Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. Public Health Scotland (PHS) monitors and publishes weekly prevalence and surveillance management information data on laboratory confirmed reports of norovirus. All published reports can be found here .

PHS also publish a dashboard by board detailing the number of hospitals and wards closed due to norovirus. The latest dashboard can be found here .

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all students with a long term medical condition or additional support needs are supported as they study in further and higher education. Colleges and universities are autonomous bodies with responsibility for the management of their own student support services.

The Scottish Government recognises the disruption and harm that retail crime does to both businesses and the individuals who work there. We support the work of our Justice partners to tackle this, including through the innovative Scottish Partnership Against Acquisitive Crime strategy. This strategy is led by Police Scotland, together with other organisations, including retailers, and outlines a partnership approach to the prevention, deterrence and enforcement of a range of crimes including shoplifting.

The Criminal Proceedings National Statistics for 2021-22 were published on the 24th October 2023. These include the first partial year of activity for the earliest opening period under the Act (from August 2021 to March 2022). Due to this, some caution should be exercised in interpreting the figures. Over August 2021 to March 2022, 26 individuals were convicted in court where the main charge was a crime or offence under the Retail Workers Act. The type of sentences received included custodial (13 individuals), community-based (9), a financial penalty (3) or another sentence type (1).

The Criminal Proceedings National Statistics for 2022-23, which will represent the first full reporting year of activity under the Act (from 1st April 2022 to 31st March 2023) will be published in 2024. Separate to this, data about the number of charges (not people) resulting in a conviction has been extracted from the management information used to publish the Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services Criminal Disposals Dashboard (Source: Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services Criminal Disposals Dashboard ). This shows there were 543 charges under the Retail Workers Act that received a criminal conviction in court from August 2021 up to March 2023.

As set out in the Women’s Health Plan , we are committed to developing a menopause and menstrual health workplace policy for NHS Scotland, as an example of best practice and to promote equivalent efforts across the public, private and third sector. This policy and its supporting guides will launch at the end of October.

It aims to provide a supportive environment, where staff (in a predominately female sector) can perform at their best, in a way that supports their wellbeing and ultimately helps staff retention.

Line managers and workplace adjustment guides will also be published to supplement the policy. These guides will be available to all staff across Scotland, not just NHS Scotland employees.

Additionally, Endometriosis UK run the Endometriosis Employer Friendly Scheme and a number of employers across Scotland have signed on to the scheme. In addition, the Endometriosis UK website also hosts resources for employers and employees on how to support those with endometriosis in the workplace.

The Endometriosis Referral Care Pathway for Scotland was published by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery in January 2023 and distributed to NHS Scotland Boards.

The rainfall we have seen across Scotland in October has been extreme, affecting many communities and businesses. The Scottish Government has been in close contact with the agricultural sector through our Area Offices and networks to determine the extent to which producers have been affected and what the implications of that are, including for food crops in the North East region.

Following the severe rainfall of 6 th to 8 th October I met with NFUS, East of Scotland Growers and Kettle Produce on 13th October to hear about the impacts on fruit and vegetable producers at that stage, which were principally in the Perthshire area, with losses reported to crops such as carrots, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, swede and sprouts. I then visited Keithick Farms near Coupar Angus to see and discuss the impacts of the flooding with a number of affected farm businesses.

From 19th to 21st October there were further impacts on crops from Storm Babet, which as well as worsening the situation in some of the areas affected earlier in the month, has also led to some further flooding of crops in Angus and Aberdeenshire, including potatoes.

It will take time for the extent of the impacts of the October flooding on food crops to become fully apparent, as the condition of crops still in the ground becomes clearer on fuller assessment and harvesting. The Scottish Government remains in close contact with farming organisations and producers to understand those impacts and discuss what actions can be taken to mitigate them. In the meantime we would encourage retailers to ensure that they are sympathetic to any producers who may have been negatively impacted by the flooding.

The Scottish Government continues to work closely with categorised responders, who are responsible under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 for assessing the risk of an emergency occurring, maintaining plans to ensure they can continue to perform their functions in case of an emergency, and considering whether an assessment makes it necessary or expedient to add or modify plans. Scottish Government are not however responsible for, or the owners of, any of these plans.

In relation to door-to-door welfare checks specifically, our follow-up report on Storm Arwen in October 2022 confirmed that “The capability to deliver this type of large-scale response relies on a number of the issues, for example swift activation of resilience arrangements, the ability to quickly assess the impact on the ground, strong mutual aid arrangements and links to community and voluntary groups, and agile public communications plans. Resilience partnerships are however also aware that deploying a large number of people to travel on foot to carry out door-to-door checks could itself create a risk for those involved, for example if the weather conditions remain challenging. As such, these checks should always be considered as part of a range of ‘care for people’ considerations and measures which are rolled out in response to any major incident, which might also for example include the provision of rest centres.”

The Scottish Government is also supporting partners in the development of the Persons at Risk Distribution (PARD) resource which enables the swift identification of, and support to, those most at risk during an incident.

The Scottish Government, via its Ready Scotland digital channels, runs a year-long communications campaign with a specific focus on severe weather.

The Diet and Healthy Weight Monitoring report was not published in 2022 and, as set out at the time, we have engaged with users to decide on the future of this publication. An announcement will be made shortly informed by the outcome of user engagement. Most of the data previously included in the Diet and Healthy Weight Monitoring report is now presented in the Scottish Health Survey with the remaining few indicators available in other publications. Results from the 2022 Scottish Health Survey will be published on 5 December 2023. Data for the indicators on sales of soft drinks with added sugar, confectionery, biscuits, cakes and pastries are available on the Food Standards Scotland website and type 2 diabetes prevalence is available in the Scottish Diabetes Survey report.

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

This information is not currently held by SPS. This type of information can only be obtained through analysis and testing via a laboratory setting.