- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 04 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 17 April 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what engagement it has had with legal experts regarding any (a) constitutional and (b) ethical implications of the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill.
Answer
Scottish Government decisions are informed by appropriate analysis of any legal considerations. All legal advice is confidential. It is a long-established convention that legal advice provided to the Scottish Government is not disclosed, and that the Scottish Government does not disclose the source of legal advice other than in the most exceptional circumstances.
The Scottish Government set out its position on the constitutional implications of the Bill, as well as that, given the strong feelings and deeply felt views on this matter, Scottish Ministers would be given a free vote at Stage 1, in a Memorandum to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee on 30 September 2024. This can be accessed at: Assisted Dying Bill for Terminally Ill Adults SG Memorandum (parliament.scot)
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Kaukab Stewart on 17 April 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the report in The Scotsman on 29 March 2025, SNP ministers examine measures to help Scots have more children amid "fertility gap", how much it would cost to implement Nordic-style family policies, and how these would be funded.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-36274 on 17 April 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.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Kaukab Stewart on 17 April 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what its position on whether underlying economic and housing pressures might contribute to Scotland’s reported low birthrate.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-36274 on 17 April 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.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Kaukab Stewart on 17 April 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to bring forward proposals to increase birth rates in Scotland.
Answer
Scotland is not alone in experiencing falling birth rates, which is a trend across many high-income countries. This has significant implications for the sustainability of our economies, communities and public services. We want to ensure that Scotland is the ideal place to raise a family, and while deciding to have a child or not is rightly a personal decision, we are identifying and addressing barriers to people starting or expanding families in line with their intentions, through the delivery of Scotland’s Population Strategy.
Our 2022 ‘Attitudes to Family Formation’ research highlighted a range of key factors such as housing and economic pressures driving decisions around family formation in Scotland. In mid-2023, the Ministerial Population Taskforce requested that further research be undertaken to increase the Scottish Government’s awareness of family friendly policies which had been developed and implemented in different countries, including interventions implemented in Nordic countries. A paper was discussed at the December 2024 meeting of the Taskforce which explored initial learning from this research exercise.
This early stage, exploratory research aimed to consider the broader international context and responses to trends around birth rates. As such, implications for costed implementation of interventions in Scotland have not yet been considered. The next steps for this workstream will include further research into parental leave uptake and its impact on fertility decisions. Outputs from this work will be considered accordingly by Scottish Ministers.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Kaukab Stewart on 17 April 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the report in The Scotsman on 29 March 2025, SNP ministers examine measures to help Scots have more children amid "fertility gap", what its position is on whether the adoption of Nordic-style family policies would have a measurable impact on Scotland’s birth rate.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-36274 on 17 April 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.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answer expected on 14 May 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will ask the Scottish Funding Council to revise its teaching grant methodology, in light of reports that the current methodology does not adequately reflect institutional financial needs.
Answer
Answer expected on 14 May 2025
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Siobhian Brown on 16 April 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that retail crime, including shoplifting and vandalism, cost businesses £420 million in 2024-25.
Answer
The Scottish Government understands the impact of retail crime on businesses. Our Budget will make an additional £3 million available in 2025-26 to tackle retail crime. This is in addition to an investment next year of a record
£1.62 billion for policing.
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.
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.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Siobhian Brown on 16 April 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the creation of a specific criminal offence of assaulting a retail worker, and what steps it has taken to explore this.
Answer
There are no plans to update the current legislation regarding the protection of retail workers. Section 1 of the Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Act 2021 already makes it a specific offence to assault, threaten or abuse a retail worker. Such behaviour can also be prosecuted using other, more general, offences including, for example, common law assault and the offence of threatening or abusive behaviour.
It is essential that those who perpetrate violence are held to account for their actions. Legislation and prosecution form part of our overall response to tackling violence, and sits alongside our preventative approach as set out in the Violence Prevention Framework for Scotland.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Siobhian Brown on 16 April 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the reported call by the Scottish Grocers’ Federation for stronger legislative and enforcement action to tackle shoplifting.
Answer
The Scottish Government understands the impact of retail crime on businesses and the concerns of retailers including the Scottish Grocers’ Federation.
Sufficient legislation already exists in order to prosecute those who are guilty of shoplifting.
Our Budget will make an additional £3 million available in 2025-26 to tackle retail crime. This is in addition to an investment next year of a record £1.62 billion for policing.
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.
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.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 April 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Kaukab Stewart on 16 April 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-35432 by Kaukab Stewart on 19 March 2025, whether it will provide a breakdown of the costs associated with the "New Scots Community Engagement".
Answer
All funding for Community Engagement was distributed in the form of small grants for refugee assisting communities and groups, to enable their engagement in the development of the New Scots Strategy held between Q4 2023-2024. As published in the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy 2024: Engagement Analysis Report, 72 groups were funded and 81 events were held.
