Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government and COSLA have today jointly published a new Statement of Intent. It is available on the Scottish Government website here: https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781805253778 .

This new Statement of Intent will report on the progress of the commitments made in our joint Statement of Intent published in March 2021, and sets out additional actions we will take across the next 12 – 18 months to bring about improvements to the delivery of social care support.

The Stonemasonry Short Life Working Group held its initial meeting in May 2022 and has since met three further times, with the most recent meeting held on 4 November 2022. After the next scheduled meeting in January 2023, the Stonemasonry Short Life Working Group intends to report to the Our Place in Time Skills and Expertise Group by the end of January 2023 with an outline of what actions are required to put stonemasonry training in Scotland in a sustainable position. Additionally, in order to provide an independent review of 2022-23 Scottish Stonemasonry Skills & Training needs, four stakeholder stonemasonry training workshops have taken place across November and December 2022.

We are committed to tackling disrepair in housing and driving a culture in which good maintenance is given a high priority.

Social landlords are required to have a clear complaints process and where a tenant is dissatisfied with the response of their housing provider, they are able to escalate their complaint to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. The Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) is responsible for monitoring social landlords’ progress towards the Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS), which they are required to meet, as part of the SHR’s role to monitor and report on social landlords’ achievement of the Scottish Social Housing Charter. SHR wrote to all Social Landlords on 1 December 2022 on the importance of having appropriate, proactive systems to identify and deal with any reported cases of mould and damp timeously and effectively.

For private landlords, they are obliged to meet the Repairing Standard and Tolerable Standard. If, after a landlord has been notified of a problem, it is not attended to satisfactorily, then tenants have the right to refer the matter to the Housing and Property Chamber First Tier Tribunal for Scotland, who can require landlords to take remedial action. Local authorities also have powers to inspect properties in relation to the repairing standard and rights to make an application to the Tribunal in respect of this were introduced through the Housing (Scotland) Act 2014.

In the New Deal for Tenants consultation, published in December 2021, we asked for opinions on how best to ensure that landlords undertake repairs in a timely fashion. We are carefully considering what measures are necessary to ensure that private rented homes are in good condition and that tenants’ concerns are quickly resolved.

We have also committed to developing a new cross tenure Housing Standard for Scotland during this Parliamentary term.

Police Scotland continue to develop international partnerships with law enforcement authorities and support agencies to assist with investigations into human trafficking and exploitation offences and support for victims.

Development of those partnerships remains an operational matter for the Chief Constable of Police Scotland.

The Claimant Count is publicly available on www.nomisweb.co.uk , including breakdowns by age group and local authority area in Scotland in each month of the last five years.

Nomis - Official Census and Labour Market Statistics (nomisweb.co.uk)

The Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 is the principal piece of legislation governing the use and development of land. The act is supported by various pieces of subordinate legislation, such as the Town and Country Planning General Permitted Development (Scotland) Order, which provides permitted development rights for certain categories of digital communications infrastructure. Guidance on these permitted development rights is set out in Scottish Government Circular 2-2015

Specific guidance in relation to the siting of telecommunications equipment is contained in Planning Advice Note 62: Radio telecommunications This document is currently in the process of being updated and will include guidance on the siting of 5G mobile telecom masts. The intention is to publish this in the early part of 2023.

Through our revised draft National Planning framework 4 , we have proposed policies which support the delivery of such infrastructure which is carefully balanced amongst other factors such as visual and amenity impacts.

The Scottish Government is monitoring with Creative Scotland the position of cultural organisations in the current crisis. The Creative Scotland board meets on 19 December to consider the option of using its UK National Lottery reserves to help maintain standstill funding for Regularly Funded Organisations through 2023-24.

This would include support for Eden Court which receives £500,000 per year. Creative Scotland will also offer ongoing flexibility in the use of existing Regular Funding, whilst also exploring support for organisations and the sector to innovate and explore new ways of working.

The Scottish Government recognises that this is an incredibly worrying time for the culture sector as a whole and is in regular dialogue with the sector. We are holding a series of roundtables including one planned for Inverness in January 2023.

The Chief Entrepreneur has had 24 formal meetings with businesses since his appointment, not including daily engagements through email, social media and wider events. These engagements reflect the urgency and drive which the Chief Entrepreneur has brought to his work in government as well as the broad base of engagement and relationship building required in order to successfully embed entrepreneurship across all sectors of the Scottish economy. A list of all engagements undertaken by the Chief Entrepreneur during this period will shortly be published through the FOI process.

The Scottish Government is clear that there is no place for harassment or abuse in any form in the workplace and that everyone has the right to go to work without fear of intimidation.

Equality Law and Employment Law, are reserved to the UK Parliament. In the absence of powers over employment law, the Scottish Government will do all it can within devolved powers to promote and embed fair and inclusive working practices. We encourage all employers to have in place robust workplace policies for preventing and handling issues such as bullying or harassment.

On 9 December 2022 we published a refreshed Fair Work Action Plan which brings together our original Fair Work, Gender Pay Gap and Disabled People’s Employment action plans, along with the actions from our new Anti-Racist Employment Strategy . It takes forward the next phase of actions to drive forward Fair Work and will make it easier for employers and partners to access information on the critical role Fair Work has to play in achieving positive economic benefits on an individual and collective level. The action plan highlights the issue of sexual harassment at work and offers a case study in the Equally Safe initiative funded by Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government’s Fair Work First approach asks employers in receipt of public sector funding to commit to Fair Work criteria, including ‘action to tackle the gender pay gap’ and ‘offer of flexible and family friendly working from day one of employment’. Going forward we will ensure relevant guidance includes good practice and signposting to advice and tools for employers on preventing and tackling sexual harassment at work, such as the Close the Gap Equally Safe at Work resource.

The Scottish Government welcomes the inquiry and acknowledges that the submissions made to the inquiry by people affected in England and Wales will correlate with the experiences we have heard about in Scotland.

We remain committed to taking steps to address the challenges for the people who have been affected by historical adoption practices in Scotland.