Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government currently has no plans to increase the single person’s council tax discount. We are committed to reforming the Council Tax to make it fairer and is establishing a working group with representation from the Scottish Green Party, and engaging with COSLA, to oversee the development of effective deliberative engagement on sources of local government funding, including Council Tax. This work will culminate in a citizens’ assembly.

The Scottish Government holds data on the number of long term empty homes that have been empty for 6 months or more, by local authority from 2005 to 2021. This can be accessed using the following link: Housing statistics: Empty properties and second homes - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

This data is sourced from Council Tax information. Caution should be applied when considering this data as improvements have been made to the data collection systems by several local authorities since 2005, with some local authorities reporting zero long-term empty properties up until 2013. In addition, local authorities gained discretionary power to remove the empty properties discount or set a council tax increase of 100% in 2013. The council tax changes have led to the reclassification of a number of properties.

The review, Improving the Management of Sexual Offence Cases , led by the Lord Justice Clerk, Lady Dorrian, developed proposals for an improved system to deal with serious sexual offence cases, including recommending consideration of a time-limited pilot of single judge rape trials. We have committed to give careful consideration to all of the Review’s recommendations.

We have established a Governance Group to further explore the recommendations on an individual and collective basis. The Group established a short-life working group to consider the specific issues involved in any potential pilot of single judge rape trials. In addition, we launched a consultation on 12 May to gather wider views on the recommendation and other proposals to improve victims’ experiences of the justice system. Decisions on whether to proceed with legislation to implement a pilot will be informed by the outcomes of the working group and the consultation.

This information is not held centrally.

In addition to the Scottish Government, the working group includes representation from the following organisations:

• Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service
• Faculty of Advocates
• Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service
• Victims Support Scotland
• Scottish Legal Aid Board
• Rape Crisis Scotland
• Law Society of Scotland

A number of Working Groups have been set up to support and inform the Lady Dorrian Review Governance Group on specific areas or aspects of the recommendations, share accountability and ownership of action, and encourage stakeholders and organisations to work together.

In the context of broader terms of reference to support the Governance Group, the Single Judge Trial Pilot Working Group has been set up specifically to:

• Identify the key areas for development in order to make recommendations to the Governance Group on how to progress the consideration of a pilot. This may include aspects of feasibility and potential challenges (legal and other) of a pilot;
• Identify what other information, research, evidence may be needed to assist the consideration of the issues arising from the recommendation and any pilot;
• Consider how the progress, consideration and evaluation planned in relation to recommendation 5 and ‘steps to enhancing the quality of jury involvement’ might impact on the scope of any planned pilot.
• Identify policy and operational development required to further the consideration of a pilot and key opportunities/challenges to building consensus given the division of the Review Group;
• Consider what might be included within a public consultation document to gather views on the recommendation;
• Look at any other issues relevant to its considerations;
• Consider the implications of progressing of this recommendation in light of the work on the other recommendations within the Report, bearing in mind the independence of certain recommendations identified in the Report.

The Working Group is expected to report its findings to the Lady Dorrian Review Governance Group in Autumn 2022.

This information is not held centrally.

Since the launch of the Young Person’s Guarantee in November 2020, we have provided additional funding, with the aim of supporting new and enhanced opportunities for young people, through Local Employability Partnerships (LEPs). In 2022-23, Local Employability Partnerships will receive almost £113 million in funding for local employability services through the No One Left Behind approach, which includes the Young Person’s Guarantee, to provide support that meets both individual and labour market needs in each area. This is crucial to achieving shared aims around tackling poverty and inequalities.

As part of funding arrangements, Local Authorities are required to complete Equality Impact Assessments for the funding provided through the Guarantee, outlining how their plans and policies will support young people with protected characteristics, including disabled young people, and where they will target supported education, employment and training projects.

Recently published experimental statistics show that between January 2021-December 2021, 1189 disabled young people received employability support via LEPs, which included Young Person’s Guarantee funding. This data cannot be further disaggregated by type of disability.

The Scottish Government has no functions in relation to Kickstart, which is reserved to the UK Government. Data relating to the Kickstart Scheme is collated by the UK Government and is not currently shared with the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government remains committed to answering all correspondence as quickly as possible and within agreed timescales. This question has been interpreted to be seeking figures from the start of session 6 to date.

a) The Scottish Government responded to 2750 freedom of information requests within the statutory 20 working day deadline during this period. The time limit was exceeded 470 times. FOI performance figures are published on monthly basis on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/publications/freedom-of-information-foi-reporting/ .

b) The Scottish Government produces statistics, available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, which show how many written parliamentary questions were answered after the substantive date.

c) A high volume of Ministerial correspondence was received by the Scottish Government during this period. Of the 44991 pieces of correspondence received, 77% were answered on time with 10370 exceeding the response deadline.

The information requested can be found here: Housing statistics: Empty properties and second homes - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . Please note the figures provided for each local authority area do not differentiate between the different types of empty property.