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The safe treatment and health of those in custody is a key priority for Scotland’s prisons. Our frontline prison officers, together with our NHS staff, work hard every day to support people in custody who often have complex health care needs. The responsibility for healthcare services in prisons sits with NHS Boards and Integrated Joint Boards. The Scottish Prison Service also plays a crucial role in facilitating access to those services.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that people leaving prison are supported to reintegrate into their communities, as well as ensuring our public services recognise and respond to their needs. The National Prison Care Network hosted by NHS National Services Scotland brings together local NHS partners and the Scottish Prison Service at a tactical level. This mechanism will provide national coordination, develop consistent approaches and coordinate communications between partners, across custody settings. This new structure will provide a platform to address a number of issues that require a national approach this includes Data and Information (including clinical IT), Integration of Health and Social Care, Medicines and Community Integration Planning.

The Scottish Government will also be making changes to legislation to allow prisoners to register with a GP in the community prior to their release. This will promote continuity of care, prevention of re-offending, prevention of accidental overdose, potential to reduce work for GPs, and reduce pressure on Out of Hours.

The Scottish Government cannot comment on individual cases. The responsibility for healthcare services in prisons sits with Integration Joint Boards and NHS Boards.

The Scottish Government established the Health and Social Care in Prisons Programme in 2017 through which a refresh of the 2011 Memorandum of Understanding has been identified as a priority. We are working with key Stakeholders to progress an approach to drafting a new Memorandum of Understanding that will accurately reflect Stakeholders current roles and responsibilities in the delivery of safe, effective and patient centred care.

The quarterly update on action 15 was published at 09:00 on 11 March 2020.

The provision of surveillance at each of Highlands and Islands Airports Limited’s (HIAL) Air Traffic Control airports is crucial to the delivery of modern, efficient and environmentally sound Air Traffic Services in the Highlands and Islands, where safe operation is key. HIAL will be undertaking a procurement exercise to fully inform the market of the requirement and press for innovative solutions from suppliers. Following the completion of the tender exercise, the number of radar heads and costs will be known.

It should be noted that, as identified in the ‘HIAL ATM2030 Technical Scoping Study’ by Helios, any change to the current method of Air Traffic Control operation will lead to an increase in operational costs.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-25939 on 24 October 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The Interventions for Vulnerable Youth service transferred to Kibble Education and Care Centre in October 2019. Funding remains in place for the delivery of the current service until 1 April 2020.

The Scottish Government value this important preventative service which supports some of our most vulnerable young people in Scotland. We are in discussions with Kibble regarding funding proposals from April and will continue our consideration around longer term, whole-system support for vulnerable children and young people in Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W–27559 on 24 February 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The Scottish Government's Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund, administered by VisitScotland, is investing £9 million in much-needed infrastructure across rural Scotland. £6 million has already been awarded over the first two rounds. Recognising both the success of, and the need for the fund, we made a further commitment within our current Programme for Government for an additional £3 million of funding to invest in new projects in 2020-21. The process for this third round of funding is still active and the deadline for application is 10 July 2020. Orkney Islands Council, as with other Local Authorities, are being encouraged to apply for funding where their projects meet the fund's criteria.

The Stones of Stenness was chosen as the location of one of the three initial pilots for the Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund, with £80,000 awarded in March 2018 to Orkney Islands Council for that purpose. Work by the Council on delivering much needed car parking facilities at one of Orkney's top Neolithic sites is ongoing.

Orkney Islands Council has not received funding through either of the first two rounds of the main fund administered by VisitScotland but it will be open to the local authority to apply to the third round.

The data gap initially arose due to technological difficulties when the Scottish Government server was upgraded in 2014. Scottish Government analysts agreed with the Scottish Prison Service that SPS would provide public information on the prison population regularly to fill the gap in provision.

SPS use an management information system, PR2, in their day-to-day operations. They publish aggregate statistics on the population annually, providing key information on the age, gender and legal status of the population on their website. The information available in these aggregate statistics is limited to the attributes defined when it was instituted, and as a result is not as flexible as the previous system.

SPS also provide a weekly snapshot from PR2, giving the most up-to-date version of similar information, on their website.

The Scottish Government recently pre-announced the publication of statistics on the prison population in May 2020. This collection is a derived longitudinal dataset, constructed from available legacy information on PR2. It does not rely on the daily snapshots from which the previous Official Statistics source was built. This publication will include a range of information not previously available, including detailed age groups, equalities group characteristics, and durations in residence for the prison population.