Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the local economic impact of road closures. The impact of closing a road due to a collision depends on the specific circumstances such as the collision location, the time of day, the duration of the closure and any diversion route.

At a more general level, the Department for Transport has estimated the values assigned to the cost of road casualties and collisions in Great Britain, for use in cost-benefit analysis of the prevention of road casualties and collisions in road schemes. This information is used in the assessment of road schemes in Scotland via Scottish Transport Appraisal Guidance (STAG) and is published in Transport Scotland’s annual Reported Road Casualties publication: https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/reported-road-casualties-scotland-2022/table-9a-b/

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The health and wellbeing of those who live and work in our prisons is a key priority for the Scottish Prison Service and we continue to work with numerous organisations to offer those in their care a suite of support to address both their addiction and recovery journey.

1. The total number of Drug Recoveries from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2023 are appended in the following table. This data includes both in prison and preventative finds.

The wrasse fishing season is open from 1 May to 30 November, so at present no vessels hold a derogation giving permission from Scottish Ministers to fish for wild wrasse. Applications are assessed on a year by year basis, and do not automatically carry over. In the 2023 season, 67 vessels were issued with a derogation and of those 51 used creels to fish for other species at some point over the course of 2023.

The Scottish Government fully supports rail freight and modal shift, thus this is outlined in the 2016 rail freight strategy https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/5362/ts-rail-freight-strategy-a4-aw3.pdf

In 2019 Network Rail, and the industry, developed a comprehensive Industry Growth Plan for Rail Freight and an updated Plan for longer-term growth is being developed.

Our priority for supporting Rail freight remains in facilitating more efficient operation - through investment in capacity, adjustment of passenger services and encouraging and requiring Network Rail to support rail freight. We want rail freight to be competitive without the need for subsidy.

Creative Scotland provides funding to the Four Nations International Fund which fosters greater collaboration between cultural practitioners and/or organisations in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales together with international partners based in Europe and beyond.

The fund has a combined budget of £320,000 with co-investment from Arts Council England, Arts Council Northern Ireland, and Arts Council Wales / Wales Arts International.

Further information on the Four Nations International Fund can be found on. Four Nations International Fund | Creative Scotland

The Scottish Government does not allocate fully registered teachers to local authorities. Statutory responsibility for the recruitment and employment of teachers and all other support staff in local authority schools sits with individual councils.

Probationer teachers progressing through the Teacher Induction Scheme (TIS) are placed with local authorities through an allocation process. This is a placement and not employment. Where the number of probationers exceeds the number of places offered initially by local authorities these are subsequently allocated on a supernumerary basis. As previously indicated in answer to S6W-23885 this number was initially 626. To date there are over 500 deferrals and withdrawals from this year’s initial cohort so the 600 “supernumerary” figure as of May 2023 does not mean there are 600 surplus teachers.

Discussions on the Skills Development Scotland budget for 2024-2025 are ongoing. We hope to confirm the ITA position in the coming weeks.

The Scottish Government regularly engages with the UK Government and devolved government administrations in respect of student financial support matters. However, we have not been made aware of any issues relating to the conduct of Erudio Student Loans debt recovery practices that are impacting on Scottish borrowers.

If the member is aware of any specific issues for Scottish borrowers, they should be advised to contact Erudio Student Loans directly to raise their concerns. If, following that, they are not satisfied with the response then the issue can be taken to the Financial Ombudsman Service to consider.

The Scottish Government does not receive information on the number of people in Scotland who have loans payable to Erudio Student Loans Company.