Chamber and committees

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

SPS hold our serving staff and prospective staff to the highest of standards. While the vast majority of our staff adhere to the highest standards of conduct, SPS continues to be vigilant to any potential corruption concerns within our establishments. Maintaining the safety and security of Scotland’s prisons is and will remain an absolute priority.

The number of SPS staff who were subject to a gross misconduct investigation, had a sanction imposed, or were dismissed for inappropriate relationships with persons in our care for each financial year from 2015-16 to 2025-26 is set out in the following table:

The judgement has been issued in the litigation brought by For Women Scotland in relation to the Scottish Prison Service’s policy on the management of transgender people in custody. The Scottish Government has carefully considered the judgment and has decided not to appeal.

The Scottish Prison Service is considering the implications of the judgement and has withdrawn the previous policy while that work is undertaken.

During the course of the litigation, it was appropriate that matters relating to the case were addressed through the court process. The proceedings are still live pending the final procedural steps being taken and the Scottish Government will focus on implementing the judgment in accordance with the law.

The Scottish Government regularly engages with a wide range of organisations and stakeholders on issues relating to equality, justice and human rights. As with any stakeholder, any request for a meeting, made after the court proceedings are fully concluded, would be considered in the usual way.

The Scottish Government and relevant agencies have issued a response to the Committee and this is available on their website: https://rm.coe.int/48802c60f5.

We have already taken a number of decisive steps to help alleviate populational pressures and optimise the capacity of the existing prison estate. On 25 June, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice announced: Achieving a Sustainable Prison Population: Justice Secretary's speech - gov.scot the launch of a consultation: Prison population and penal reform - working towards a sustainable prison population: consultation - gov.scot that seeks views on a set of proposed reforms to the criminal justice system in Scotland, building on the recommendations of the Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission, Scottish Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission report: Justice That Works - gov.scot that will help to deliver a lasting and sustainable approach.

The crime codes exist to convert breaches of criminal law into useable operational data, and ultimately the Official Statistics on recorded crime in Scotland. For those codes that specifically relate to crimes committed against children under the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009, the age of 15 and under is used as the Act effectively provides the age of consent in Scotland at 16 years old. The one exception to this is the Section 42 offence of sexual abuse of trust, which relates to those aged under 18. As such, the approach taken with the crime codes reflects the criminal law as agreed by the Scottish Parliament, with sexual offences committed against 16 or 17 year olds (excluding Section 42) continuing to be recorded using the relevant crime code for all adults.

SFRS publishes Fire Safety and Organisational statistics and Incident statistics on their website https://www.firescotland.gov.uk/about/statistics/, the next edition of Incident statistics is expected on 30 October 2026. There are currently no official statistics on response times or station demand in Scotland.

SFRS continues to respond to every emergency incident with the appropriate level of resources. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service's (SFRS) Operations Control rooms dynamically mobilise fire appliances based on their real-time location and availability, rather than fixed station response areas. This approach ensures that the nearest available resource is always deployed to achieve the quickest possible response time.

According to the latest Fire Safety and Organisational Statistics 2024-25, published in August 2025, the Service has 356 stations and two thirds of these stations, 240, are primarily crewed by on-call duty firefighters, and a further 42 are volunteer stations.

The Service Delivery Review (SDR) is not a cost-saving exercise; it is a safety focussed modernisation programme designed to ensure Scotland has a fire and rescue service fit for the future and new risks.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) Board approved the recommendation to create two new fire stations at Tranent in East Lothian and Cowcaddens in Glasgow, requiring a £20.074 million capital investment. Any financial savings resulting from the review, for example from removing the running costs of maintaining long-term dormant stations, will be re-invested in the service. 69 wholetime firefighters will be redirected to the essential training and prevention functions in SFRS.

The SDR consolidates the £7.8 million resources budget savings that were delivered through the temporary appliance withdrawals introduced in 2023. In addition, the appraisal identifies £42.650 million in potential future capital investment that may be avoided. This reflects a reduction in future estate investment pressures rather than a budget saving. Details of this can be found on the Board paper (link: https://www.firescotland.gov.uk/publications/document/?id=9704).

The complexity of large scale data centre developments, and interplay across reserved and devolved policy areas, makes discussions with UK Government across a range of areas particularly important. To this end, the Scottish Government has met with UK Government counterparts across HM Treasury (HMT), Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), and the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

In respect of a co-ordinated framework, we have, together with the UK and Welsh Governments, jointly commissioned NESO to produce a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) for Great Britain. The SSEP will spatially optimise a specified volume of flexible data centre demand (1-2GW). This will indicate where opportunities for energy system benefits exist, such as co-location of renewables and data centres, supporting the development of government policy on the spatial location of data centre demand. The Regional Energy Strategic Plan for Scotland will further enable the coordinated development of the energy system across multiple vectors.

Table 1 shows the average combined police custody waiting and processing times from 2021-22 to 2025-26.

Waiting time is the time spent from the point the person arrested and the arresting officers arrive at a custody centre, to the point police custody officers and staff began to process and in effect book the person into custody. Police Scotland always try to ensure that this time is as minimal as possible, however waiting times can be impacted by a range of operational matters, which include more than one person needing to be processed or booked in at similar times, custody staff responding to a medical emergency etc.

Processing time is the time taken to book the person into custody. This involves the arrested person being searched and asked questions to allow for an assessment of vulnerability, including medical conditions, which is critical to ensure a safe environment for people in police custody.

Table 1: Average Combined Waiting and Processing time in minutes, 2021-22 to 2025-26

Both our Equally Safe Strategy to tackle Violence against Women and Girls, and our Strategic Approach to challenge demand for prostitution recognise the need for a preventative approach, and also recognise that boys and men can also be victims of violence and exploitation. We have a range of actions in place to tackle the behaviours that underly these issues, including work with the education sector.

Schools deliver learning that enables young people to be media literate – which can include highlighting the harms associated with pornography; and relationships, sexual health and parenthood education to equip children and young people with the knowledge, skills and values to conduct positive relationships.

Through the Delivering Equally Safe fund we provide funding to Rape Crisis Scotland to deliver Equally Safe at School and the national sexual violence prevention programme which aim to tackle sexual harassment and violence in our schools. In addition, we fund the Mentors in Violence Prevention Scotland Programme, a schools-based, peer education programme working to tackle gender stereotyping and attitudes that condone violence against women and girls.

In February 2026 we launched a public information campaign to help combat the harms of sexist and misogynistic content online. Our campaign was designed to make boys and young men aware of the impact of sexist content on social media and how interacting with that can harm the women and girls they know in the real world – including their sisters, friends and classmates. By choosing not to like, share or comment on sexist content online, boys and men can help stop it spreading.

We have committed to developing a public health campaign to make young people and their parents aware of how to use social media, screen time, and online time in a safe and healthy manner.

We also launched a new Crimestopper’s awareness campaign on Commercial Sexual Exploitation in February 2026, further underlying that there is no place for the sexual exploitation of any individual in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has committed to bring forward legislation to criminalising misogynistic harassment and abuse in Scotland and we will set out the timetable for the upcoming legislative programme in due course.

Further, the Scottish Government has established a new Prevention Unit, to help embed a culture of prevention and early intervention across public services in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is committed to drawing on a wide range of evidence in developing the Better Surfaces Fund. Engagement with relevant stakeholders will inform the design and operation of the fund, to ensure it supports the adoption of best practice and delivers lasting benefits for Scotland’s road network.