Chamber and committees

Scotland's trade and investment work in India is led by Scottish Development International (SDI). SDI currently have a team of 6 FTEs and 1 contractor based across offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad. SDI are in the process of recruiting a further 3 FTEs in India. In Scotland, SDI employ 1 FTE in their High Growth Market Unit. In addition to the trade and investment staff working for SDI in India, many of SDI’s staff based in Scotland spend a proportion of their time supporting the development of trade and investment opportunities in this important market.

Scottish Government staff work closely with SDI on trade and investment matters. This includes implementing the First Minister's four point plan, elements of the Programme for Government and the Scottish Government's Trade and Investment Strategy.

The Scottish Government was not afforded an opportunity to make such a submission. Scotland’s trade and investment work in India is led by Scottish Development International (SDI) which has three offices in India and works with a number of partners to support Scottish businesses to operate and expand in India, as well as promoting investment into Scotland. In pursuing this agenda, SDI works closely with the UK government and its agencies.

The Scottish Government produce estimates of international exports in the Exports Statistics Scotland publication. The latest published figures show Scottish exports to India were worth £205 million in 2014. This is equal to 1.4% of total exports to non-EU countries. The following table shows these figures for the last 10 years.

Scottish Exports (£ million) to India and non-EU Countries, 2005 to 2014

Source: Export Statistics Scotland 2014

Transport Scotland is responsible for preventing snow and ice endangering the safe passage of pedestrians and vehicles on trunk roads in Scotland. Significant planning is undertaken in advance of winter to ensure that the trunk road operating companies are prepared and to share lessons learned from previous years. The trunk road Operating Companies each have a Winter Service Plan, which is available online at:

http://www.transport.gov.scot/road/winter-service-ready-winter-and-severe-weather.

We work with our partners, including Police Scotland and the Met Office, in our state of the art control centre to keep Scotland moving across the winter months and we continue to use the best available technology to give road users the most up to date information about the roads when they require it.

The Transport Scotland website also provides advice on safe winter driving, including the leaflet “Driving in Bad Weather”, which is available at: http://www.transport.gov.scot/system/files/documents/tsc-basic-pages/Road/Driving%20in%20Bad%20Weather_new.pdf.

Local authorities are responsible for winter service operations on local roads.

In August, the Scottish Government published 'Scotland's Labour Market Strategy' to set out how a strong labour market will help drive inclusive growth. The strategy demonstrates the action we are taking to ensure that every person, regardless of background, has the opportunity to develop the skills required to participate successfully in the labour market.

Through implementing Developing the Young Workforce and developing our labour market intelligence and skills planning through Skills Development Scotland, we are making sure these opportunities are matched to local and sectoral skill demands so Scotland's workforce has the right skills and attributes to meet the needs of our evolving labour market.

We deliver on ensuring the provision of a skilled workforce through a variety of means including by rolling out Developing the Young Workforce and supporting 233,000 places in higher education, 227,000 places in college and 26,000 modern apprenticeship starts in 2016.

The information requested is not held centrally. The Scottish Government publishes annual statistics on drug seizures by Police Scotland, however this data is only available at the Scotland level. We also do not hold information on the total monetary value of any specific type of drug seized.

Police Scotland may be able to provide further information (http://www.scotland.police.uk/contact-us/contact-us-form)

The Scottish Government is committed to doing all that we can to prevent and eradicate hate crime and prejudice, and build community cohesion.

We are clear that any form of hate crime is totally unacceptable and we are committed to tackling all forms of crime motivated by prejudice.

Under Section 6 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 an offence is committed when a person communicates material which contains, or implies, a threat of serious violence or death against another person and the material communicated would cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm. An offence is also committed if the material is intended to stir up religiously-motivated hatred. The material communicated does not have to relate to football and applies to text, images, video and sound, communicated by any means (e.g. by post, the internet, leaflets). Unlike elsewhere in the UK, prior to the introduction of the legislation there was no specific offence in Scots law criminalising threats made with the intent of inciting religious hatred. This was an obvious gap and it was clear that legislation was required to address it.

Police Scotland will review and fully investigate all reports of hate incidents, including those that refer to online posting of “hate tweets” via social media platforms. Where a post is found to meet the criteria of being ‘grossly offensive’ in terms of Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 all efforts are made to trace the perpetrator with a view to bring them to justice, this would be recorded as a hate crime regardless of whether the perpetrator was identified or not. Where an incident is investigated and the post does not meet the criteria required under legislation the report would be recorded as a hate incident.

The information requested is not held centrally. The Scottish Government publishes annual statistics on crimes of vandalism recorded by the police, however this data is not broken down into the specific types of property that has been vandalised, or for geographies other than the national or local authority level.

Police Scotland may be able to provide further information through their contact us form (http://www.scotland.police.uk/contact-us/contact-us-form).

The accident data collected does not differentiate between trucks and heavy goods vehicles. However, the following table shows the number of injury road accidents reported to the police involving heavy goods vehicles in the Lothian Parliamentary Region over the last ten years.

This is a matter for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS). The information requested is not held centrally. The SFRS produces its own statistics, which are available on the SFRS website: http://www.firescotland.gov.uk/about-us/fire-and-rescue-statistics.aspx.