Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government wants to improve opportunities, outcomes and support for people with Down’s Syndrome. To this end, we have committed to introducing a Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodiversity Bill as part of the Programme for Government. This Bill will ensure that the rights of people with Down’s Syndrome, among others, are respected and protected. To help make sure the new legislation is championed when it is implemented we will create a Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodiversity Commissioner through the new law.

The Scottish Government position is that we take a wider view of Down’s Syndrome within the rights of people with all learning disabilities.

Rather than duplicate the Down Syndrome Bill, we will continue with our commitment to introduce a Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodiversity Bill as part of the Programme for Government. This will ensure that the Bill meets the needs of people with Down’s Syndrome in the Scottish context.

Scottish Legislation already exists that requires Scottish public bodies meet the needs of people with Down’s Syndrome. The Additional Support for Learning Act (Scotland) 2004 (as amended) places duties upon education authorities to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils. The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 places duties upon Local Authorities and the NHS to provide services in a way which takes account of the particular needs of different service-users, and also takes account of the particular characteristics and circumstances of different service-users.

We continue to liaise regularly with our stakeholders around policy developments, and this includes the Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities, People First and Down’s Syndrome Scotland.

The Scottish Government aims to carry out scoping work on the remit and powers of a Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodiversity Commissioner in this Parliamentary year. This year we will begin an engagement exercise explore the Commissioner role, how it will be developed and what it will be responsible for. We will engage with all learning disability and autism stakeholders across the public and third sector, this includes Government officials across the 4 UK Nations and those with lived experience, who will be at the centre of the work.

We are working with local authority partners to develop a fully funded free school milk scheme for all children in primary schools as well as a free school milk scheme pilot in secondary schools.

We are working with local authority partners to develop a fully funded free school milk scheme for primary age pupils as well as a free school milk scheme pilot for secondary age young people. Existing subsidy arrangements will continue for another year to ensure that local authorities can continue to access subsidy towards their local school milk schemes while the new scheme is being developed.

Anonymous Voter Registration is available to anyone meeting certain statutory requirements where, if their name or address were listed on the electoral register, their safety would be at risk (or where the safety of other people at the same address as them would be at risk).

An anonymously registered elector has the same options for voting at an election as other electors. They can vote in person at a polling station or they can apply to vote by post or by proxy.

If they choose to vote in person, they will receive a poll card before the election. The poll card will be sent in a covering envelope. An anonymously registered elector must take this poll card to the polling station and will not be able to vote without it.

If the elector wants to vote by post or by proxy, they can ask the Electoral Registration Officer who will provide them with an application form which can also be downloaded from electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter

Further information on anonymous registration can be found in the following guidance which was produced in partnership between the Electoral Commission and Scottish Women’s Aid: ‘Anonymous registration: Supporting survivors of domestic abuse to register to vote’

Following a search of the information held on the Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) portal, there have been no contracts awarded to Amazon during financial year 2020-21 by any Scottish Public buying organisation. This information is already in the public domain and available on the internet by searching www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk . The PCS portal is a national advertising website provided by the Scottish Government as a one-stop shop for suppliers to access Scottish public sector contract opportunities.

The Scottish Government has a corporate correspondence system. Correspondence addressed to Ministers and requiring a response is added to the system on receipt.

The total number of mental health and learning disability beds within the NHS Scotland estate each of the last five years was:

Correspondence from MSPs is routinely answered by Scottish Government Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers. The Health and Social Care portfolio has experienced a huge and unprecedented increase in correspondence over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order for MSPs to receive timely responses, much of the correspondence previously signed by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport is being reviewed on their behalf by Scottish Government Deputy Directors. This remains under review and normal process will resume when volumes allow for timely responses.

The Scottish Government aim to respond to ministerial correspondence within 20 working days. Performance is monitored at local and corporate levels of government.

Disclosure Scotland checks and shares information about people's criminal records. This helps organisations to employ the right people for certain types of work, like working with children or protected adults. The requirement for disclosure checks is unlikely to apply to all individuals involved in the decision making process for the health and wellbeing census. Further information about the circumstances which require disclosure checks is available from Types of disclosure - mygov.scot

In terms of accessing individuals’ information, for the purposes of safeguarding, only a small number of individual staff within each local authority will have access to the responses provided by children and young people in the Census, and be able to actually identify an individual based on their Scottish Candidate Number by accessing a separate management information system which holds this information. No other persons (e.g. Scottish Government analysts) who will have access to the individual responses provided by children and young people would be able to do this, as they do not have access to any systems that store the names of individual pupils. Analysts are also required to comply with rules and regulations that are set out for when processing individual level data for statistics and research purposes.

It would be expected that anyone carrying out 'regulated work' including teaching or supervising children and/or protected adults or working directly with children and/or protected adults would have membership of the PVG Scheme.