Chamber and committees

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 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.

This information is not held centrally and is a matter for the Care Inspectorate (CI).

The CI does not hold data in relation to care homes that have closed, however information on cancelled services is publicly available on the CI website: https://www.careinspectorate.com/index.php/publications-statistics/93-public/datastore

These are services who have had their registration cancelled and this does not necessarily mean closure. Some services will have cancelled their registration but a new legal entity may have continued the provision of the service.

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

Concerns regarding accommodation costs during the August Festivals pre-date short-term licensing mandatory standards, whereby the success of festivals and tourism within Scotland in recent years has seen increased visitors during peak holiday periods, which has resulted in higher demand for accommodation in the central Edinburgh area.

Short-term lets continue to be a growing sector and as such Scotland is not alone globally in deciding to regulate the sector. Licensing is now in place to ensure short-term lets are safe and the people providing them are suitable. Guests can have confidence that licensed hosts and accommodation have reached a recognised standard of assurance complying with mandatory conditions such as fire, gas, water and electrical safety. Many hosts are already complying with these through existing law or best practice, and we do not consider them onerous.

This additional assurance is expected to enhance Edinburgh’s reputation as an attractive, high quality, all-year round destination and help towards delivering the six-council City Region Regional Prosperity Framework Delivery Plan & 2023-24 Prospectus. 39% of the 2.2 million tickets for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2022 were sold to Edinburgh locals, which was an increase of 4% on 2019, pre-COVID figures.

We continue to work with Festivals Edinburgh, the City of Edinburgh Council and industry groups (such as the Events Industry Advisory Group) to continue to support them to build on this success, and to address associated challenges. This is in addition to our continued support to the sector, including fourteen major festivals in Edinburgh and Glasgow receiving a share of this year’s £1.8 million Expo Fund.

The Scottish Government remains committed to using our limited powers in this area to make Universal Credit more accessible and fairer for people in Scotland.

Universal Credit is reserved to the UK Government and delivery of split payments is therefore dependent on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) agreeing to deliver the policy on behalf of the Scottish Government. We continue to work with DWP to explore the feasibility of adapting the Universal Credit system to introduce split payments to make welfare benefits more accessible to families in Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-17748 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/questions-and-answers .

The information you have requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government as the management of debt is an issue for education authorities and their finance departments.

The Scottish Government is aware, however, that Glasgow City Council announced at the end of March that it would write off outstanding school meal debts at all schools under its management at a cost of around £300,000 to the council; City of Edinburgh Council cancelled £64,000 of outstanding school meal debts in August 2022 and, earlier this month, councillors at Midlothian Council announced they had cancelled all outstanding school meal debts in the area totalling around £32,000.

Local authorities also have the power to make discretionary offers of free school meals to families, where they are experiencing financial hardship due to exceptional circumstances, if they do not meet the regular eligibility criteria.

COSLA, working with partners from across Local Government, have developed a set of good practice principles for the management of school meal debt, which were published on 20 February 2023. The intended audience for these principles is local authority staff across a range of departments (including education, catering, finance and debt collection) as well as Head Teachers, class teachers and other school staff. The principles can be accessed through the following link: COSLA Publish Good Practice Principles for Managing School Meal Debt - 20th February 2023 | COSLA .

The Scottish Government condemns all acts of antisocial behaviour, including vandalism, and we believe that our focus should be on preventing these crimes from occurring in the first place.

There are currently a number of provisions contained in the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995 and Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland) Act 2004 that specifically deal with the offence of vandalism and these include on the spot fixed penalties that the police can issue to those suspected of low-level statutory vandalism offences. Local agencies, such as Police Scotland and local authorities, are best placed to deal with these offences and it also open to them to undertake early intervention and diversionary work to prevent antisocial behaviour in their areas . We currently have no plans to replicate the UK Government’s proposals, but will monitor the development of this approach.

The Scottish Government expects all NHS Boards in Scotland to take note of the Scottish Health Technologies Group recommendations, published on 23 March 2023, and take steps to ensure that any woman who requires access to placental growth factor (PlGF) based tests as part of her maternity care can do so. We will continue to work with the Scottish Perinatal Network and will write to NHS Boards again in June to assess how implementation of PlGF testing is progressing.