Chamber and committees

The £463 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) programme delivered over 101,300 fibre connections in the West Scotland region with over 96,600 of those capable of delivering speeds of 24 Megabits per second (Mbps) and above. The Reaching 100% (R100) programme will build upon this work by ensuring all homes and businesses can access superfast broadband – including those in the constituencies of Clydebank and Milngavie, Cunninghame North, Cunninghame South, Dumbarton, Eastwood, Greenock and Inverclyde, Paisley, Renfrewshire North and West, Renfrewshire South, and Strathkelvin and Bearsden. The £600 million R100 contracts will deliver a substantial number of fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections, and the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) will also ensure that anyone who wants a superfast connection of 30Mbps and above by the end of 2021 can have one.

This is a matter for the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission. The information that has been requested is not held by the Scottish Government.

Mr McArthur may be interested to know that a consultation seeking views on options for changes to the way legal services are regulated and how the legal complaints system operates is currently open and is running from 1 October to 24 December 2021. The consultation is available at: https://consult.gov.scot/justice/legal-services-regulation-reform-in-scotland .

The Scottish Government advises anyone who has experienced domestic abuse or sexual violence to report crimes committed against them, regardless of the impacts of Covid-19. Police Scotland remain committed to proactively target perpetrators and protect victims and their families from domestic abuse or further harm.

Domestic abuse cases continue to feature in the court programme as a key priority, with a view to mitigating the impact of the pandemic on timescales for these types of cases. £50m of Scottish Government Covid recovery funding was allocated this year and the recruitment and training of extra justice staff has enabled additional court capacity recently. This will support the process for reducing the backlog in criminal cases through the collaborative Recovery programme.

The Scottish Government meets regularly with Scottish Women’s Aid to discuss their concerns, and to outline the approach being taken to addressing the impact of the pandemic on all court cases. We understand the pandemic has extended waiting lists for support and have allocated £4.5 million split between Scottish Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland to address this issue.

The Cabinet Secretary for External Affairs wrote to Lord Frost on 10 September stressing the necessity of representation of Scottish stakeholders on the Domestic Advisory Group and Civil Society Forum, including the representation of remote communities, disadvantaged groups and all sectors of society and business. Prior to the Cabinet Office consultation closing, the Cabinet Secretary met with representatives of the third sector to discuss their participation in the groups and officials have encouraged stakeholders to respond to the consultation. Plans are in place for follow up discussions with stakeholders in the autumn to help ensure that they are adequately represented.

The Scottish Government is committed to tackling racial inequalities. Our recently-published Immediate Priorities Plan (IPP) sets out how we will work across government and beyond to tackle deep rooted inequalities, and implements the recommendations of the Expert Reference Group on Covid-19 and Ethnicity. The IPP captures work ongoing across government, including our Fair Work First approach; the development of a race equality toolkit for employers; a Workplace Equality Fund to support minority ethnic people into employment; an ethnicity pay strategy; and a £20 increase to the Scottish Child Payment. We recognise the need for our work to tackle poverty to reach minority ethnic families in particular. That is why they are one of six priority groups we want to focus on in our national mission to eradicate child poverty in Scotland. Health inequalities are being tackled through a concurrent focus on improving Covid-19 health outcomes and targeting diseases, such as diabetes, which are overrepresented in certain minority ethnic communities.

As noted in the Programme for Government, we intend to consult shortly on proposed reforms to the law relating to bail and release from custody. Public protection and victims’ safety are at the heart of our proposals for reform, which focus on reduce reoffending and associated victimisation.

In relation to bail, we will be consulting on proposals to refocus how remand is used, especially for those who pose little or no risk to public safety. With regards to release from custody, we intend to consult on reforms to support release arrangements, with a focus on enabling reintegration into the community.

The responses to this consultation will inform a year 1 bill.

We recognise that there is very limited data on Islamophobia in Scotland and that this is essential to effectively tackle Islamophobia in Scotland.

In respect of anti-Muslim hate crime, in February 2020, the Scottish Government published a research report ‘A Study of the Characteristics of Police Recorded Hate Crime in Scotland’. This is the first time that such information has been publicised, and includes information on the type of prejudice shown. In around one-quarter (26%) of religiously-aggravated hate crimes recorded in 2018-19, the perpetrator showed prejudice towards the Muslim community.

Another study into the characteristics of hate crimes recorded in 2020-21 is ongoing and is currently planned to be published in 2022. The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 includes provision to require disaggregated data on hate crime to be published annually and we are currently developing our approach in partnership with justice agencies. This will provide key information about the nature of hate crime in Scotland, including information about those involved. Such data will be essential to effectively tackle hate crime in Scotland and to inform future interventions in this area.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03003 on 1 October 2021. 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 .

Our Tackling Prejudice and Building Connected Communities Action Plan includes a number of actions around raising awareness of hate crime and to encourage reporting. For information, a full list of action commitments in this area can be found at http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2017/06/1336/5 . We will publish a report on progress made in delivering those actions during the coming months.

Implementation of the Hate Crime Act provides a good opportunity for the Scottish Government, justice partners and stakeholders to take stock of and refresh our approach to tackling hate crime and we are committed to developing a new hate crime strategy later this year. The new strategy will support implementation of the Hate Crime Act, as well as further work to consider the need for the Scottish Government to define Islamophobia, including consideration of the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group’s definition.

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

A solution was identified with the provider in relation to illicit SIM cards being used in prison issued mobile phones and it is currently being implemented across the prison estate. This solution enables the SPS to blacklist handsets on various network providers rendering the handsets unusable with a non-prison issued SIM. The security measures in place will continue to be monitored by the SPS.