Chamber and committees

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

The total cost for providing prisoners with mobile phones since the roll out in June 2020 and the end of the provision in July 2023 has been £5.972m. These figures include all costs associated with usage, running costs and mobile handsets purchased, as well as the capital implementation spend.

Introduced during the COVID-19 global pandemic, prison issue mobile phones provided those in our care with the ability to maintain contact with family and friends during an extremely difficult and challenging period.

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

The following table shows the number of breaches where an authorised mobile telephone was used in the prison setting up to and including 31 July 2023, when the provision was withdrawn:

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

Prison issue mobile telephones for use by those in our care, were withdrawn from use on 31 July 2023.

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.

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.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21186 on 22 September 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The survey by the Royal College of Psychiatrists describes some of the issues with current mental health service provision that we are working hard to improve. The recent Audit Scotland report concluded that our new Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy "recognises the importance of a whole system approach to supporting mental health and wellbeing and provides a foundation for better joint working ". The Mental Health Strategy Delivery Plan and Workforce Action Plan will be published in the coming weeks, and these will set out the actions we intend to take to address many of the issues across the whole system.

We fully agree with the conclusion in Audit Scotland’s report that our focus cannot just be on access to specialist services for mental health. As well as many other key pieces of work, our commitment to this is shown by:

• Our investment of £51m in the adult Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund since 2021. Approximately 3,300 grants were made to local organisations across Scotland in its first two years.
• Our continuing national roll-out of our Distress Brief Intervention programme.
• Our ongoing investment (£4.4m in 2022/23) in NHS 24’s Mental Health Hub, which continues to receive approx. 2,500 calls a week.

To support the range of help available, mental health spending has doubled in cash terms from £651m to £1.3bn since 2007.

This strategic investment to help create thousands of green jobs and deliver the full economic potential of offshore renewables projects will be delivered over the next five years.

There will be an extensive programme of consultation as the Green Industrial Strategy is developed in line with our commitments within the New Deal for Business. We have already engaged with a number of organisations including Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC), Confederation of British Industry (CBI Scotland), Scottish Council for Development & Industry (SCDI), Federation of Small Business (FSB), Institute of Directors (IoD) and Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE). We will continue to engage with stakeholders through our New Deal for Business Group and other mechanisms in order to shape the strategy.