I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-41553 on 6 November 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

The Scottish Government continues to consider relevant evidence and analysis as part of our ongoing policy development for a cruise ship levy. This formal analysis will publish early next year.

Port and cruise stakeholders have been working on their own alternative proposals to a levy. We anticipate these will be shared with the Scottish Government in the next few weeks. The Scottish Government will consider these stakeholder proposals alongside the alongside the consultation analysis when deciding next steps.

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

Disclosure Scotland’s service level agreement is to process 90% of applications within 14 days and we are currently performing within this target.

As of Monday 20 October 2025, there were 1,132 Protecting Vulnerable Group (PVG) applications relating to people working with children outstanding beyond 14 days.

Note 1: Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) applications from 1 April 2025 onwards, with the implementation of the Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020, represents: Level 2 PVG scheme disclosure (Join), Level 2 PVG scheme disclosure (Existing), Confirmation of PVG scheme membership (Join) and Confirmation of PVG scheme membership (Existing). Prior to 1 April 2025, PVG applications represents: Scheme Record Disclosure, Short Scheme Record Disclosure, Existing Scheme Record Disclosure and Statements of Scheme Membership.

Note 2: This figure relates to PVG applications solely applying to work with children with a processing time of 14 days and above at the time of data extraction.

Note 3: The processing time for applications currently being processed on the system incorporates all time between an application being received by Disclosure Scotland, through to the time of data extraction. Disclosure Scotland deducts any time which the application was suspended on our system, such as being suspended for customer contact. Weekend days are included in the number of processing days for applications, but national holidays and Scottish Government public and privilege holidays are excluded.

The Scottish Government values the commitment that adoptive families and practitioners make to providing safe, loving, nurturing homes for children and young people across Scotland.

We have awarded the following total funding since 2020 to the Association for Fostering, Kinship and Adoption (AFKA) Scotland; Adoption UK Scotland; St Andrew’s Children’s Society; Health In Mind; and Birthlink, who deliver services and support to adoptive families and practitioners:

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

Disclosure Scotland is currently performing within its Service Level Agreement (SLA) to process 90% of applications within 14 days.

Disclosure Scotland is forecasted to spend £9.84 million on staff costs in financial year 2025 to 2026 to deliver our disclosure processing and support services. This is against a total forecasted Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit (RDEL) spend of £34 million. Of the £9.84 million, £900,000 has been allocated to improve processing times this financial year.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government as it relates to an operational matter for the children’s hearings system.

The Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) publish their annual statistics, which sets out a measure on time taken to progress referrals through the children’s hearings system. The information is available on the SCRA website: Official Statistics - SCRA

Information on the sex of victims and perpetrators is not held centrally as the data the Scottish Government receive from Police Scotland is a simple count of recorded crimes by crime type. The two exceptions to this are where separate Official Statistics products cover specific types of recorded crime in more detail, namely (i) homicide and (ii) any crime recorded by police as part of a domestic abuse related incident. In this instance domestic abuse is defined as between partners (married, cohabiting, civil partnership or otherwise) or ex-partners.

The first table shows the number of female homicide victims with a male accused during each month from January 2024 to March 2025. Figures for April 2025 to date will be available following publication of the 2025-26 Homicide in Scotland Official Statistics in October 2026.

The second table shows the number of domestic abuse incidents involving a female victim and a male suspected perpetrator, where either a non-sexual crime of violence or a sexual crime was recorded. This covers each month from January to March 2024. Figures for April 2024 to March 2025 will be available following publication of the 2024-25 Domestic Abuse in Scotland Official Statistics by Spring 2026.

Number of female homicide victims with male accused, Scotland, January 2024 to March 2025

The Scottish Government is responsible for setting the overall policy direction for neurodevelopmental services, and for working with and funding NHS Health Boards and local authorities to ensure they plan and deliver appropriate local services. It is for local NHS Boards and local authorities to decide how they implement these policies to ensure that their local population have the highest quality of care, support and treatment at the right time and in the right place.

Individual health boards are responsible for the management of their waiting lists. Boards are expected to ensure that their approaches to service delivery are consistent with national guidance, including the National Neurodevelopmental Specification for Children and Young People. The Specification complements and sits within the Getting It Right for Every Child approach, and reflects the principles of UNCRC.

Historic real terms cuts to our block grant from the UK Government have put pressure on our capital budget and the delay in the UK Government setting the Autumn budget is having a knock-on effect on our planning.

As a result of budget constraints, in December 2023, all NHS Boards were advised to pause development of all projects not already in construction.

We are currently working with all NHS Health Boards to develop a whole system NHS infrastructure plan to inform long-term investment priorities across Scotland – this includes consideration of National Treatment Centres.

The Renewable Energy Planning Database (REPD) records the progress of renewable electricity projects over 150kW as they move through the planning system. According to this data there are currently 4216 onshore wind turbines in active operation across Scotland.

Please note that there was a minimum installed capacity threshold for inclusion into the REPD of 1MW until 2021, at which point it was lowered to 150kW. This means that projects below 1MW that were going through the planning system before 2021 may not be represented in the REPD database.

The Scottish Government does not hold or collate data on inactive wind turbines.