Chamber and committees

All costs, including those associated with crew staff, providing security, providing catering and port charges for the M/S Victoria and M/S Ambition are covered in our contract with Corporate Travel Management.

The original contract notice with Corporate Travel Management (North) Ltd, was published on 9 August 2022. Latest details on contract costings will be published soon on the Scottish Government’s website.

Invoices to CTM will be published on the Scottish Government website in due course as part of our statutory duty to publish all invoices greater than £25k.

The Scottish Government places great importance on leisure facilities and recognises the significant challenges that are facing operators such as leisure trusts, particularly with swimming pools, as increased operational costs continues to put pressure on their operations.

I recently met with members of Community Leisure UK to discuss the issues facing the leisure and culture trusts in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has increased the local government funding by over £1 billion in 2022-23, a real terms increase of 6.3 per cent, despite a 5.2 per cent real terms reduction in the overall Scottish Budget. It is the responsibility of the individual local authorities to provide leisure facilities, including swimming pools, and local authorities are independent corporate bodies with their own power and responsibilities and are entirely separate from the Scottish Government. Ultimately, it is for locally elected representatives to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial recourses available to them, including on swimming pools, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The Scottish Government will continue to make the case for the UK Government to do more to protect our public services.

The Scottish Government is grateful to Police Scotland’s call handlers for their continued hard work to ensure that calls to the service are answered as quickly and as safely as possible.

In its 2021 briefing note, His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, (HMICS) noted significant progress in Police Scotland’s call handling processes and a commitment to pursue continuous improvement. Furthermore, this year’s HMICS assurance review on the service’s Contact Assessment Model (CAM) highlighted a number of successes in how calls are now triaged by handlers.

The Scottish Government does not collect data on Police Scotland 999 or 101 calls. Delivery of these services is a matter for the Chief Constable under the oversight of the SPA.

Police Scotland publish monthly reports on call handling which are available at: https://www.scotland.police.uk/about-us/what-we-do/how-we-are-performing/.

The calculated annual average cost per prisoner place within SPS is published in the SPS Annual Report and Accounts each year. For 2021-22 the annual average cost per prisoner place, which excludes capital charges, exceptional payments and the cost of the Court Custody and Prisoner Escort contracts, was £41,858 (2020-21 £39,350).

SPS do not currently calculate the average cost per prisoner place at an individual establishment level therefore this level of detail is not available.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-12534 on 12 December 2022. 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

725 additional training places have been created for trainee doctors since 2014. This includes 152 posts which were agreed to this year and will be recruited to in 2023. This represents the largest annual expansion to date, exceeding last year’s record by 13 places. An annual breakdown is included in the following table.

Data is not held for years prior to 2014.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-12534 on 12 December 2022. 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

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-12583 on 12 December 2022. 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

The Scottish Government is currently giving consideration to recommendation 7 of the Inspectorate’s report as part of its work on the planned Criminal Justice Reform Bill and proposals in relation to Independent Legal Representation in respect of section 275 applications.

The Bill will look to deliver reforms building on the Scottish Government’s recent consultation on Improving Victims’ Experiences of the Justice System and recommendations from Lady Dorrian’s Review on Improving the Management of Sexual Offence Cases.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-12534 on 12 December 2022. 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