The Energy Skills Passport is an industry-led initiative supported by RenewableUK and Offshore Energies UK, with Scottish Government funding also contributing to its development. The initial version, launched in January 2025, is designed to support individual oil and gas workers by helping them identify transferable skills and training needs to transition into key offshore wind roles. The Passport is focused on workforce mobility between sectors and we will continue to engage with industry and other stakeholders, including trade unions, on its potential roles across Scotland's energy sectors.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6W-33255 on 23 January 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

There have been two instances where groups of prisoners have been granted early release from their sentence at the order of Scottish Ministers in the last five years – firstly in May 2020, and secondly in June and July 2024.

Data was made available on the number of individuals who returned to prison custody (either held on remand or sentenced) amongst the individuals released in those processes. For the May 2020 Coronavirus specific emergency early release process, as of November 2020, 142 of the original 348 individuals who were released early had returned to custody.

For the June and July 2024 emergency early release process, as of December 2024, 61 of the 477 individuals who were released early had returned to custody before their original date of liberation.

The information requested on reoffending is not held centrally by the Scottish Government and could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost.

The Scottish Government is working closely with the UK Government on their review of electricity market arrangements (REMA), including on any potential impacts that zonal pricing could have on all market participants, including consumers, communities and industry. The UK Government is working on modelling to further understand this, and we will continue to scrutinise this closely. Modelling conducted for UK Government by LCP Delta and Grant Thornton indicates that indicates that Scotland’s consumers could potentially benefit from lower wholesale electricity prices. However, we are also aware of modelling which suggests potentially negative impacts for Scotland’s renewables industry.

We are engaging with a range of stakeholders, including the renewable industry and consumer organisations to ensure that the impacts of zonal pricing are fully considered by the UK Government ahead of any decisions on market reform. We have also gathered views on electricity reform via the first Scottish Forum on Future Electricity Markets held in December 2024 and our Scottish Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) which meets four times a year.

The Scottish Government commissioned independent research through ClimateXChange to assess the potential impact of locational pricing for a just transition to net zero, which was published on 12 August 2024.

Employment and industrial relations legislation is reserved to the UK Parliament. While this remains the case, the Scottish Government will continue to use our Fair Work policy to drive up labour market standards for workers across the Scottish labour market. There have been no recent discussions with the UK Government specifically regarding the employment rights of offshore oil and gas workers in Scotland.

A decision has been made by the Environment Agency to replace some of the Quality Protocols (QP) which only apply in England and Wales, including the QP for Tyre Derived Rubber Materials, with a ‘Resource Framework’. The outcomes of the review of the Tyre Derived Rubber Material QP (published in 2009) are yet to be published therefore we do not know to what extent the Resource Framework will mirror or amend the approach currently set out in the QP.

In Scotland, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency's (SEPA) approach to end-of-waste is similar to the QPs. SEPA has equivalent end-of-waste positions for many of the materials covered by QPs, including compost, anaerobic digestate and aggregates. They do not currently have a published end-of-waste position for Tyre Derived Rubber Materials but have discussed the possibility with tyre recyclers in the past.

The Environment Agency is currently working with representatives from the tyre recycling industry on the design and contents of the new Resource Framework and SEPA will consider the Framework’s findings, once it is understood what the Framework for this material contains. While awaiting the outcome of the QP review, SEPA remains open to approaches from any business seeking to agree an end-of-waste position.

SEPA’s end-of-waste positions take the approach that the storage of recovered materials remains a regulated waste activity until they are dispatched to their end user. This is to ensure that the recovery of the material is genuine and that the material is not just stockpiled with no actual prospect of an end use.

There is no obligation on private companies to inform the Scottish Government of redundancy figures, therefore this information is not held centrally. The Scottish Government will continue to engage regularly with both the oil and gas industry and the relevant trade unions, including in relation to workforce planning matters. We will also continue to monitor company announcements.

In the unfortunate event of any employees facing redundancy, the Scottish Government will always offer and provide support through our initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment, PACE. Through providing skills development and employability support, PACE aims to minimise the time individuals affected by redundancy are out of work.

The SPS engaged the services of legal advisers, cost consultants, insurance brokers and geo-technical consultants to advise on cost controls within the contract. It would not be appropriate for SPS to publish this advice as it is commercially sensitive information, however SPS will publish a summary of their Business Case on their website.

SPS will publish information on the releases under the changes to sentencing for short-term prisoners on their website and SPS has previously published information on releases under the emergency release legislation also on their website.

SPS continue to be as open and transparent as possible, whilst continuing to meet their statutory obligation to ensure that those in their care have their personal information protected; as such SPS cannot publish a breakdown of establishments as some of the data could relate to a small group of individuals, which may lead to their inadvertent identification.

Information on the total number of incidents in schools attended by Police Scotland is not held centrally.

Information is available from the Accredited Official Statistics on the number of police recorded crimes of weapon possession in a school. This is available within Table A8 of the Recorded Crime in Scotland 2023-24 publication, back to 2017-18 (the first year data was collected separately for school settings).