Chamber and committees

Transport Scotland officials engage regularly with CalMac and cover a range of operational topics including staff and crew not only for the Arran Ferry services but the whole of the Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Services network. I recently met with representatives of CalMac’s senior management team and discussed a range of issues including the Arran service.

Scotland’s Redress Scheme has been running for twelve weeks and Redress Scotland have begun to make decisions and offers of redress payments. As this process is in its infancy, completed applications and financial payments have not yet reached a level to enable us to disclose payment amounts without comprising the applicants’ data privacy.

It should also be noted that although determinations have been made, all associated payments may not yet have been processed as a fundamental aspect of the scheme is to ensure that applicants have suitable time, up to 6 months following determination, to consider the offer and seek legal advice prior to accepting any payment and signing any necessary waiver relating to their application. Further information regarding payments will be available in due course as more determinations are made, and in line with the reporting responsibilities included in the legislation.

At the time of response, there are 11 entries on the contributors list.

The list of contributors is a published list available on the gov.scot website and will be updated upon further contributors joining the scheme.

Scotland’s Redress Scheme: contributor list - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The following table shows how many school-aged children are in each local authority (as at September 2020) and how many devices have been distributed by councils using the £25m digital inclusion funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21.

Local authorities across Scotland have a range of approaches to provision of technology in schools, including some councils who have undertaken to provide cohorts of their school population with devices using their own budgets. We do not hold information centrally on those approaches, therefore, the following table only shows devices distributed through the funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all school-aged children and young people in Scotland have access to a digital device by the end of this parliament.

The Scottish Government has provided the Violence Reduction Unit with the following funding:

 *includes a one off payment for additional funding to VRU

The Scottish Government does not routinely collect statistics on wider international parental child abduction cases outwith the 1980 Hague Convention On The Civil Aspects Of International Child Abduction. The Scottish Government’s Central Authority has been involved with 110 cases between 2015 and 2021, where an application under the 1980 Hague Convention On The Civil Aspects Of International Child Abduction has been made to a foreign country to bring a child back to Scotland.

Funding for devices was provided to local authorities by the Scottish Government. As such, local authorities undertook their own procurement exercises and devices purchased became assets of, and are managed by individual local authorities. Decisions on their use, including around security, are taken locally.

The Scottish Government’s 2021/22 Programme for Government commits to work to ensure that a legitimate and constitutional referendum can be held within this Parliamentary term, if the Covid crisis is over, and that a detailed prospectus for an independent Scotland will be prepared to allow the people of Scotland to make an informed choice over their future.

The work to prepare an independence prospectus is being co-ordinated by the Constitutional Futures Division within the Constitution and Cabinet Directorate. This division is currently comprised of one Senior Civil Servant and thirteen other officials (12.9 FTE).

The work to take forward referendum legislation will be co-ordinated by a team in the Elections and FOI Division, also in the Constitution and Cabinet Directorate. The team is currently comprised of three officials.

The staff numbers may change as the work programme evolves. Both streams of work will also draw on other civil servants who will contribute to varying extents as part of their wider responsibilities in supporting the Scottish Government.

As civil servants are not required to record the time spent on individual tasks we cannot provide a figure for total staff hours spent on taking forward these commitments.

The Scottish Government has today introduced legislation to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004, to ensure the process by which a trans person can obtain legal recognition is simplified, in line with the commitment made in the 2021/22 Programme for Government and the Scottish Government and Scottish Green Party Shared Policy Programme.

As set out in the Restorative Justice Action Plan, we have committed to make restorative justice services available across Scotland by 2023 to all those who wish to access it. We are working with stakeholders on creating a ‘hub and spoke’ model for service delivery. This will consist of a National Hub that will have a strategic, oversight role, with services delivered locally via Regional Hubs. The location where facilitated meetings will take place will be determined by the needs of those looking to access the service.