Chamber and committees

During 2003-04, of those cases where victims, witnesses and/or bereaved next of kin were referred to Victim Information and Advice (VIA), 4,453 (approximately 99%) of the 4,504 court bail decisions recorded where the accused had appeared from custody were communicated within 24 hours.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) purchases forensic pathology services in connection with its core function to investigate sudden, suspicious, unexpected and unexplained deaths. The annual spend on forensic pathology services since 2000-2001 (the first year of the current contractual arrangements) is as shown in the following table. The figures include the cost of additional analyses undertaken (such as toxicology) to assist in establishing cause of death.

Year	Annual Spend
2000-01	£2,516,334
2001-02	£3,470,225
2002-03	£4,159,648
2003-04	£5,154,290

 

Additionally, COPFS contributes to the cost of public mortuary provision in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow.

In the past two financial years 2002-03 and 2003-04 we spent over £86 million on the major transport infrastructure projects set out in the Transport White Paper Scotland’s Transport Future.

The final capital costs of these projects will depend on the prices achieved through tendering and these are affected by both the market at the time and the type of contract awarded.

The additional funding for expenditure on information communication technology and the major refurbishment of the department’s Glasgow office has been allocated to the capital expenditure line in table 4.01. Further funding for the modernisation of the prosecution service has been allocated to Solemn, Summary and Non-Court business to reflect future modernisation measures arising from the implementation of the Bonomy reforms of the High Court as well as a range of alternatives to prosecution which will impact on Non-Court business.

Procurators Fiscal are provided with the necessary training and development opportunities to enable them to carry out their wide range of duties, including appropriate training on dealing with environmental crime. It has not proved possible to disaggregate training expenditure to the specific quantification of environmental training which has often been covered as part of wider training initiatives, but in order to achieve our Partnership Commitment we will continue to focus resources to train prosecutors in dealing with environmental and wildlife crime.

Data relating to the number of actions under the Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Act 2001 are not collected centrally. Top-line information is collected and published annually in Civil Judicial Statistics. The latest version can be viewed on the Executive website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/justice/cjs02-00.asp.

The Executive is currently reviewing the way the Justice Department collects and provides information and statistics about the civil justice system. A consultation document has been issued. It is available on the Scottish Executive website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/view/views.asp. Closing date for responses is 17 December 2004.

In 2003 the Scottish Executive conducted an evaluation of the 2001 act. The findings have been published on the Executive website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/cru/resfinds/lsf41-00.asp.

The information requested is given in the following table.

Clear up Rates for Serious Crimes of Violence¹ Recorded by the Police, by Council Area, 1999 to 2003

Council Area	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003
Per Cent
Aberdeen City	50	48	51	49	59
Aberdeenshire	68	61	72	62	65
Angus	93	95	91	96	95
Argyll and Bute	84	84	78	71	74
Clackmannanshire	89	89	95	95	99
Dumfries and Galloway	84	87	86	81	74
Dundee City	78	74	71	80	94
East Ayrshire	68	70	66	71	79
East Dunbartonshire	66	59	59	66	57
East Lothian	73	81	78	76	69
East Renfrewshire	60	58	51	48	58
Edinburgh, City of	53	58	55	54	56
Eilean Siar	100	100	100	89	100
Falkirk	88	89	92	90	93
Fife	78	73	74	72	75
Glasgow City	47	46	44	41	42
Highland	89	90	90	92	89
Inverclyde	60	53	71	57	60
Midlothian	73	73	85	73	66
Moray	77	64	82	81	74
North Ayrshire	66	60	64	61	72
North Lanarkshire	65	62	66	68	67
Orkney Islands	100	100	87	78	100
Perth and Kinross	86	93	82	81	95
Renfrewshire	52	49	51	50	49
Scottish Borders	87	92	92	94	88
Shetland Islands	100	96	100	100	88
South Ayrshire	77	80	67	78	79
South Lanarkshire	57	56	54	50	52
Stirling	85	86	91	90	94
West Dunbartonshire	62	61	63	60	54
West Lothian	68	71	70	65	63
Scotland	60	60	60	58	60

Note: 1. Serious violent crimes are those recorded as serious assault(including murder and culpable homicide), robbery, all other non–sexual crimes ofviolence (except abortion, possession of a firearm, drugging or chemical weaponoffences), homosexual acts, attempts to commit unnatural crimes, rape and attempted rape. Under the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995 it is an offence to commit, or be party to the commission of, a homosexual act if it is not in private, non consensual or with a person under 16 (irrespective of consent). Such crimes are included in the statistics as “homosexual acts”. Under common law, non consensual intercourse with a man or boy can constitute “indecent assault” and/or sodomy (the latter also included in the statistics as “homosexual acts”) depending upon the circumstances of the case. In addition to the statutory offence mentioned above, it is a common law offence for any person, whether male or female, to engage in indecency with a boy under the age of 14, the consent of the boy being irrelevant. Such cases would be included under “homosexual acts” if committed by a man.

The granting of new radio licences and the regulation of radio stations is a reserved matter. Ofcom is the regulator for the UK communications industries, with responsibilities across television, radio, telecommunications and wireless communications services.  In assessing radio licence applications, Ofcom must have regard (amongst other matters) to the statutory criteria contained in Section 105 of the Broadcasting Act 1990, as amended, when it is deciding whether, or to whom, to award a local commercial radio licence.  One of the criteria is the extent to which any proposed service would cater for the tastes and interests of those living in the area or locality for which the service would be provided.

The Executive is keen that the broadcasting media should reflect Scotland’s rich cultural diversity.  However, we are not convinced that content regulation should extend to the compulsory broadcasting on all radio stations of particular types of entertainment and have made no representations to Ofcom to this effect.

An Advisory Committee for Scotland has been established to provide advice to Ofcom about the interests and opinions of people living in Scotland on all communications matters, and the Ofcom Content Board has one member who isappointed to represent Scottish interests.  License awards are dealt with by aradio licensing committee which is a sub-committee of the Content Board.  Theregular radio licensing committee will have 2 additional members with specificknowledge of and interest in the Scottish radio sector to help them with theaward of the recently advertised Edinburgh FM licence.

We believe these are the appropriate mechanisms by which to establish arrangements for regulation of content.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond.  His response is as follows:

Information is not available in the form requested.  The information currently available on returns to custody in Scotland is contained in SPS Research Bulletin 22.  Analysis of sexual and violent re-offending among different types of sexual offenders was published by the SPS in a 2004 research paper Sexual Offending inScottish Prisons by Cooke and Pedersen, reporting research was part of aninternational project funded by the European Commission.

The expectation is that the prosecution of environmental and wildlife crime will be through Summary court business. Accordingly, funding for the training of prosecutors in dealing with environmental crime is allocated to this section.