Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government’s budget for 2025-26 includes £412.2 million for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) which is an increase of £18.8 million. This will enable SFRS to continue to deliver the high standard of services required to keep communities safe. This includes an increase from £43 million to £47 million in capital funding which will allow the service to invest more in property, fleet and equipment. The allocation of resources is a matter for the SFRS Board.

The Scottish Government is committed to working with SFRS to ensure continuing priority is given to the implementation of its wildfire strategy. The Service’s planned spend is circa £1.6 million over the course of the 3 year roll-out of its strategy. New equipment, vehicles and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) continues to be rolled out and SFRS will fully implement its wildfire strategy during the course of 2025. As part of its strategy SFRS is adopting ‘burn suppression’ techniques such as those in use in the new Mediterranean-style specialist wildfire units. Due to extensive training and the use of new techniques, SFRS’s ability to tackle wildfires has never been so advanced.

The Minister for Victims and Community Safety regularly meets with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) Chief Officer and Board Chair where a wide range of issues are discussed, including the capital budget allocation and the SFRS estate. The Scottish Government is aware of the condition of fire stations and has increased the capital funding for SFRS from £32.5m in 2023-24 to £43m in 2024-25 and to £47m in 2025-26. The allocation of resources is a matter for the SFRS Board.

Information is not held centrally on the total number of violent incidents within schools that involve the use of a weapon. Some information is available where any such use of a weapon resulted in either the exclusion of a pupil or the recording of a weapon possession (used) crime by the police.

Table One shows those exclusions from school in 2020-21 and 2022-23 which included the reasons of Physical assault using improvised weapon, physical assault using weapon and threat of physical violence using weapon or improvised weapon. This data is published biennially, with the next update covering the 2024-25 academic year. It should be noted that each exclusion can include more than one reason and figures for 2020-21 will have been impacted by the closure of the school estate as part of the Covid-19 lockdown.

Table Two shows the number of weapon possession crimes in school recorded by the police, where the weapon has been used against another person (for example to threaten or assault). This only covers cases that have been reported to the police, and again the relatively lower figures for the year ending December 2020 will likely reflect the pandemic related school closures.

Table One: Reasons for exclusion from school, 2020-21 and 2022-23

In general, the Scottish Government has no role in day to day operations at airports in Scotland as these are regulated by the UK Government and its associated agencies.

Officials engaged regularly with Scottish airports during the disruption affecting Heathrow Airport in order to understand the impact on Scotland. Whilst no concerns were raised by Scottish airports in relation to power supply, we would of course be happy to engage further with the sector should any issues arise that directly affect Scotland.

NHS Grampian were escalated to Level 3 of the NHS Support and Intervention Escalation Framework in January 2025 for financial management and position. The Scottish Government are providing specific tailored support to NHS Grampian in order to help stabilise the financial position. Alongside additional cost improvement programmes, the support package includes a dedicated financial support lead within Scottish Government who frequently meets NHS Grampian Executives challenge their financial position and trajectories and ensure the Board is on track to meet financial improvement milestones.

Throughcare services are in place to support individuals being released from custody to reintegrate into the community, which includes providing support with any accommodation needs. A new national voluntary throughcare service, Upside, with annual funding of £5.3 million from the Scottish Government, launched on 1 April 2025.

The Scottish Government thanks the Marine Conservation Society and their volunteers for their considerable efforts in gathering the data within the State of Our Beaches 2024 report, and also removing beach litter during these surveys. Their citizen science is vital in helping us prioritise future policy and legislation development.

We recognise that marine litter is an important national and international problem and have prioritised action through the Marine Litter Strategy for Scotland to ensure that the amount of litter entering the marine environment is minimised to bring ecological, economic and social benefits.

We published our refreshed Marine Litter Strategy in September 2022, which sets out a co-ordinated approach to address the amount of litter entering the marine environment, and supports the removal of debris that is already there. The updated strategy contains multiple actions on the most problematic types of marine litter including sewage-related debris and wet wipes. We are working across the four nations to put an end to pollution caused by wet wipes containing plastic, with legislation forthcoming.

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

SPS Women’s Strategy delivers a focus on both therapeutic and trauma informed environments for women in our care, and through individualised case management processes, women’s safety is managed in a way that is sensitive to their individual and gender specific needs and risks.

SPS’ person-centred approach and Women’s Strategy acknowledges that safety and wellbeing needs can be different for each woman, and traumatic experience can show that one woman’s feeling of safety and secure looks very different from another’s.

In practice our approach allows us to create an environment that promotes safety in a way that is sensitive to individual past experiences of distress, abuse and trauma.

Additionally, SPS are acutely aware of the Supreme Courts Judgement regarding the ‘biological definition’ of a woman and are currently considering any impact this may have on existing policies and operations.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-36086 on 24 April 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government thanks the Marine Conservation Society and all the many volunteers for their excellent work in monitoring beach litter and cleaning our shores. Citizen science is valued, and in combination with data from our scientists and our wider international monitoring programme, it is useful in helping us prioritise policy development to effectively reduce marine litter.