Chamber and committees

The Evaluation of the Scottish Strategy for Autism has been completed. The report is being finalised and is expected to be published soon.

The issue of body-worn cameras is a policy and operational decision for Police Scotland, acting under the oversight of the Scottish Police Authority. However, as part of our budget allocation for policing this year, we have provided one-off funding of £500,000 to support their use by armed officers.

Police Scotland are currently running a public consultation on a wider roll-out body-worn video across the service which will assist them in protecting the public, their officers and staff and provide best evidence at court.

This consultation launched on the 1 June and is due to close on 31 August 2021. The results will help inform protocols, a code of practice and training to ensure that cameras are used in appropriate and proportionate way .

The Scottish Government has committed to a review of the Victim Notification Scheme and work in relation to this is being taken forward.

The minutes from the meeting of the Victims Taskforce on 10 March 2021 where this matter was discussed can be accessed here: Victims Taskforce papers: March 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

Data from Public Health Scotland shows the number of (a) children and (b) adults presenting with self-harming issues within Scottish NHS acute hospitals in each year from 2007 to 2020, broken down by calendar year of admission (inpatient data only). Figures for 2021 cannot be provided at this time.

Notes :

• The recording of data does not allow for a breakdown between NHS boards.
• There are some quality issues with this data set due to the recording of self-harm in Acute inpatient settings.
• Figures on self-harm presentations in Accident & Emergency departments, psychiatric inpatient hospitals and outpatients settings cannot be published at this time, due to data quality issues.
• Many people with self-harm related injuries are not treated as Acute inpatients, or do not present to NHS hospitals. Therefore, the data provided will likely be an undercount of self-harm related injuries in the period 2007-2020

The Scottish Government is actively working with partners to develop Scotland’s approach to self-harm; a commitment in the Mental Health Transition & Recovery Plan. We recognise self harm behaviour is complex and often reflects underlying emotional distress. We commissioned Samaritans Scotland to undertake research in 2020 which resulted in the publication of ‘Hidden too long: uncovering self-harm in Scotland’ ( https://media.samaritans.org/documents/HiddenTooLong_uncoveringself-harminScotland.pdf ). Building on that research, our engagement with partners and people with lived experience will allow us to better understand the prevalence and nature of self-harm (and associated data requirements). Crucially, it will inform our approach to ensuring compassionate responses which effectively support individuals and families.

The Scottish Government notes the recent calls for the International Criminal Court to recognise the destruction of nature, “ecocide”, as an international crime.

We are committed to maintaining high environmental standards and have put in place arrangements to establish Environmental Standards Scotland (ESS) as the new governance body which has the ability to keep under review the implementation of international obligations relating to environmental protection legislation and advise the Government accordingly.

The second milestone of the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing to 2032 (EESSH2) requires social landlords to ensure their stock meets, or can be treated as meeting, EPC Band B, or is as energy efficient as practically possible, by the end of December 2032 and within the limits of cost, technology and necessary consent.

The EESSH2 milestone does not change landlords’ responsibility to manage their investment policy to ensure that it is cost-effective, especially where substantial additional investment has a potential impact on rents. The Scottish Government guidance for landlords makes it clear that we do not expect landlords to invest in measures that are unaffordable or where the costs are disproportionate to the benefits to tenants. Landlords have broad discretion to decide if potential energy efficiency measures are too expensive or are not value for money in their stock. We will continue to work in partnership with the sector to find the most effective ways to tackle the shared challenge of the climate emergency together.

Scottish Government modelling suggests that it could cost a total of £3.4 billion to bring 62% of Scottish social housing up to EPC band B using existing technology. Historically, a large part of the expenditure needed to improve homes has come from landlords' own resources or borrowing as part of their continuing investment to improve their homes. The Scottish Government provides guidance to help landlords identify funding sources, including Energy Company Obligation, UK Government Schemes, and funding from the Scottish Government.

Through our Social Housing Net Zero Heat fund, the Scottish Government has already committed to make available £100 million over the next parliament to support existing social landlords across Scotland to install zero emission heating systems and energy efficiency measures across their housing stock. In addition, the Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme and its successor programme will invest £400 million over the next five years in large-scale heat decarbonisation infrastructure. We will continue to work with the sector to assess the impact of funding to date and ensure that our funding effectively supports further acceleration of the decarbonisation of our social housing stock alongside the ongoing investment of social landlords in maintaining the efficiency and quality of their stock.

As set out on page 63 of the Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) for Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), we do not anticipate online retailers being adversely impacted by our DRS. The BRIA is available here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/deposit-return-scheme-scotland-full-business-regulatory-impact-assessment-2/documents/ .

It is vital to the success and fairness of our DRS that online retailers charge the deposit and provide a service to allow it to be redeemed and the container returned.

We recognise that local carer support services have been under additional pressure during the pandemic.

Local authorities and integration authorities are responsible for carer support under the Carers Act and commission third sector organisations to provide much of that support on their behalf. The 2021-22 budget contains an additional £28.5 million in the local government settlement for Carers Act implementation. Added to similar (baselined) increases in previous years since the Act came into force in April 2018, this brings the total additional investment for 2021-22 to £68 million per year.

The previous Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport wrote to local authorities in March 2021 to highlight the importance of using this additional funding to expand carer support: www.gov.scot/publications/carers-act-finance-2021-2022-letter .

The Scottish Government also funds the Time to Live scheme, administered by Shared Care Scotland, to enable local carer organisations to provide small grants for carers to spend on short breaks or something that gives them a break from caring. In response to the pandemic, we have put an additional £910,000 into the scheme in 2020-21 and a further £250,000 in 2021-22.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving and embedding inclusive communication within Government and across public bodies, this is a focus of one of our Equality Outcomes for the 2021-25 reporting period, as well as being a 2020 PfG commitment. The Scottish Government intends all local services to be accessible to all citizens in Scotland, regardless of circumstances of an individual service user.

We believe that as professionals, Social Workers are best placed to make a professional judgment based on their assessment of need exactly what, if any additional support is required. This assessment will include consideration of need for Spoken Language Interpreters, British Sign Language and any form of verbal/non-verbal communication requirements.

The Scottish Government currently regularly attend the below meetings alongside the UK Government:

• UKG COP26 Delivery Board
• Devolved Administration Directors Forum
• UKG led COP26 regular Devolved Administrations catch-up
• Devolved Administrations Ministerial group
• COP26 COVID Steering Group
• COP26 Test, Trace and Isolate Working Group
• COVID leads weekly meeting
• Transport Co-Ordination Group (Relevant sub groups below)

o Communications

o Rail and Subway

o Glasgow City

o Edinburgh City

o Aviation

o Bus and Coach

o Resilience

o Venue Transport

• Transport Steering Group
• Travel Steering Group
• COP26 Planners working Group
• COP26 SCS Risk Challenge Panels
• COP26 Security & Readiness Steering Group
• COP26 Venue Operations Steering Group
• COP26 VIP Logistics Planning Group
• COP26 Testing & Exercising Group
• COP26 Blue Zone Staffing Group
• COP26 Horizon Scanning Group
• COP26 Policing and Security Assurance Group (PSAG)