Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government publish their annual marketing spend on https://www.gov.scot/collections/marketing-spend/ which is broken down by portfolio, specific campaign and campaign media and available for public to view.

The theft of railway materials is an important issue. It is for the police to enforce criminal laws such as theft and the Scottish Government fully supports the police taking the necessary action to hold perpetrators to account.

In terms of the resale of stolen railway materials, attempts may be made to sell these to metal dealers.

There is a licensing scheme for metal dealers and itinerant metal dealers under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (“the 1982 Act”). The Scottish Government has taken action to raise standards within the industry, and make it more difficult for metal thieves to convert the proceeds of crime into cash. These changes were made via the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015 (“the 2015 Act”), which amended the 1982 Act, strengthening and modernising the existing regime.

The 2015 Act provided new definitions for metal dealer and itinerant metal dealer, thereby extending the scope of the regime. It tightened record keeping arrangements and required proper identification of customers. It also increased penalties for licensing offences.

In more detail, the 2015 Act raised the penalties for failure to have an appropriate metal dealer or itinerant metal dealer licence, or failure to comply with licence conditions. The maximum penalty on summary conviction for operating without a licence without reasonable excuse, or for operating in breach of a condition of a licence, was increased to a fine not exceeding £20,000 and/or imprisonment of no longer than six months. The 2015 Act also amended the 1982 Act to provide for forms of payment that may be accepted by a metal dealer or itinerant metal dealer. This permits payment by bank transfer or cheque and means cash is not an acceptable method of payment.

I have asked Alison Byrne OBE, Chief Executive of National Records of Scotland (NRS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

Access to NRS Services is set out in our Public Access Policy - National Records of Scotland (NRS) .

For the range of services delivered by NRS, assessments including the EQIA, Island Communities Impact Assessment and Digital Scotland Service Standard Assessment are undertaken at the point of service change and improvement to help improve accessibility for citizens across all communities.

I have asked Alison Byrne OBE, Chief Executive of National Records of Scotland (NRS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

NRS’ function is to collect, preserve and produce information about Scotland's people and history and make it available to inform current and future generations. Our services including holding Scotland’s National Archives, one of 5 National Collections in Scotland, the registration of vital events (births, deaths, marriages etc) and the production of population and demographic statistics, including taking the decennial Census of Scotland’s people.

NRS is committed to improving its services and putting the needs of our customers at the heart of everything we do. Recent improvements include:

In 2024, NRS launched our refreshed and modernised Scotland’s People website and recently refreshed the corporate website. This improves online access to public records, archives and statistics, together with a modernised Digital Archive Search Room to provide a dedicated space for researchers to access digitised archival records.

An increasing number of birth and death registrations are now carried out remotely following implementation of the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Act 2022.

NRS has launched a new and innovative interactive online mapping tool and Flexible Table Builder tool allowing users to access detailed Census 2022 data and combine information from different topics like religion, health or education down to neighbourhood level. This allows all users to utilise the information for their defined analysis alongside our continued delivery of all of our high quality demographic statistics in line with UK standards and through enhancement of our statistical services.

As records are increasingly created and held in digital form, NRS is scaling up its capability in order to ensure that it can continue to preserve and make available future additions to the national archive in ‘born-digital’ form.

NRS has for some years, provided a web continuity and web archiving service. This takes regular snapshots of key public authority websites, supporting business continuity for public bodies as well as providing valuable historical information for public transparency and research purposes.

The Scottish Government does not provide guidance to local authorities specifically about support for community radio stations. We are however clear that community radio is a valuable resource across many communities in Scotland and we will persist in championing the continuation and strengthening of these vital services for Scottish listeners through our engagement with relevant stakeholders, including the UK Government and the regulator Ofcom.

The Scottish Government contracts experienced media planning and buying agencies to create media strategies and to buy media schedules. The media agency will recommend the best combination of media channels based on the aims of the campaign, allocated budget and audience. The media agency will take into account the following factors:

The Scottish Government published the Government response to the EPC Reform consultation on 21 January 2025 [1]. This confirms that we will lay revised EPC regulations in Parliament during 2025, to come into force in 2026. These regulations will introduce an improved EPC rating system to give consumers better information on the fabric energy efficiency of their building and on the emissions and efficiency of their heating system, as well as on potential improvements they could make to both. We will also retain the rating on modelled energy costs which consumer testing tells us is so important to them at this time of sustained high energy prices. That user testing has, in addition, allowed consumers to tell us how to make the design and accessibility of EPCs better, and we can confirm that introduction of a redesigned certificate will coincide with the regulations bringing the new rating system into force.

[1] https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781836912408.

Please see below for a breakdown of the collective advertising spend given to community radio stations over the past five financial years, as the 2024-25 financial year is not yet complete the information is not included. This breakdown includes a list of the stations that received advertising spend within each year. Information on individual spend per radio station is not available to us as this is deemed commercially sensitive.

The National Entitlement Card allows the holder to access rail concession schemes, where such schemes exist. It is a feature of these Local Authority sponsored schemes that tickets may only be purchased in face-to-face transactions – either at ticket offices or on board a train. The Scottish Government specifies that all ScotRail trains should have a member of staff on board and therefore these concessionary fares are always available for eligible passengers.

The allocation of medical specialty training places is made annually to ensure it meets the needs of the healthcare workforce, recognising that completion of specialty training can take a minimum of 3 to 8 years depending on the specialty. This process is overseen by a group of senior representatives from the Scottish Government, NHS Education for Scotland, professional bodies, and Health Boards. Based on workforce data and service demands, the group makes recommendations to Scottish Ministers regarding any changes needed, including the potential expansion of training places in specific specialties.