Chamber and committees

The Scottish Police Authority has launched a recruitment campaign on Friday 31 March 2023, looking for a new Chief Constable to lead the second largest police service in the UK, after Sir Iain Livingstone QPM announced his intention to retire in the summer of 2023 at a meeting of the Authority on 23 February.

The deadline for applications is Friday 28 April. The Authority expects to announce a successful candidate in June 2023. This will be a fixed term appointment for a minimum of two years and a maximum of five years.

The appointment process has been reviewed and approved by the Scottish Police Authority’s People Committee. A Selection Panel has been convened which will be chaired by Martyn Evans, Chair of the Authority and will include Fiona McQueen CBE - Member, SPA, Joe Griffin - Director-General, Scottish Government, Angela Scott - Chief Executive, Aberdeen City Council, Independent Member, and Martin Hewitt QPM, Former Chair, National Police Chiefs Council – UK Policing Professional. Craig Naylor, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland and Lynn Brown OBE, Chief Executive of the Scottish Police Authority will be advisors to the panel and observe its discussions with candidates.

The appointment is subject to the approval of the Scottish Ministers.

The former Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans met with the Chair of the SPA and the Chief Constable on 22 March and they discussed the arrangements for the recruitment campaign, transition plans and timing.

Whilst there are currently no supertrawlers in the Scottish fishing fleet, a number of other fleets operate within Scottish waters, including a small number of EU supertrawlers. As well as vessels from the rest of the UK, the UK/EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement allows EU vessels full access to fish shared stocks within UK waters.

It is important to note that all vessels authorised to operate in Scottish waters do so under the appropriate licenses, and are obliged to follow Scottish domestic management rules, including mesh size restrictions and closed areas. These vessels also operate within agreed quotas. The majority of commercial stocks fished are managed by the use of Total Allowable Catch (TAC) limits. TAC levels are informed by the best available independent scientific advice, and are used with an aim to ensure sustainable fishing levels in the long term. Vessels, regardless of size or gear, are only permitted to fish the quotas that they have been allocated, in line with TACs set for each stock.

Sustainability, support for biodiversity, and consideration of the wider ecosystem is at the heart of how we manage Scotland’s fisheries and protect our marine environment. This is reflected in the 12 point action plan contained within Scotland Fisheries Management Strategy, and in the Blue Economy Vision for Scotland, which sets out our ambition for the sustainable management and shared stewardship of Scotland’s sea and coasts.

The application fee for Minimal Asset Process bankruptcy was removed from 6 February 2023.

I previously wrote to the Economy and Fair Work Committee setting out my current thinking on earnings arrestments. A copy of the letter addressed to the Convenor of the Economy and Fair Work Committee on 15 March 2023 can be found on the Scottish Parliament website.

The Scottish Government is taking a range of activities to improve circularity within the Scottish economy. This includes consulting on proposals for a Circular Economy Bill Delivering Scotland's circular economy: Proposed Circular Economy Bill - Consultation analysis - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) which we will bring forward before summer recess, and for a Waste Route Map which will be published later this year Delivering Scotland's Circular Economy - route map to 2025 and beyond: consultation analysis - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

We have made one of the biggest investments in a generation to modernise recycling in Scotland through the £70m Recycling Improvement Fund. The Fund is supporting Scottish councils to modernise recycling services and increase both the quantity and the quality of recycling collected. This increases the supply of materials in frequent use and high demand, such as plastics, and helps to ensure availability of materials for businesses whilst reducing waste.

The forthcoming Deposit Return Scheme has already delivered hundreds of millions of pounds of investment across Scotland and is creating over 500 new green jobs.

Last year, we launched a Circular Textiles Fund to improve the circularity of textiles; issued a revised procurement policy note setting out that we expect public bodies to use their public procurement spend to support climate and circular economy ambitions ( Public procurement - taking account of climate and circular economy considerations: SPPN 3/2022 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot); and launched the Low Carbon Manufacturing Challenge Fund, which will support the development of new business models based on the principles of a circular economy.

We also provide funding to Zero Waste Scotland which has a range of support available for businesses and social enterprises to help them transition to more circular ways of working. Zero Waste Scotland also works in partnership with organisations throughout Scotland to encourage collaboration on circular economy projects between businesses, sectors and communities, for example: with Highlands & Islands Enterprise, South of Scotland Enterprise, Chambers of Commerce, manufacturing and renewable energy industry bodies.

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

Since January 2022, there have been 20 instances of drone activity being recorded over or inside the prison estate, out of which there were been 6 physical drone recoveries. SPS systems cannot provide information prior to this date as incidents before January 2022 are not categorised to allow this information to be extracted. The rising number of incidents involving drones has now resulted in closer monitoring and recording of these incidents.

We expect all investment to adhere to the Interim Principles for Responsible Investment in Natural Capital as a minimum. The ethical framework that is being developed by NatureScot and its partners to guide investments under the Memorandum of Understanding will support this.

The matters referred to cannot be determined until the ethical framework has been agreed and approved and the project design phase, which includes developing investment cases with land managers, has been completed.

The Climate Change Committee, an independent statutory body, published their report on Voluntary Carbon Markets and Offsetting in October 2022, concluding that high-integrity carbon credits purchased by businesses can play a small but important role in supporting the transition to net zero.

Establishing a values-led, high-integrity market for responsible private investment in natural capital is a commitment of the National Strategy for Economic Transformation, and the Scottish Government is working to ensure that this is one of a number of measures used to achieve a just transition. In support of this, our Interim Principles for Responsible Investment in Natural Capital make clear that investments should create benefits that are shared between public, private and community interests.

The Scottish Government takes all crime, including that committed in rural areas, extremely seriously. One of the key Aims of our Vision for Justice, published in 2022, is to ensure that we have a society in which people feel, and are, safer in their communities. In January this year, we revised our Strategic Police Priorities, which underpin the statutory policing principles that the main purpose of policing is to improve the safety and wellbeing of persons, localities and communities in Scotland.

The Scottish Partnership Against Rural Crime (SPARC), is chaired by Police Scotland and draws together key stakeholders from across the justice and rural sectors, including Scottish Government, to provide a robust, multi-agency approach to rural crime and support activity at local level.

SPARC published an updated Strategy last year which set out 7 key priority areas and detailed the Rural Watch Scotland initiative focused on preventative activity undertaken and delivered by Neighbourhood Watch Scotland working through SPARC.

The Median waiting time for patients residing in NHS Highland, NHS Orkney, NHS Shetland, and NHS Western Isles that have attended a new outpatient appointment or received treatment as an inpatient or day case in other NHS Boards, in each of the last 10 years can be found in the Scottish Parliament Information under Bib. No. 64141.

Please note that PHS are unable to provide data at procedure level, and so data are provided at specialty level only. NHS Board of residence is derived from a patient’s postcode at the point when they were added to the waiting list. Please also note that PHS are unable to provide data prior to October 2012, so annual data are provided from January 2013 onwards.

For each NHS Board/specialty combination, the number of new outpatient attendances and inpatient/day case admissions has been provided along with the median and 90th percentile length of wait. The median is provided rather than the mean because an average can be skewed incorrectly by a small number of very long waits that are recorded in error in the national data. The 90th percentile statistic indicates that 9 out of 10 patients waited less than or equal to the number of days shown and provides a more accurate representation of the length of wait experienced by patients.