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The Scottish Government regularly engages with both the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) and Police Scotland to discuss a range of matters arising in the delivery of justice services.

Specialist or problem solving courts, the establishment of which is ultimately a decision for the judiciary and SCTS, can be an effective way of supporting those with particular needs and positive work is underway in this area.

For example, the Glasgow Alcohol Court opened in 2018 and aims to reduce rates of offending by supporting people who offend with their underlying alcohol issues. Once accepted into the Alcohol Court, participants receive intensive support from their justice social worker and a substance use worker. In 2022, 240 people were accepted into the Alcohol Court.

There are other good practice examples of problem solving courts, including the Pan-Lanarkshire Alcohol and Drugs Problem Solving Court, which secured funding via the CORRA foundation and launched in December 2023.

In terms of court disposals, community payback orders offer a range of potential requirements including a specific alcohol treatment requirement.

Police Scotland, working in partnership with stakeholders, is establishing a working group that will promote best practice and work to drive an increase in referrals from police custody into support for mental health and wellbeing, alcohol and drugs and other relevant services. The new pathway for arrest referrals has now been established, which involved a full review of practices, mapping of services and establishing any gaps in service provision across Scotland. Further work is planned to drive further improvements in the arrest referral service.

Land ownership, management and use should deliver a wide range of social, environmental, economic and cultural benefits to the people of Scotland. Community energy has a key role to play in supporting this and we have recently announced £3.5 million in 2025-26 for a new ‘Community Energy Generation Growth Fund’ through our Community and Renewable Energy Scheme. This will support community groups to develop their own renewable energy projects and enable communities to benefit from the energy transition.

Through our Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement and corresponding protocols, we set our vision for the ownership, use and management of land, including recognising that more local communities should have the opportunity to own, lease or use buildings and land which can contribute to their community's wellbeing and future development.

The Energy Saving Trust (EST), on behalf of the Scottish Government, publishes the annual Community and Locally Owned Energy in Scotland (COLO) Report. The latest report states that, as of December 2023, there are 92 MW of operational capacity across 12,110 installations in the Public Sector and Charity category, across a range of technologies.

As this is an operational matter for Scottish Water, and the Scottish Government does not hold the information, I have asked them to respond. Their reply is as follows:

Scottish Water Group's (including Scottish Water Horizons) generating capacity by technology (2023-24) is detailed in the following table:

As this is an operational matter for Scottish Water, and the Scottish Government does not hold the information, I have asked them to respond. Their reply is as follows:

Currently, Scottish Water hosts 0.17MW of hydro (estimated @ 1.3GWh/annum) and 279MW of wind (estimated @ 831GWh/annum).

The income received from hosting 3rd party renewables was £5.9m in 2023-24 and £3.6m in 2024-25 (note that this income tracks the wholesale cost of electricity).

Under current constitutional arrangements in the UK, asylum is reserved to the UK.

Parliament and handled by the Home Office. This includes the provision of accommodation for people seeking asylum if they would otherwise be destitute while waiting for a decision on their asylum application from the Home Office. The Scottish Government has no control of these processes.

The Scottish Government is aware that hotels have been procured as contingency asylum accommodation in Scotland. Published Home Office statistics indicate that at the end of December 2024 there were 1,421 people seeking asylum accommodated in contingency hotels in Scotland. As the Home Office is responsible for the provision of asylum accommodation, including the use of contingency hotels, questions relating to their operation should be directed to the Home Office.

NHS Boards have reporting systems to capture data on violence and aggression - including sexual assault. I strongly encourage staff to report any and all instances of violent and aggressive behaviour.

Health Improvement Scotland are working with all NHS boards and partner organisations to standardise the reporting of adverse events, and have developed a national framework which was published in February.

This details the importance of national standards of reporting and the requirement for monitoring and publishing of data. This will facilitate the collation of accurate data nationally.

The courts have extensive powers to deal robustly with sexual offending. All instances of such behaviour should be reported and escalated to Police Scotland as quickly as possible for consideration of necessary action.

The Scottish Government is committed to expanding electronic monitoring use across a broader range of licences and court orders, including exploring the use of new technology, such as remote alcohol monitoring, which is provided for by the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019.

Regulations came into force on 31 January 2025 which enable the use of GPS monitoring devices for those released on Home Detention Curfew (HDC). As work continues to embed these changes, we will engage with justice partners to explore the potential uses of new technologies, including both GPS and remote substance monitoring technologies. The functionality of GPS tags may have a role in helping to address particular behaviour associated with problematic alcohol use, for example, by excluding someone from a town centre on a Saturday night.

Emergency early release regulations have been utilised twice within the last five years (May 2020 and June/July 2024).

On both occasions, the conditions of release were as they would have been at the individual’s original scheduled liberation date. Therefore, as those eligible for release were serving short-term sentences, they were not routinely supervised or monitored following their release.

Therefore, information with regards to their housing circumstances, use of voluntary throughcare, and employment status is not held by the Scottish Government.

The total number of hours of other activity carried out in 2023-24 is not held, but relevant information in relation to orders successfully completed is available.

In the financial year 2023-24, 6,742 unpaid work or other activity requirements imposed as part of a Community Payback Order (CPO) were successfully completed. Of these successful requirements, 884,844 hours were completed.

This above information is available from Table 14 from Justice Social Work Statistics in Scotland: 2023-24 – Part 2 - gov.scot.

Of the hours carried out as part of successfully completed unpaid work or other activity requirements in 2023-24, 66,646 hours (8%) were recorded as other activity.

A start date for the review is not confirmed at this time – it is important that the scope and timing of the review is considered within the context of wider reform on access to health care, which is already underway.

It is recognised that transport to health is a key enabler to ensure equitable access to healthcare, and work to bring travel/transport and health planning closer together is in progress. This work will include bringing local bodies together at a regional level to consider the options for transport to health.