Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to increasing the participation of people from BAME backgrounds in politics. In 2016 the Scottish Government published the Race equality framework for Scotland 2016-2030. One of its aims is to ensure minority ethnic participation and representation is effective, fair, proportionate, and valued at all levels of political, community and public life.

This ambition is also reflected in the commitment in the Bute House Agreement to encourage more people to register to vote, to stand as candidates and to remove barriers some people experience so they can vote independently.

The Scottish Government funds a post based in CoSLA until March 2024, to support the work of the Cross-Party Barriers to Elected Office Special Interest Group. The group involves elected members from each of COSLA’s Political Groups, and seeks to identify changes in culture and practices, and support our ambition to deliver greater equality and diversity within local democracy.

We recognise that pay may be a barrier to some people standing to become a councillor. The Scottish Government and COSLA have jointly committed to undertake an independent review of Councillor remuneration. The inaugural meeting of the Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee (SLARC) was held in April 2023. A report with recommendations for Ministers will be published at the end of November 2023.

The difficulty of getting reliable data on the participation of under-represented groups, including people from BAME backgrounds, is an issue that stakeholders raised during the electoral reform consultation in 2018. In response, the Scottish Government worked closely with a range of stakeholders, including the Electoral Management Board for Scotland, the Electoral Commission, COSLA and the Improvement Service to run a candidate survey for the 2022 Local Government elections.

The Local Government candidate diversity survey suggests that among those who responded (28% of candidates responded, which is lower than we would want but represents a typical response rate for this kind of survey), 6.7% of candidates in 2022 identified as “Asian” or “All other ethnic groups” (rather than “White” or “Prefer not to say”). For those who went on to be elected the figure was 4.0%. We are looking at ways to improve the collection of data in the future as the voluntary approach clearly has its limitations. This survey does however confirm the view that people with BAME backgrounds are under-represented in local government.

Clearly work remains to be done to encourage more people from BAME backgrounds to take part in politics. We are open to ideas to ensure that all members of society have the opportunity to participate in politics and to become elected representatives.

Across Scotland safety cameras are deployed through the Scottish Safety Camera Programme primarily where they have the greatest potential to reduce injury collisions and where there is evidence of both collisions and speeding. This is in accordance with criteria contained in the Scottish Safety Camera Programme Handbook.

There are a range of sites along the A75 where mobile safety camera resources are deployed.

An annual site prioritisation exercise is underway to assess the performance of all existing safety camera sites across Scotland and to identify locations which meet minimum criteria requirements. If new locations are identified on the A75 which meet minimum criteria requirements then consideration will be given to deploying additional camera resources on the route.

In the Statement to Parliament by the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport, on the 26 January 2023, a Delivery Plan for STPR2 to provide further insight on the prioritisation of the recommendations will follow later this year, and this will set out the investment priorities over 20 years.

Whilst it is important to note that progress is already being made on 38 of the 45 recommendations, it has not been possible to fund all of our current commitments from the existing capital spending review. Thus, it is important that the Delivery Plan is developed in the context of the on-going cost of living crisis and the Scottish Government’s fiscal outlook. These financial challenges have a bearing on the investment pipeline of projects and programmes, both pre-existing and STPR2 recommendations, plus statutory and legal commitments.

The Scottish Ministers, in exercise of their powers under Section 88 of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, offer to give to the Scottish Police Authority an annual grant in connection with delivery of the operational policing aspects of the Scottish Safety Camera Programme. These operational aspects are undertaken by three regional safety camera units covering the north, east and west of Scotland.

The value of the grant for the 3 year period 2020-2023 is set out below.

The annual summary analysis report will be published on or before‎ 1 May on the Sustainable Scotland Network website ( Sustainable Scotland Network - The Sustainable Scotland Network ).

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. This is a matter for Health Boards locally.

The devolved responsibilities for Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees are published on gov.scot: Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

PHS publish waiting times data on a quarterly basis. The next publication covering the period to March 2023 will be published on 30 May 2023.

We remain committed to increasing capacity to support recovery, including providing additional endoscopies. To support this we have put in place four mobile endoscopy units, which are providing five to six endoscopy rooms across NHS Scotland. A Dyce facility continues to provide additional endoscopy for NHS Grampian and a new endoscopy room is due to open in NHS Ayrshire and Arran on 1 May 2023.

NTC Golden Jubilee Phase 2 is planned to open in late 2023 bringing additional capacity of five orthopaedic theatres, five endoscopy rooms and two general theatres, and around 9,400 procedures in 2023-24.

We continue to work with Boards on a series of measures to increase diagnostic capacity. Scotland’s world-leading diagnostic bowel service, Colon Capsule Endoscopy (CCE), has supported nearly 3,000 patients since becoming operational in June 2020, including around 2,500 since April 2021.

International trade and import controls are matters reserved to the UK Government. The Scottish Government has limited powers to reduce the amount of food imported. However, our Vision for Trade strategy clearly shows, we are committed to a balanced and nuanced approach to trade, and we know that imports are an important source of food for Scotland, offering products that cannot be produced domestically and protecting us against shocks to production. Our approach to trade preserves food security by protecting our sensitive agricultural sectors but also enabling us to comply with our World Trade Organisation obligations. We continue to press the UK Government to adopt this approach and take in account food security when negotiating trade deals, specifically market access aspects. The Scottish Government are disappointed that the UK Government has repeatedly postponed introducing checks on imports coming from the EU which causes an unacceptable risk to health and welfare. For example, the lack of checks on pork imports is currently of particular concern given the number of cases of highly contagious African Swine Fever. We have continually raised this issue with UK Government and will continue to press for checks on imports.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of domestic food production and the ongoing challenges faced by our farmers and crofters through the continued impact of Brexit, COVID-19, the ongoing situation in Ukraine, and now the cost crisis.

We recognise the importance of maintaining support for the sector; this is why we have committed to maintaining direct payments. We have also provided additional support to the food producing sector by ensuring payments through the Basic Payment Scheme and Greening payments were made in advance. Annually, the Scottish Government pays out around £420 million through these schemes. We have also established a Food Security Unit within the Scottish Government to develop evidence-based systems to monitor risks or threats to the supply chain to help mitigate future shocks and impacts on food security.

Supporting our local food businesses provides important markets for local food producers: we have provided: £15m funding towards the Scotland Food & Drink Recovery plan over 2020 to 2023; £17.5m to businesses across Scotland over the last two years through the Food Processing Marketing & Co-operation grant scheme; and £500k towards the Scottish Grocers Federation’s “Go Local” programme which has helped many independent convenience operators transform their stores and stock more locally sourced produce.

The Scottish Government does not formally assess the impact of clinical interventions.