Chamber and committees

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. His response is as follows:

SPS has a clear zero tolerance approach towards all violence, including sexual assault and staff are trained to recognise and respond to the precursors of violence and manage any incidents when they do occur.

A Cell Sharing Risk Assessment must be conducted before any person in SPS care is allocated to a residential setting. This assessment is used to consider an individual’s suitability to share a cell with others in order to reduce the risk of harm, including interpersonal violence.

The Cell Sharing Risk Assessment is a dynamic process. Records are continually updated in response to changes in circumstance which may impact upon the level of risk presented by an individual. Where any person is identified as presenting a risk to others, then this is recorded and will inform all subsequent management decisions. Any individual who is subject to a Sexual Offences Prevention Orderwill also have a dedicated management plan developed and implemented to take into account the conditions applied by the courts.

Violence Reduction meetings take place on a monthly basis across Scottish Prisons to discuss all notable incidents, trends and preventative actions.

CCTV cameras operate within all Scottish prisons to deter violent incidents and assist in any post-incident investigations. Violent incidents are always reported to Police Scotland.

The Scottish Government legislated in the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015 to strengthen the taxi and private hire licensing regime, for example by requiring local authorities to appoint civic licensing standards officers, whose role includes supervising compliance. We expect every company and individual to operate within the existing licensing regime, and for all taxi and private hire car drivers, and vehicles, to be licensed. Anyone acting as an unlicensed driver is committing a criminal offence.

While we recognise the potential benefits to taxi and private hire car companies, and to passengers, in using new technology to access services, safety is always of paramount concern. It is clearly not acceptable for users or drivers to suffer from discrimination or violence. Any driver or passenger who believes they may have been the victim of a criminal offence should report the matter to the police, so that the incident can be investigated.

The Scottish Government policy is clear that it has no intention to charge patients who miss appointments. There can be many reasons why a patient may not attend. For example if there was a family emergency. To put a system in place to charge patients for non-attendance is likely to be highly expensive to operate.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting health boards implement policies to reduce missed appointments such as providing reminder services through text, emails and social media. This will allow reminder services to be tailored for patients who are most likely not to attend.

We fully recognise the importance of a safe, well performing road network for the health of Scotland’s economy, and our research has shown that the trunk road network alone contributes £1.38 billion in approximate Gross Value Added to Scotland’s economy. We will continue to ensure the network is safe and fit for purpose by inspecting trunk roads at regular intervals to identify defects like potholes, which are then repaired by the Operating Companies within the strict timescales set-out in their contracts. The Transport Scotland Road Asset Management Plan (RAMP) sets out how Scotland's trunk road network is maintained strategically and efficiently in order to protect our assets and ensure maximum value for money from our road maintenance activities. This can be found on the Transport Scotland website at https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/32978/j408891.pdf .

There are no discounts available for island residents on the Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Services (CHFS) network, operated by CalMac, other than those provided for older and disabled people by national and local concessionary travel schemes.

The introduction of Road Equivalent Tariff (RET) across the CHFS network, which was completed in October 2015, simplified the fares structure and provided significant ferry fare reductions for all passengers and for cars and small commercial vehicles. These lower RET fares on the CHFS network are available equally to islands residents, their friends and families and other visitors.

We expect Boards to continue to review the reasons why patients do not attend appointments and look for ways to improve their booking practices and clinic times such as running clinics at night or weekends as well as providing reminder services through text, emails and social media. These type of changes can lead to fewer missed appointments as well as providing more efficient and effective services.

Reported Road Casualties Scotland provides information on injury road accidents reported to the police. The latest statistics available are up to 2016.

The following table shows the number of injury accidents involving pedal cyclists by severity of the accident.

Information on missed appointments is collected centrally for first outpatient consultation only. There were 145,493 missed first outpatient appointments during the calendar year 2017 - this is from over 1.4 million new outpatient appointments undertaken during the year.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

The specific information requested is not available centrally.