 25 February 2025 - NHS waiting times - diagnostics - Publications - Public Health Scotland

The Scottish Government is taking action to create jobs and boost employability in our coalfields communities. We are investing over £900 million in Growth Deals for Ayrshire, Glasgow (including North and South Lanarkshire), and Edinburgh and South East Scotland which includes Fife. This funding is creating thousands of new jobs and maintaining existing jobs across these areas. The UK Government is providing match funding.

No One Left Behind is a Scotland-wide strategy delivering employability support to those eligible and furthest from the labour market. It is a collaboration between the Scottish Government and local authorities, and aligns and integrates services in each local area to offer an all-round, holistic approach.

Regeneration programmes such as Regeneration Capital Grant Fund, Investing in Communities Fund and Strengthening Communities Programme are supporting job creation, training, and employability skills. In addition we have provided over £29 million in funding to CRT since 1999 to invest in improving outcomes for former coalfield communities.

The SPCB is open to discussions with organisations that may provide a practical improvement to the processes we already have in place.  Already, we have embarked on several ways to reduce single use products including disposable cups usage across the Scottish Parliament.  The cup levy has been in place since 2019 which has significantly reduced the use of disposables.  We actively monitor the usage of disposable cups with our service partner and are working to reduce this further through positive consumer behaviour.  We are in the process of installing a customer operated appliance that rinses and dries reusable cups efficiently and hygienically. This will support customers further with using reusables on a return basis assisting us with the goal of disposable reduction. We have also ordered a stock of reuseable cups to be available when personal cups are forgotten or not available.