Chamber and committees

Local authorities have statutory responsibility for undertaking assessments of housing need and demand which form a shared evidence base for Local Housing Strategies and Local Development Plans.

The Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA) Tool contains Household projection data prepared by National Records of Scotland (NRS) which captures trends in household formation including where adults are living with their parents. Any trend, upwards or downwards, in the incidence of adult children living with parents, will, along with many other factors that drive change in household numbers, be captured and projected forwards in the projections. The HNDA tool data can be supplemented with robust, local information.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information, however, it may be available from local Health Boards.

The Scottish Government is committed to working with COSLA to agree a New Deal with Local Government in Scotland that promotes sustainability, empowerment and provides greater fiscal flexibility over local funding with clear accountability for delivery of shared priorities and outcomes.

As part of the New Deal, we are committed to concluding the Local Governance Review in this parliament, ensuring that decisions are taken as close as possible to those they affect the most is at the heart of our approach to public service reform in Scotland.

This information is not held centrally. Research on the value, incidence and impact of developer contributions was published in 2021: https://www.gov.scot/publications/value-incidence-impact-developer-contributions-scotland/documents/

The City Centre Recovery Taskforce was established in 2021 to identify actions to support city centre recovery from the effects of the COVID pandemic. It was wound up following publication of its report in March 2022 and the Scottish Government is now working with the Scottish Cities Alliance and city leaders to deliver on the report’s recommendations.

The Scottish Government has not established a Land Tax Working Group and does not have plans to do so at present. The Medium Term Financial Strategy set out that the Deputy First Minister will establish and chair an external Tax Advisory Group this summer, building on our inclusive approach to tax policymaking. The outcomes of this engagement will feed into the Budget 2024-25 and the development of the Government’s longer-term tax strategy.

The Scottish Government nor its partners hold information on morphine prescribing at this level of granularity and have no plans to do so.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of reports received by Police Scotland of scammers calling at people’s homes or targeting people online.

(a)Some information on door-to-door scammers is available from a 2018-19 study into police recorded fraud in Scotland, the findings of which were presented within the Recorded crime in Scotland 2018-19 National Statistics .

This study suggested that ‘fraudulent selling’ accounts for approximately 12% of fraud crimes, equivalent to 1,160 crimes. This typically relates to where a victim has paid for a service or product (either in person or through the internet) that the perpetrator has no intention of providing. This could include through online transactions, or payments to bogus workmen. Further analysis of this group suggests that an estimated 270 crimes of recorded fraud (or 3% of all fraud) involved a perpetrator knocking on the victim’s door, taking money and not providing a service.

(b) 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 are shown below.

Police recorded fraud in Scotland that was estimated to be cyber-enabled.

The Scottish Government wants children to grow up loved, safe and respected and to fulfil their potential, and our third sector partners play a critical role in achieving this.

We are providing over £34 million to a wide range of third sector organisations who are delivering support to families through a number of programmes – the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund, the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention & Adult Learning & Empowering Communities third sector fund, the Residential Rehabilitation Rapid Capacity Programme, the Drug and Alcohol Services – Improving Holistic Family Support Framework - as well as through direct grant funding to organisations who are providing relationship support and support to families affected by imprisonment.

The Scottish Government aims to ensure that the mental, social and physical needs of all those diagnosed with cancer are considered equal.

In 2022 the Cancer Prehabilitation Implementation Steering Group oversaw the publication of the Psychological Therapies and Support Framework for People Affected by Cancer .

The Framework not only sets out general principles for high quality holistic care, but also incorporates a number of tools that will aid implementation across Scotland. The Framework highlights the four levels of psychological care and support which are supported through expert evidence, and presents two models for implementation that are applicable across sectors, including health, care and the third-sector.

I also refer the member to the question S6W-17800 answered on 18 May 2023. 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