Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is clear that there is no place for harassment or abuse in any form in the workplace and that everyone has the right to go to work without fear of intimidation.

Equality Law and Employment Law, are reserved to the UK Parliament. In the absence of powers over employment law, the Scottish Government will do all it can within devolved powers to promote and embed fair and inclusive working practices. We encourage all employers to have in place robust workplace policies for preventing and handling issues such as bullying or harassment.

On 9 December 2022 we published a refreshed Fair Work Action Plan which brings together our original Fair Work, Gender Pay Gap and Disabled People’s Employment action plans, along with the actions from our new Anti-Racist Employment Strategy . It takes forward the next phase of actions to drive forward Fair Work and will make it easier for employers and partners to access information on the critical role Fair Work has to play in achieving positive economic benefits on an individual and collective level. The action plan highlights the issue of sexual harassment at work and offers a case study in the Equally Safe initiative funded by Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government’s Fair Work First approach asks employers in receipt of public sector funding to commit to Fair Work criteria, including ‘action to tackle the gender pay gap’ and ‘offer of flexible and family friendly working from day one of employment’. Going forward we will ensure relevant guidance includes good practice and signposting to advice and tools for employers on preventing and tackling sexual harassment at work, such as the Close the Gap Equally Safe at Work resource.

The Scottish Government welcomes the inquiry and acknowledges that the submissions made to the inquiry by people affected in England and Wales will correlate with the experiences we have heard about in Scotland.

We remain committed to taking steps to address the challenges for the people who have been affected by historical adoption practices in Scotland.

The Stonemasonry Short Life Working Group held its initial meeting in May 2022 and has since met three further times, with the most recent meeting held on 4 November 2022. After the next scheduled meeting in January 2023, the Stonemasonry Short Life Working Group intends to report to the Our Place in Time Skills and Expertise Group by the end of January 2023 with an outline of what actions are required to put stonemasonry training in Scotland in a sustainable position. Additionally, in order to provide an independent review of 2022-23 Scottish Stonemasonry Skills & Training needs, four stakeholder stonemasonry training workshops have taken place across November and December 2022.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government. Although there is no statutory accreditation for energy efficiency installers, our Quality Assurance policy statement, which was published on 7 June, included information on the standards, skills and certification required for installers.

The Scottish Government and COSLA have today jointly published a new Statement of Intent. It is available on the Scottish Government website here: https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781805253778 .

This new Statement of Intent will report on the progress of the commitments made in our joint Statement of Intent published in March 2021, and sets out additional actions we will take across the next 12 – 18 months to bring about improvements to the delivery of social care support.

The guidance on the pharmacological and psychological management of benzodiazepine dependency published by the Drug deaths Taskforce has now been endorsed as the most up-to-date guidance available and will be updated following further research currently being undertaken and following engagement with prescribers.

£10.3million a year has been made available to ADPs for the implementation of the 10 MAT Standards. This is the specific funding for MAT implementation, and is in addition to the general funding for specific MAT-related activities such as outreach and near-fatal overdose pathways.

The ScotRail Passenger Assist Service is available at all stations in Scotland, whether stations are staffed or unstaffed for all or part of the day. The ScotRail website provides details on how Passenger Assist can be requested and obtained.

Details can be found via the following link:- Accessible travel | ScotRail .

According to Supplementary Report to the Benchmarking Report published on 2 August 2022 the following areas are yet to fully implemented MAT 3:

NHS Shetland - Shetland ADP area

NHS Grampian - Moray ADP area

NHS Highland - Argyll & Bute ADP area

MAT 3 states that ‘Each service within the drug treatment system should have a documented procedure to identify and follow-up people at high risk of severe drug-related harm, including death’. These areas are as follows:

In January 2023 the Scottish Government will be publishing a formal response to the Taskforce report – Changing Lives – which includes an action to address inconsistencies in implementing near-fatal overdose (NFO) pathways under MAT standard 3.

Additionally, local areas have been directed by Ministers to have standards 1-5 implemented by April 2023. The Government continues working with identified areas to support them to progress the implementation in line with this timeframe.

The National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978 Act places a broad general duty on the Scottish Ministers to improve health in Scotland and confers functions which assist in performing that duty. However, that duty and those functions cannot be viewed in isolation. Per the Scotland Act 1998, the Scottish Ministers cannot exercise their functions in a manner which would be outside of devolved competence.

Although the Scottish Government is taking a public health approach to drug dependence, if the Scottish Ministers were to exercise their functions (including functions which relate to health improvement) in a way which conflicts with the subject matter of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 then that would be outside competence.

The work being done by Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership to explore the possibility of a Safer Drug Consumption Facility in Scotland, within the current legal framework, has been done carefully with the benefit of their independent legal advice. In the event of a positive outcome to work carried out by partners, we will quickly establish a Safer Drug Consumption Facility in Glasgow.