Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government continue to urge all retailers and their staff to keep reporting crimes. While it might feel like some minor incidents aren’t worth it, or individual retailers may feel like the police won’t be able to do anything, each crime report aids our collective understanding of who is doing this and why. Local officers may also well have intelligence they can use to catch the perpetrators.

Our Budget will make an additional £3 million available in 2025-26 to tackle retail crime.

This funding will support the formation of a Retail Crime Taskforce which will provide a visible and measurable impact on retail crime and will deliver on the following objectives:

• Prevent: Stop people from becoming perpetrators of Retail crime by developing and implementing intervention and diversion mechanisms with partners.
• Pursue: Target retail crime by bringing perpetrators to justice, with a focus on repeat offenders and organised criminals.
• Protect: Strengthen the collective protections against Retail Crime by engaging directly with retailers on crime prevention and training.
• Prepare: Mitigate against the impact of Retail Crime by exploring innovate opportunities for direct reporting systems.

New technologies will also be utilised to explore ways to make it easier for retail staff to directly report crimes to police, as well as capitalising on Police Scotland’s existing Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC), to secure early criminal justice outcomes.

This builds on a successful proof of concept within Fife Division and will aim to provide an efficient and effective direct reporting system to retailers.

I was pleased to welcome the launch of Police Scotland’s plans to tackle retail crime last month, which is being funded by an additional £3 million from the Scottish Government.

I hope to see these plans make a difference to the rates of shoplifting Scotland has seen in recent months, and we will continue to liaise closely with Police Scotland as their planned actions are rolled out.

We have increased police funding year-on-year since 2016-17, investing more than £14.6 billion since the creation of Police Scotland in 2013. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government has initiated planning for the next Scottish Spending Review, that will identify opportunities to optimise the use of Scottish Government funding over the longer term.

The conclusion of the UK Government’s 2025 spending review will provide key funding information to underpin the Scottish Government’s own multi-year spending review. Provision of funding in future years will also be part of discussions with the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland to understand the budget requirement to deliver their three-year business plan.

Scottish Ministers were made aware on 14 March 2025 that CMAL had selected Remontowa Shipbuilding SA in Poland as the lead bidder for the Small Vessel Replacement Programme phase one vessels contract.

CMAL informed all bidders of the outcome of the procurement process on 17 March 2025. Ministers were then notified on 28 March 2025 that no challenges to the procurement outcome had been made during the required ten day standstill period, and that CMAL would be signing the contract with Remontowa later the same day.

The Scottish Government keeps all dog control legislation under review and that includes the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 (“the 1991 Act”).

A Scottish Government led Short Life Working Group was established in 2022 to assist with taking forward our commitment to review the 1991 Act.

The focus of the review was on the criminal offence in the 1991 Act of a dog being dangerously out of control.

The working group has undertaken this review, and the Scottish Government is continuing to consider the wide range of views offered to determine what may be appropriate as next steps. The Minutes of the group meetings can be found on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/groups/dangerous-dogs-act-short-life-working-group/

In the meantime the Scottish Government has taken action to introduce new safeguards in relation to XL Bully dogs. The XL Bully dog has now been added to the list of prohibited dog breeds under the 1991 Act.

The Scottish Government also hosted a ‘Responsible Dog Ownership’ Summit on 20 September 2024. The summit brought together attendees from a range of organisations, including the police, local authorities, veterinary bodies, public health, third sector organisations and the Communication Workers Union to consider how dog control and dog welfare can be improved upon.

The Memorandum of Understanding is a jointly drafted and agreed document between the Parole Board for Scotland (PBS) and Scottish Ministers. The MOU defines the relationship and interaction between Parole Board for Scotland and the Scottish Government.

The MoU is set to be rebranded as a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA).

Both the Parole Board for Scotland and the Scottish Government have reached agreement on the MoA document and are now finalising sign-off prior to publication.

Over the last three years, the Scottish Government has provided the Scottish Assembly with £425,136 to build capacity via our leadership and engagement framework and over the last 4 years has provided £316,349 of core funding via our Inspiring Inclusion charity portfolio. Both of these funds are managed and distributed by fund manager, Inspiring Scotland. The Scottish Assembly have an application for funding for 2025-26 submitted and applications are currently being considered.

To offset the changes to funding in 2025-26, we committed to a 6 month extension of the current funding allocated to the Scottish Assembly, which will total £107,152, to provide additional opportunities to explore alternative funding streams.

Inspiring Scotland offer management consultancy services to the Scottish Assembly’s executive team and Board and provide intensive support where needed. This includes support to explore alternative funding and income streams aimed at long term sustainability of the organisation.

The proposed reforms will make pre-application consultation for electricity infrastructure projects a statutory requirement and also introduce an Acceptance Stage when Scottish Ministers can decline to accept applications which have not fulfilled the necessary requirements. These reforms will reduce timescales for processing applications and increase local input into project proposals.

The Scottish Government will publish detailed guidance on the Acceptance Stage and what happens if the relevant planning authority objects or if an application is not accepted.

The proposed reforms will apply to applications for consent under section 36 and section 37 of the Electricity Act 1989 made to Scottish Ministers. Section 36 applications made to Scottish Ministers have a capacity of over 50MW. Therefore, it is not anticipated that the reforms to introduce new fees for pre-application functions will reduce application numbers.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-35680 on 27 March 2025. 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 South of Scotland Business Panel survey interviews over 600 South-based companies and social enterprises each year. It provides an important temperature check of business confidence and helps to identify challenges and opportunities.

In line with similar surveys across Scotland, this year’s results show that business confidence has understandably been affected by the current challenging economic environment.

However, in this context it was good to see positive change in Net Zero planning and in businesses supporting their employees, with three-quarters of businesses taking action to help their workforce through, for example, investment in training or offering more flexible working and the number of businesses with a formal plan in place to reduce emissions more than doubling since 2023.

Scottish Government recognises the challenges highlighted by the survey and we remain committed to working closely with SOSE and other partners to provide as much support as we can. Last year, for example, SOSE provided £6.9 million of funding to SMEs in the south. By providing investment, expertise and mentoring to businesses, SOSE will continue to develop the economic potential of the region.