Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-39288 on 25 July 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 is continuing to invest in violence prevention activity through our grant funded partner organisations, including the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit and Youthlink Scotland’s No Knives Better Lives.

This includes the development and delivery of two campaigns on knife crime and weapon carrying, to raise awareness to older children and the adults around them, including a campaign specifically targeting primary aged school children.

The Quit Fighting for Likes campaign will be promoted to front line professionals to encourage conversations with young people to explore the impact of filming and sharing violent images online. Resources will also target parents to help support young people away from carrying weapons.

We are considering what more we can do to strengthen support for young people and communities.

The First Minister convened the meeting on 12 June to focus on the views of those working in the youth work sector on violence among young people.

We recognise there are a wide range of organisations working to support young people and families across communities who are undertaking valuable prevention and early intervention work. To ensure those attending were able to put forward views in the time available, it was necessary to restrict numbers, so were unable to invite everyone with an interest in this matter.

The Scottish Government remain open to meeting with organisations wishing to contribute to this discussion to help inform the overall response to strengthen support to young people and communities.

All Territorial Boards can now provide their GPs with access to the new Digital Dermatology Pathway. Supplier data suggests that as of 18 July, 627 GP practices (71%) across 13 Territorial Boards have access to the pathway, of which 423 have used this to capture images as part of a referral to secondary care. The remaining Territorial Board has an existing pathway in place.

The current project plan is on track to have this business case completed by summer 2025. Once completed it will be reviewed through the appropriate governance processes.

The Scottish Government has worked closely with Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) to develop and refine the eligibility criteria for the Islands Business Resilience Fund (IBRF) and identify how this targeted funding can reach those businesses which meet the criteria and have been impacted by reductions in ferry services.

HIE carried out detailed analysis of data and statistics provided by Transport Scotland and CalMac relating to ferry disruption. Based on this, the islands of South Uist, Colonsay, North Uist, Eriskay, Benbecula, Berneray, Grimsay and Arran were identified as eligible for the Fund, as they each had experienced more than 15% ferry cancellations over the last three operating seasons, with limited alternatives. For comparison, the average disruption to ferry services, across the CalMac network was around 6-7%.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-39288 on 25 July 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 analysis of risk and provision of fire and rescue resources is an operational matter for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS). The Scottish Government supports SFRS as it carefully considers how to adapt to changing risks to remain an effective and efficient service across the whole of Scotland, with firefighters in the right place at the right time. SFRS is conducting a public consultation on possible service changes, including Lochgelly fire station but until that consultation closes and the results are analysed, no decisions have been taken.

No Green Freeport relief had been granted by October 2024, when mid-year estimates of non-domestic rates income for 2024-2025 were collected. This is the latest available data.

Provisional outturn data for 2024-2025 will be published later in the summer as part of the Non-domestic rates income statistics series, and I will write to the member as soon as this is published.

The Wellbeing Economy Monitor will be published on the Scottish Government webpages and can be found using the site search facility when searching for the terms “Wellbeing Economy Monitor” or “Wellbeing Economy”. We intend to bring together the Wellbeing Economy material as a collection on our webpages including previously published monitors which should add to its prominence.