Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is aware of reports of unusually large numbers of emaciated and dead seabirds that were found along the North Sea costs in autumn 2021 and have been working to establish the potential causes. We have a number of dead seabird, fish, plankton and water samples undergoing analysis with the aim of identifying potential causes for the mortality event. The Scottish Government has been working closely with the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the Sea Mammal Research Unit and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science and the findings of these investigations will be published in due course.

Care and Repair services operate throughout Scotland to offer independent advice and assistance to help homeowners repair, improve or adapt their homes so that they can live in comfort and safety in their own community. As of 1 March there were 27 care and repair offices in Scotland covering all local authority areas except West Lothian, with all providing help to vulnerable older and disabled people to install fire alarms under the government financed scheme.

The Scottish Government has provided £1.23 million to Care and Repair Scotland during 2021-22. This includes £1.1 million to support compliance with the new fire alarms legislation and £130,000 for its role as national coordinating body for Care and Repair services in Scotland .

I refer the member to the answer given in S6W-05977.

We know since the initial introduction of the Distance Aware initiative, uptake has been good and we have therefore ordered more badges and lanyards and considered additional ways to distribute.

As such we will offer Local Authorities badges and lanyards to distribute on a flexible basis, based on local need. It will be for Local Authorities to decide on distribution channels, but could include testing centres and council buildings, as well as any local community facilities, hubs or stores in rural communities.

In rural, remote and island locations, lateral flow device (LFD) tests can be ordered online or collected from test sites, pharmacies and dispensing GPs. Beyond this, local partners are responsible for choosing where to establish additional LFD community collect points.

In NHS Highland, NHS Orkney, NHS Shetland and NHS Western Isles examples of community collect sites have included vaccination centres, libraries and transport hubs including airports, mainland ferry terminals, bus and railway stations. Partners maintain an up-to-date list of their community collect sites on their websites, which can be found via gov.scot.

The following table shows how many school-aged children are in each local authority (as at September 2020) and how many devices have been distributed by councils using the £25m digital inclusion funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21.

Local authorities across Scotland have a range of approaches to provision of technology in schools, including some councils who have undertaken to provide cohorts of their school population with devices using their own budgets. We do not hold information centrally on those approaches, therefore, the table below only shows devices distributed through the funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all school-aged children and young people in Scotland have access to a digital device by the end of this parliament.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all school-aged children and young people in Scotland have access to a digital device by the end of this parliament in 2026.

The Scottish Government is not aware of any further plans to use facial recognition technology in schools in Scotland however, as the First Minister stated in her response question S6F-00388 on 28 October 2021, she is clear that the use of facial recognition in schools to be neither a proportionate nor a necessary measure. I can confirm this remains the position, although the decision on whether to introduce biometric identification systems into schools is ultimately a matter for local authorities and individual schools to consider for themselves. I also understand that North Ayrshire Council no longer use facial recognition technology and have reverted back to using Personal Identification Numbers for pupils to collect their school lunches.

I would like to be clear in stating our position, which is that prior to introducing biometric systems education authorities should carry out a privacy impact assessment, or a proportionate equivalent, and consult with pupils and parents. Information should also be provided on data protection; how to opt out; consent; and about alternative systems that can be used. Schools and education authorities will also pay due attention to the Information Commissioner’s Office requirements that organisations that are using facial recognition technology should comply with data protection law before, during and after its use.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of reported incidents that may be homophobic in nature. Data is available on the number of police recorded hate crimes that include an aggravation for sexual orientation, the vast majority of which were found to be for prejudice towards the gay and lesbian community in 2018-19.

The Scottish Government published a study on the characteristics of police recorded Hate Crime in February 2021. This includes details on the characteristics of these cases, based on a random sample of police recorded crimes. The following table shows the number of sexual orientation aggravated hate crimes recorded by Police Scotland for (a) South Ayrshire, (b) East Ayrshire and (c) Scotland (for reference) from 2015-16 to 2019-20. The number of hate crimes with a sexual orientation aggravation presented below is higher than the figures provided in the aforementioned study. This is because the table also includes hate crimes that have multiple aggravations (one of which is sexual orientation).

The study also looked in more detail at the prejudice shown by perpetrators. In the vast majority (94%) of sexual orientation aggravated hate crimes in 2018-19 the perpetrator showed prejudice towards the gay and lesbian community. In over two-thirds (69%) of crimes the words used or actions taken by the perpetrator showed a prejudice towards the gay community, with a further quarter (25%) showing prejudice towards the lesbian community. In 2018-19, the study showed that 39% of sexual orientation aggravated hate crimes had a Police Officer as a victim. Due to the sampling design, it is not possible to provide this information at a local authority level.

A second study into the characteristics of police recorded hate crime is due to be published this year. This will provide a similar type of detailed disaggregated data and information on police recorded hate crimes for the year 2020-21.

We provided £0.5 million to Care and Repair in September 2021 and in response to levels of demand, have provided a further £0.5 million in February 2022. This £1 million funding will enable Care and Repair to support eligible older and disabled households with making the necessary changes. We continue to work closely with Care and Repair to understand how best to support them and their clients.

The latest available data from the Scottish Health Service Costs book shows that for 2019-20 the percentage of NHS expenditure spent on mental health services was 8.49%.

We are working with partners to deliver the 2021-22 Programme for Government commitment to ensure that at least 10% of frontline NHS spend goes towards mental health and 1% goes on child and adolescent services by the end of this Parliament.