Chamber and committees

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

Prisoners are charged £5.00 to use the Prisoner PIN phones for 100 minutes when calling a landline and are charged £10.00 when they call a mobile phone for 100 minutes.

There have been no changes to these prices in the last 4 years.

Neither the Home Energy Scotland (HES) Grant and Loan Scheme or the Private Rented Sector (PRS) Landlord Loan Scheme require the household or applicant to be in receipt of benefits to be eligible for funding. Accordingly, no information is collected in regard to this during the application process.

The HES Grant and Loan Scheme is available to all homeowners in Scotland. The PRS Landlord Loan Scheme is available to registered private landlords, acting either as an individual or a business, that owns privately rented properties.

The Trauma Informed Justice: A Knowledge and Skills Framework for Working with Victims and Witnesses, published on 3 May 2023 , gives organisations the information they need to develop and deliver training for their staff, tailored to the nature of the engagement those staff have with victims and witnesses. Justice organisations represented on the Victims Taskforce are working in collaboration to implement the framework and are being supported by NHS Education Scotland, the authors of the Framework.

The provisions in Part 2 of the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill have been designed to make sure our justice system recognises how common trauma is, understands how trauma can affect people, and adjust its ways of working to respond to those impacts as far as possible and reduce the risk of retraumatising people. The Bill creates a legal definition of trauma-informed practice for the justice sector, to help provide clarity and consistency, and it requires criminal justice agencies to have regard to trauma-informed practice in their work with victims and witnesses of crime.

There were no incidents of someone being found in possession of a firearm within a prison in 2022-23. When the Recorded Crime in Scotland Statistics 2022-23 were originally published on the 20th June they showed one such case. However, Police Scotland identified an administrative error, whereby this crime should have instead been classified as bringing drugs into a prison. The above statistics were revised to reflect this and re-published on the 1st July 2023.

Dwelling types including flats are covered by the Warmer Homes Scotland scheme. Domestic Energy Assessors will carry out a survey of the home and recommend suitable improvements which can include insulation measures such as loft insulation, wall insulation and draft-proofing. The improvements offered to the homeowner will depend on the survey results of the home and what room it is in the property. Where there is a roof above the ceiling it will be loft insulation that is offered, subject to access and suitability. Where a flat roof is present, internal wall insulation (IWI) can be applied if appropriate and recommended by the Domestic Energy Assessor. This measure is only offered in habitable rooms (e.g. bedrooms or living rooms).

The Scottish Milk and Healthy Snack Scheme (SMHSS) expands and improves on the UK Nursery Milk Scheme, which it replaced in August 2021. It is the only Scheme in the UK offering children a healthy snack of fruit or vegetables, in addition to milk, promoting better health outcomes for children through a nutritious and varied diet. For those children who cannot drink cow’s, goat’s or sheep’s milk for medical, ethical or religious reasons, the SMHSS offers a specified non-dairy alternative.

Most recent data from local authority partners (April 2023) shows uptake of around 3,300 registered childcare settings and around 140,000 children. Spend on delivering the SMHSS amounted to £6.9 Million in financial year 2021-22 and £13.8 Million in financial year 2022-23.

The Scottish Government fully recognise the seriousness of the ongoing cost of living crisis and, through the emergency Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act, are helping tenants, who we know are at risk of being financially vulnerable and less able to absorb the impacts of the current cost of living crisis. The emergency measures include a 3% cap on applicable in-tenancy rent increases and stronger protections against eviction.

Annex F of the Statement of Reasons for the 2nd proposed extension of the Act provides analysis of mortgage rate rises for private sector landlords in the context of this emergency legislation. While this does not correlate to increases in rents, it does reflect the potential increases in costs that some landlords may be facing which could influence how landlords with Buy to Let mortgages set rents.

The emergency Act is giving important support to tenants, providing them with much-needed stability in their housing costs. It has gone further than anywhere else in the UK in helping protect tenants across the rental sector.

While the focus of the emergency legislation is to protect tenants, the Scottish Government recognises that some landlords may also be facing pressures from this cost crisis. That is why the Scottish Government has built in a number of safeguards that allow for consideration of landlords’ circumstances. The measures will be kept under review and the Scottish Government will work with the private rented sector to understand the impact.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on whether all employees of Community Justice Scotland have been directed to receive training on trauma-informed justice, or how many employees have received this training to date. This is a matter for Community Justice Scotland.

There has been no change to the number of planned carriages on peak services on the North Berwick to Edinburgh line, with the majority of peak trains planned to run with six carriages.

From time to time operational difficulties do arise, for example disruption caused by late running cross border services, which may affect delivery of ScotRail plans on this route. This is an operational matter for ScotRail Trains Ltd. to manage, who may be contacted at Contact us | ScotRail for further information.

The Scottish Government do not routinely hold data on ChargePlace Scotland charge points per square kilometre.

The latest figures from the Department For Transport show that Scottish electric vehicle drivers benefit from over 70 public charge points per one hundred thousand people, compared to 60 in England (excluding London), over 50 in Wales and 20 in Northern Ireland. Scotland has the highest rate of rapid charging provision anywhere in the UK, with 18.4 per one hundred thousand people while the UK average is 11.4.