Chamber and committees

As set out in the Policy Memorandum, accompanying the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill, the policy intention is that a local authority can establish exemptions to a visitor levy scheme in its area as it believes are appropriate. The Bill therefore provides for a local authority to put such exemptions in place, which will be informed by advice in national guidance being developed by local government and business organisations in the Visitor Levy Expert Group.

We have undertaken the full suite of assessments required for the introduction of the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill and these were published on the Scottish Government website on 14 June 2023. There is no requirement to assess the potential impact of Bills on developing countries. We are, however, committed to ensuring Scotland remains a global leader in equality, inclusion and human rights, and recently I met representatives of Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace Justice & Peace Scotland > Home (justiceandpeacescotland.org.uk) , from Malawi, who gave a very informative and moving presentation on Human Rights and Mining.

As set out in the Policy Memorandum, accompanying the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill, the policy intention is that a local authority can establish exemptions to a visitor levy scheme in its area as it believes are appropriate. The Bill therefore provides for a local authority to put such exemptions in place, which will be informed by advice in national guidance being developed by local government and business organisations in the Visitor Levy Expert Group.

As set out in the Policy Memorandum, accompanying the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill, the policy intention is that a local authority can establish exemptions to a visitor levy scheme in its area as it believes are appropriate. The Bill therefore provides for a local authority to put such exemptions in place, which will be informed by advice in national guidance being developed by local government and business organisations in the Visitor Levy Expert Group.

Police Scotland consider they would be able to effectively police the proposed site in Glasgow. Police Scotland have operational independence and how any facility might be policed is a matter for them, however it has been of the utmost importance to me to ensure that Police Scotland retain the operational ability to effectively police the facility and ensure that the wider community, those operating the site and those using the facility can be kept safe.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. The member may wish to contact the British Transport Police.

Data on crime and anti-social behaviour incidents on the rail network is available on the British Transport Police website: British Transport Police - Crime information for the rail network in England, Scotland and Wales (btp.police.uk) .

We continue to work with partners to further delivery of this commitment. This includes consideration of the delivery and funding model.

We continue to work with partners to develop delivery plans, including phasing and funding options for this commitment. Details of timescales and funding allocations will be confirmed in due course.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-22110 on 30 October 2023. 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 Health and Safety Executive (the HSE) operates across the UK including in Scotland under governance from the Department of Work and Pensions within the UK Government. The HSE is responsible for helping people be safer at work.

As part of their responsibilities for workplace safety, the HSE publishes workplace safety statistics for Scotland. In November 2022, they published the latest statistics:

Workplace health and safety statistics for Scotland, 2022 (hse.gov.uk)

In presenting these statistics, the HSE indicated that '... this report represents a profile of workplace health and safety in Scotland and its primary purpose is to provide Scotland specific equivalents of the statistics for Great Britain published across HSE’s Health and Safety Statistics pages. The figures also enable comparisons between Scotland and Great Britain to be made. However, any such comparative analysis should be interpreted with caution since any differences in health and safety outcomes are likely to be at least in part driven by differences in the industry sectors and occupations people work in.'

More specifically, the HSE has carried out a statistical analysis of fatalities in the workplace across the nations of the UK. On page 15 of their November 2022 report, they indicated the following:

'Over recent years, the fatal injury rate in Scotland has been consistently higher than that of Great Britain, but there is no difference in the rate of non-fatal injuries. One explanation is that in Scotland, a greater proportion of workers are employed in higher risk industry sectors or higher risk occupations, compared with Great Britain as a whole. It is possible to standardise fatal injury rates by adjusting them to account for differences in industry composition between countries and regions and a recent research report shows the effect this has on the relative rates of the countries and regions of Great Britain.

The following table shows estimates of the unstandardised and standardised country-specific fatal injury rates for the period 2015/16-2019/20 (the full report can be found at www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/adhoc analysis/updated-standardised-fatals.pdf) .

Number, un-standardised rate and standardised rate of fatal injuries per 100,000 workers (2015-16 – 2019-20)