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Violence towards pupils or staff is unacceptable.

Responsibility for addressing concerns in specific local authority areas rests with the local authority, as the employer of school staff.

In August, we published our action plan on relationships and behaviour in schools, jointly owned with COSLA. The plan sets out 20 actions to be taken by 2027, including actions to reduce violence in schools. In March we published the first progress report on delivery against the plan, which highlighted progress has been made across all 20 actions.

In response to the findings of the Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research 2023 about support staff’s experiences of violence, the Scottish Government provided £900k funding for training of support staff in direct response to findings of the research that staff would welcome such training.

As part of Programme for Government, we are investing £29m to support the recruitment, retention and training of the ASN workforce via local and national programmes.

On 17 June I published new guidance to support school staff on fostering a positive, inclusive and safe school environment, including the use of consequences. I also published guidance on risk assessments for violent, aggressive, and dangerous behaviour.

The Scottish Government values the teaching profession and the important work that teachers do.

We are clear that reducing teachers’ class contact time by 90 minutes per week will help address critical concerns around teacher workload, thereby creating the space to drive improvement and reform in our schools and improve outcomes for pupils.

Reduction of teachers class contact time is ultimately a matter which will require agreement from the whole Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers, and we will continue to work with COSLA and the teaching unions to make meaningful progress on this important commitment.

Scottish Government officials have commissioned an Economic Impact Assessment of the value delivered by our investment in Glasgow Prestwick Airport. As previously set out to Parliament, a market testing exercise evaluating the potential for returning the airport to private ownership is ongoing and I will update Parliament when a significant development has been made.

We will publish key findings from the Economic Impact Assessment when the market testing exercise has been concluded.

I have asked Colin Lancaster, Chief Executive of the Scottish Legal Aid Board to respond. His response is as follows:-

The Solicitor Contact Line (SCL) is a team of publicly funded criminal defence lawyers who provide telephone advice and in-person representation to suspects in police custody. The majority of publicly funded advice for those in police custody is provided by solicitors in private practice: SCL assists the around 30% who do not already have a solicitor, mostly by way of telephone advice.

Where SCL identify that in-person representation is needed, this will normally be provided by duty solicitors from either the private sector or the Public Defence Solicitors’ Office. The SCL provides contingency cover which is called upon in a small proportion of cases.

There has been no formal ballot for industrial action and it is unclear whether or when any such a ballot might take place. If the result of any ballot supports action, the form or extent of that action is also unclear. At this stage it is therefore not possible to comment on potential impacts.

The information requested is not held by the Scottish Government.

Private landlords in Scotland are required to register with their local authority which has responsibility to investigate and take any necessary action arising from complaints from tenants of private rented properties.

Where a tenant believes their rented property does not meet the legal repairing standard, they can take their landlord to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing & Property Chamber). The Tribunal can enforce repairs by issuing the landlord with a Repairing Standard Enforcement Order (RSEO) which compels the landlord to carry out specific repairs within a set timeframe.

Where a landlord fails to comply with an RSEO the Tribunal will send a copy of the failure to comply decision to the local authority. The Tribunal may also issue a Rent Relief Order restricting the rent payable until the RSEO has been complied with. A local authority has powers to apply to the tribunal on behalf of vulnerable tenants.

Consumer Scotland, as the statutory independent consumer body in Scotland, has responsibility for overseeing scams prevention and awareness work. In addition, the Scottish Government funds a post in Trading Standards Scotland to help minimise the scale and impact of energy efficiency related scams before they cause any consumer detriment.

The Scottish Government funds the Home Energy Scotland (HES) advice service, which provides free, impartial and bespoke advice and support for energy efficiency, clean heating and fuel poverty for all households in Scotland. HES is also the route for access to various Scottish Government grants and loans. No Scottish Government funding schemes participate in cold calling. We recommend that households call HES if they are unsure if a Scottish energy efficiency scheme is genuine.

Consumers can also contact the Scottish Government-funded consumer helpline, Advice Direct Scotland, to report any suspicious schemes and seek guidance on action.

VAT is a reserved matter and outwith the responsibility of the Scottish Government. This includes decisions on the interaction between VAT and the visitor levy. The Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act allows for local authorities to make the levy not payable by accommodation which has an annual turnover below the VAT threshold. This in effect, exempts small businesses from the visitor levy.

This information is not currently held centrally.

As part of delivering Section 15 of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, we will prepare an annual report for parliament later this year covering the year of 2024-25. This will include both the characteristics of those involved and the specific prejudices shown by the perpetrators.

Police Scotland have published management information which details the total number of hate crimes recorded by them during 2024-25, by quarter and protected characteristic. This is available in Table 4 of their Quarter 4 Force Quarterly Bulletin 2024/25.

The Scottish Government engages regularly with Police Scotland on matters of relevant and shared interest, including preventing and tackling hate crime in Scotland.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the work required to research, analyse and collate the data for each requested year would quickly breach the PQ cost threshold.

Some of the information is available on the Scottish Government website in the annual Budget documents, which will include budget allocations for some public bodies. Links to these are included below. The information only goes back to 2015-16 when Scottish Government revised its approach to provide greater transparency. Prior to this, spend on public bodies was generally amalgamated into portfolio budgets.

2023-24: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2023-24/documents/
2022-23: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2022-23/documents/
2021-22: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2021-22/documents/
2020-21: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2020-21/documents/
2019-20: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2019-20/documents/
2018-19: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-draft-budget-2018-19/documents/
2017-18: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-budget-draft-budget-2017-18/documents/
2016-17: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-finances-key-facts-figures/documents/
2015-16: https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/id/eprint/21090/1/00460440.pdf

Further information may also be found on some public bodies’ funding in their published audited accounts, which can be found online on their websites. Links to these is provided in the National public bodies directory (https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-public-bodies-directory/).