Chamber and committees

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The number of assaults on staff in HMP Inverness in the last 5 years are as follows:

The Scottish Government is investing up to £500 million over five years to anchor our offshore wind supply chain in Scotland. This investment will support market certainty, and help create a highly productive, competitive offshore wind economy that supports thousands of new jobs, including in north east Scotland.

The Scottish Government has also invested millions of pounds via the Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray, including the development and rollout of a digital energy skills passport (£3.7m), investment in a skills hub within the ETZ Skills Campus (£4.5m), support for the National Energy Skills Accelerator (NESA) (£1m), and funding for Net Zero Bottlenecks in Moray (£210k).

We have also convened a ‘Team Scotland’ short-life working group (SLWG) to develop an offshore wind skills action plan at pace which will identify and address gaps in training provision. The SLWG is jointly chaired by the Director of Offshore Wind in the Scottish Government and the CEO of Scottish Renewables, ensuring collaboration between the public sector and industry.

The Scottish Government published ‘Migration - Meeting Scotland's Needs’ in January setting out the economic benefits of migration to Scotland.

Scotland’s has distinct demographic challenges. While the UK’s working population is projected to increase by 0.5% between 2025-75 Scotland’s is projected to fall by 14.7%. Positive net migration increases the size of the working-age population, which is crucial for economic growth as well as fiscal sustainability. The UK Migration Advisory Committee has found that a 1% increase in the migrant share of the workforce is associated with a productivity improvement of between 1.2% and 3%. Research has shown that migrants contribute more to government revenue through taxes than they receive in public services. Migration can help meet the needs of our economy, public services and communities.

The Scottish Government has received regular updates from the Scottish Prison Service on HMP Glasgow in line with updates to the Infrastructure Investment Plan since 2014:

• In March 2014 the Scottish Government was updated that there was an on-going site search and completion dates for the project remained uncertain.
• In March 2016 the Scottish Government was updated that estimated operational date was 2022.
• In September 2016 the Scottish Government was updated that estimated operational date was 2023.
• In April 2019 the Scottish Government was updated that estimated operational date was 2024.
• In November 2020 the Scottish Government was updated that estimated operational date was 2026.
• In May 2023 the Scottish Government was updated that the project time-line was uncertain.
• In July 2023 the Scottish Government was updated that the most likely time-scale for construction completion was 2027 but there were risks associated with this.
• In May 2024 the Scottish Government was updated that the most likely time-scale for construction completion was 2028.

The Scottish Government has regular discussions with the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) on risks and contingency plans for the prison estate, including HMP Barlinnie.

In response to recommendations made by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, SPS took forward HMP Barlinnie Programme of Works which significantly improved facilitates within the prisoner reception and healthcare areas. These works concluded in April 2023.

This was a 2-stage procurement process, and 4 contractors bid at the 1st stage Pre-construction phase of the process. These bidders were Balfour Beatty Group, Graham Construction, Kier Construction and Laing O'Rourke.

The information is not available in the format requested, however, the Scottish Government routinely publishes data on local authority voids, with the latest data available here: Housing statistics: Local authority housing stock - gov.scot.

The Scottish Government expects all incidents of violent and abusive behaviour towards staff to be recorded.

In Scotland our local councils employ education staff and we expect all local authorities to be ensuring that their schools have policies in place which determine clearly what action should be taken to address challenging behaviour and to best protect their staff in the workplace. This would include having processes in place to record violent and abusive incidents towards teachers and staff.

The joint relationships and behaviour in schools action plan includes an action to review all current processes for recording incidents, to identify potential means of streamlining processes and improving consistency. An update on the plan will publish in the coming weeks.

In April 2023, the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer (CPO) announced an Independent Medicines Homecare Review in response to reports of failings in the standards of care provided across Scotland and the increasing demand for medicines homecare provision.

The CPO will be publishing the Homecare Medicines Review before the end of March. In terms of next steps, the CPO has met with NHS National Procurement to discuss what actions can be taken forward within their remit and what actions require further consideration through a task and finish group. The group will be established shortly and will be chaired by a Director of Pharmacy and a Director of Nursing. The Group will help to outline the next steps and timescales around this.

The average class size of primary pupils by local authority and stage is published in Table 6.6a of the pupil census supplementary statistics.

Pupil census supplementary statistics - gov.scot

These statistics are available from 2007-2023, data prior to 2007 is not available.

Primary class size statistics for 2024 will be published on 25 March, 2025.