Chamber and committees

Our Programme for Government in 2021-22 committed to provision of high-quality child palliative care, regardless of location, supported by sustainable funding of at least £7 million per year through Children’s Hospices Across Scotland. Scottish Government officials are in discussions with CHAS about the sustainability and oversight of funding going forward.

It is the responsibility of Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) to plan and commission adult palliative and end of life care services for their areas using the integrated budgets under their control.

The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and myself met with hospice sector representatives on 14 March to discuss the pressures that the hospice sector are currently facing, including representatives of adult hospices and CHAS.

We do not hold the information requested on the number of Baby Boxes distributed to fostered and adopted babies.

The Scottish Government welcomes the City of Edinburgh Council’s commitment to cut car kilometres by 30% by 2030, and will work with all local authorities to support equitable measures which discourage car use to accompany greater investment in public transport and active travel for a fairer and greener transport system. As outlined in our route map to achieving a 20% reduction in car kilometres by 2030, jointly developed with COSLA, the scale of the climate challenge means that we need to take forward a broad combination of interventions including infrastructure, incentives and regulatory actions, taking into account the needs of people on low incomes to help ensure a just transition to net-zero.

Lending and insurance policy are reserved matters for the UK Government. We are aware of the difficulties that some people are facing in accessing mortgages for buildings with potentially unsafe cladding. Work has been undertaken between the UK Government and UK Finance to develop a solution which reflects the situation in England and we are in urgent discussion with UK Finance about adapting that solution for Scotland as quickly as possible. The Single Building Assessment is a crucial element in identifying issues in buildings with potentially unsafe cladding in Scotland. We expect the vast majority of buildings to be found to be safe, but first we have to carry out comprehensive and technical assessments. This is a complex and time-consuming programme, and a number of assessments are either at final or pre-final reporting stage.

The Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 places the statutory responsibility for local roads, including the provision of parking spaces with local road authorities. The number of parking spaces required in each area is therefore determined by the relevant local authority.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of parking spaces in each local authority.

The Scottish Government has no plans to establish such a fund; however, we are currently considering a number of advocacy-related recommendations from the Scottish Mental Health Law Review. This includes whether a national dedicated independent advocacy service for unpaid carers should be developed.

Independent advocacy is central to empowering people to have their voices heard and to participate fully in decisions about their care. The Scottish Government is committed to co-designing, with people with lived experience including unpaid carers, and implementing a coherent, consolidated and consistent approach to independent advocacy across the National Care Service.

The Scottish Government also funds the Social Security Independent Advocacy Service, delivered independently by VoiceAbility. This is available to support anyone who self-identifies as disabled to access their Scottish Government benefits. This means the service is available free of charge to all carers and cared-for-people who identify as such.

For academic year 2021-2022, which is the most recent data we hold, 22,635 international students were residing in student accommodation (university halls and private purpose-built student accommodation) and 29,090 in other rented accommodation. We do not hold information specifically in relation to private rented or social rented accommodation.

International Enrolments at Scottish Universities by Accommodation Type, 2021-22

The Single Building assessment process has started for the 27 buildings in the original pilot. The pilot has been extended to 105 building. As the programme continues we expect further buildings to be identified and assessed. As we survey and undertake these further assessments we will have clearer information on the time-frame for the completion of all surveys on buildings with potentially unsafe cladding.

The Scottish Government does not hold the full level of information requested for reasons outlined in our answer to your recent question S6W-15113 on 7 March 2023. We do know that our delivery partner the Fuel Bank Foundation has found that in the current financial year, around four in every ten applications have come from households which include at least one child under the age of 16, or if in education, under 18.

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

In general, the data received from Police Scotland for producing the National Statistics on Recorded Crime, is a simple count of the number of crimes and offences which the police have recorded and cleared up. As such we are unable to separately identify back to 1999 which recorded crimes of fraud were committed online.

However we recently introduced a new chapter within the National Statistics, which estimates the volume of recorded cyber-crime in Scotland based on a sample of police records. Under this approach, the number of recorded frauds which involved the use of cyber technology in any way (including cyber-enabled or cyber-dependent crimes) was 2,690 in 2018-19 (the first year of available data) and 3,450 in 2019-20. It then increased significantly to 8,580 in 2020-21, before falling slightly to 8,010 in 2021-22. At least part of the increase in 2020-21 may be due to the significant impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and government instructions to limit social contact. For example in their ‘ Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2021 ’ release, the Office for National Statistics noted that an increase in fraud and computer misuse offences could reflect perpetrators taking advantage of behavioural changes during the pandemic, such as increased online shopping.

Further information on the new chapter referenced above is available as part of Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2021-2022 in particular Table A11. Figures for 2022-23 will be published in June.