Chamber and committees

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

Apart from costs of a transcription service used to transcribe interviews and surveys during the engagement phase of the review, all costs relating to the Gender Identity and Gender Reassignment (2014) policy review have been absorbed as part of the overall annual SPS Delivery Plan resourcing budget.

For information, the cost of the transcription service was £2,153 including VAT.

Local authorities subsidise the range of existing rail concession schemes and as such require ScotRail to sell tickets via stations and on train only to avoid fraudulent activity.

ScotRail advise it is working with partners to identify cost effective solutions that could be adopted in the future which would enable National Entitlement Cards to be used via other ticket purchasing channels.

This is a matter for ScotRail. However, it has advised that it is actively considering inclusion of calorie information on its onboard trolley service.

This work was produced externally to the Scottish Government. Scottish public sector representatives on the project board were sighted on the methodologies and evidence used to calculate relevant estimates and were involved in discussions with the report authors during the lifetime of the project. As noted in the report, the authors are responsible for the final report.

The Scottish Government has committed to making £3.5 billion available in this Parliamentary term towards the delivery of more social and affordable homes as part of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme.

The report is currently being finalised and will be published later in 2023 once this process has been completed.

We are continuing to work with the Learning Together Steering group, Education Scotland and other key stakeholders to develop a refreshed policy framework for parental engagement. This work is being taken forward as part of the broader Education Recovery Strategy to further improve parental involvement and engagement in schools. The refreshed action plan will take account of the recently published findings of the National Discussion on Education, which demonstrated a significant appetite from parents and carers for involvement in their children’s education. The Learning Together Action Plan will be published later this year.

Forestry and Land Scotland employ two members of staff in the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Team. One person is employed on a full-time basis and the other is employed on a 0.6 FTE basis (22.2 hours per week). Both members of staff are employed as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Managers and the total value of their combined salaries is £76,309.60 per annum.

Forestry and Land Scotland also provide Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion support to the SG Agency Scottish Forestry.

As outlined in the Scottish Ministerial Code, the Scottish Government aims to publish the information on ministerial engagements, travel and gifts for March and April 2023 by the end of June.

We’re taking a wide range of actions to tackle the drug deaths crisis. Through the National Mission on drugs we have:

• Continued to expand Residential Rehab, more particularly over the course of this parliament, we are working to increase overall residential rehabilitation capacity by 50% which is an increase from 425 beds to 650 beds. Through our work on pathways into rehab and investment in capacity, we aim to increase the number of statutory funded placements by 300% over this parliamentary term so that in 2026 at least 1,000 people are publicly funded for their placement.
• Provided £15m a year funding to community and grass-roots organisations that supported over 300 projects across Scotland, including 48 projects in the most recent funding round last month.
• Continued to drive implementation of the MAT Standards. All Health Boards, IJBs and Local Authorities have returned delivery plans and will be regularly reporting on progress to the Drugs and Alcohol Policy Minister.
• Announced a target focused on increasing the number of people in community based opioid substitute therapy to 32,000 by April 2024.
• Progressed work on introducing safer drug consumption facilities, facilitating development of a proposal which is now being considered by COPFS.
• Continued to expand the National Naloxone Programme to ensure naloxone is easily available to anyone at risk of overdose.
• Established the National Collaborative to ensure that the voices of those with lived and living experience are at the centre of policy and decision-making.
• Published a rapid review into mental health and substance use services , including recommendations to improve service delivery and support other work such as implementation of the MAT standards.
• Published our response to the Drug Death Taskforce Report , detailing over 80 actions, supported by significant new spending commitments of over £68m for the remainder of this parliament.

Last year we published National Mission on Drugs: annual report 2021 to 2022 which sets out the progress made between January 2021 and 31 March 2022 by national government, local government and third sector partners towards reducing drug deaths and improving the lives of those impacted by drugs in Scotland.

The second annual report on the progress of the National Mission 2022 to 2023 is due to be published this summer.