Questions and answers

Question reference: S6O-02716

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 08 November 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 15 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what plans it has to restore a reported £6.6 million reduction in funding to Creative Scotland for 2024-25.

Question reference: S6W-22522

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 30 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many incidents of violence on trains have been reported in each year since 2016.

Question reference: S6W-22365

Asked by: Paul Sweeney, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Growing Up Grieving report, published by the National Childhood Bereavement Project.

The Scottish Government funded a national Childhood Bereavement Coordinator project, that concluded in September 2022 with the publication of the final report ‘Growing Up Grieving’. The Co-ordinator’s report included 7 recommendations which span a number of portfolios across Scottish Government. The publication of the report coincided with that of the UK Commission on Bereavement published in October 2022 and the Scottish Bereavement Summit which took place on 13 October 2022, which included delegates from a wide range of bereavement sectors. The summit looked at and summarised the UK Commission report and other recent bereavement reports - including Growing up Grieving , and asked delegates to vote on their priority areas. The final report was published on 28 June 2023, summarising the summit’s findings and compiling recommendations from the 5 recent bereavement reports with the views of summit delegates into one set of recommendations.

As the Scottish Government programme of bereavement work spans a range of Ministerial portfolios, the bereavement cross-policy network is continuing to engage with, and listen to, bereavement sector partners. Future bereavement work will draw on the UK Commission’s findings.

Question reference: S6W-22202

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 12 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-15474 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 10 March 2023, how much of the £13 million allocated in its Budget 2023-24 has been allocated to date; which local authorities have received funding; what proportion of the allocated funding each local authority received; whether there is any remaining funding to allocate, and, if so, (a) when and (b) to which local authorities any such remaining funding will be allocated.

Question reference: S6W-22598

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 31 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill, what work has been undertaken to provide for exemption schemes for people attending a funeral.

As set out in the Policy Memorandum, accompanying the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill, the policy intention is that a local authority can establish exemptions to a visitor levy scheme in its area as it believes are appropriate. The Bill therefore provides for a local authority to put such exemptions in place, which will be informed by advice in national guidance being developed by local government and business organisations in the Visitor Levy Expert Group.

Question reference: S6W-22569

Asked by: Sarah Boyack, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 31 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the potential impact of the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill on developing countries.

We have undertaken the full suite of assessments required for the introduction of the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill and these were published on the Scottish Government website on 14 June 2023. There is no requirement to assess the potential impact of Bills on developing countries. We are, however, committed to ensuring Scotland remains a global leader in equality, inclusion and human rights, and recently I met representatives of Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace Justice & Peace Scotland > Home (justiceandpeacescotland.org.uk) , from Malawi, who gave a very informative and moving presentation on Human Rights and Mining.

Question reference: S6W-22596

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 31 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill, what work has been undertaken to provide for exemption schemes for people providing personal care for a family member.

As set out in the Policy Memorandum, accompanying the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill, the policy intention is that a local authority can establish exemptions to a visitor levy scheme in its area as it believes are appropriate. The Bill therefore provides for a local authority to put such exemptions in place, which will be informed by advice in national guidance being developed by local government and business organisations in the Visitor Levy Expert Group.

Question reference: S6W-21859

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the comments by the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice, during the stage 1 debate on the Culpable Homicide (Scotland) Bill on 21 January 2021, that the Scottish Government wants to work with bereaved families to produce a bill that could help to address the issues raised, but in a way that is within the Parliament’s devolved competence, and in light of Health and Safety Executive statistics on work-related fatal injuries in Great Britain in 2023, what its position is on whether the higher fatality rate in Scotland can be attributed to a greater proportion of people working in higher risk jobs; which employment areas it considers to be higher risk, and what sector-specific action it can take to address any increased risk.

The Health and Safety Executive (the HSE) operates across the UK including in Scotland under governance from the Department of Work and Pensions within the UK Government. The HSE is responsible for helping people be safer at work.

As part of their responsibilities for workplace safety, the HSE publishes workplace safety statistics for Scotland. In November 2022, they published the latest statistics:

Workplace health and safety statistics for Scotland, 2022 (hse.gov.uk)

In presenting these statistics, the HSE indicated that '... this report represents a profile of workplace health and safety in Scotland and its primary purpose is to provide Scotland specific equivalents of the statistics for Great Britain published across HSE’s Health and Safety Statistics pages. The figures also enable comparisons between Scotland and Great Britain to be made. However, any such comparative analysis should be interpreted with caution since any differences in health and safety outcomes are likely to be at least in part driven by differences in the industry sectors and occupations people work in.'

More specifically, the HSE has carried out a statistical analysis of fatalities in the workplace across the nations of the UK. On page 15 of their November 2022 report, they indicated the following:

'Over recent years, the fatal injury rate in Scotland has been consistently higher than that of Great Britain, but there is no difference in the rate of non-fatal injuries. One explanation is that in Scotland, a greater proportion of workers are employed in higher risk industry sectors or higher risk occupations, compared with Great Britain as a whole. It is possible to standardise fatal injury rates by adjusting them to account for differences in industry composition between countries and regions and a recent research report shows the effect this has on the relative rates of the countries and regions of Great Britain.

The following table shows estimates of the unstandardised and standardised country-specific fatal injury rates for the period 2015/16-2019/20 (the full report can be found at www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/adhoc analysis/updated-standardised-fatals.pdf) .

Number, un-standardised rate and standardised rate of fatal injuries per 100,000 workers (2015-16 – 2019-20)

Country	Number of Fatalities	Un-standardised rate of fatal injuries per 100,000 workers	Standardised rate of fatal injuries per 100,000 workers
Scotland	88	0.65	0.57
England	529	0.38	0.39
Wales	58	0.81	0.65
Great Britain	675	0.42	NA

The standardised rate for Scotland is lower than the un-standardised rate, demonstrating that its different industry composition does have an effect on the comparison between Scotland and Great Britain. However, even after standardisation the rate is still significantly higher in Scotland. It is likely that other factors, such as a different occupational distribution and other factors not related to employment, are also affecting the comparison. However, at present there is insufficient data available to enable the quantification of these effects.'

The Scottish Government will work with the HSE in any aspects where devolved issues arise to help the HSE deliver their reserved statutory responsibilities in the area of workplace safety.

Question reference: S6W-22203

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 12 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-15474 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 10 March 2023, how much of the £140 million to support the roll-out of digital devices in the Capital Spending Review has been allocated to date; how much will be allocated before May 2026, and when it expects it will be allocated; which local authorities will receive funding before May 2026, and what proportion of the funding each of those local authorities will receive.

Chamber and committees