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Work on the subsequent two year report was suspended due to the Covid19 pandemic and the need to prioritise assessing and arranging emergency funding for the culture sector.

The National Performing Companies all publish information on their websites about their community and education programmes, financial figures and key artistic achievements.

The Scottish Government discussed with Creative Scotland about the effect of the Public and Commercial Services Union industrial action on 1 February 2023. There was no significant impact on its business.

The Scottish Government does not intervene in or comment on the investigation, prosecution or sentencing of individual cases which are independent operational matters for Police Scotland, Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the courts.

Police Scotland have advised they take all reports of spiking seriously and thoroughly investigates all reports.

A comprehensive Investigative Strategy has been developed and circulated to provide guidance and direction to staff responding to and investigating incidents of spiking. A Detective Superintendent has national investigative oversight and Senior Investigating Officers have been appointed within each policing division to lead on all spiking related investigations locally. Police Scotland’s focus is on identifying people who carry out an assault in this way, investigating fully, gathering evidence, and working with Crown Office to bring the perpetrator to justice.

Where evidence is provided to Crown Office as regards an offence, it is for independent prosecutors to decide what action to take. If a case is prosecuted, it is for the independent court to determine whether an accused person is guilty and if so, what an appropriate sentence should be.

The descriptor for alcohol-free products as set out in current UK Government guidance, which applies in Scotland is:

this should only be applied to a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted if it contains no more than 0.05% ABV, and the products should also include the ABV (or state that they contain no alcohol) on the label in order to use the descriptor.

These can be found on the UK Government’s website https://www.gov.uk/

Non-Executive Board members are required to undertake mandatory training at local level as a part of their local induction process. This is set out in the Director Letter DL(2019)21 - Induction process for Non-Executive Board Members . In addition, NHS Education for Scotland has a range of learning material available to Board Members. Current eLearning modules include: “Finance”; “Audit and Risk”; and, “Equality and the Role of Board Members in Meeting the Public Sector Duty”. These modules, whilst not mandatory, are recommended.

To support health and care staff, the Scottish Government is working alongside the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre, NHS Boards and social care organisations to promote use of our national decision support platform, The Right Decision Service .

On the subject of workforce skills, I refer the member to the answer to questions S6W-14125, S6W-14142, S6W-14143, S6W-14150 and S6W-14151 on 2 February 2023.

The Scottish Government has the lead for alcohol policy in Scotland. However, Food Standards Scotland (FSS) has responsibility for the policies surrounding general food labelling in Scotland and work closely with policy officials across the four nations on these issues.

FSS launched a four-week consultation on 23 October 2018 to assess the current understanding and use of the descriptive terms ‘low alcohol’, ‘non-alcoholic’, ‘alcohol-free’ and ‘de alcoholised’ but unfortunately this work was paused due to matters relating to EU exit.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. This is a matter for NHS Education for Scotland (NES).

The Scottish Government held several roundtable meetings to bring together partners including representatives from the night-time industry and licensed premises sector to discuss the prevalence of spiking and a range of initiatives and information available on spiking.

Key outcomes from roundtable discussions focussed on messaging, training and prevention, with the Violence Reduction Unit supporting Police Scotland and businesses within the night-time economy sector to continue roll out of the bystander training to raise awareness for staff to help keep people safe.

Businesses within the night-time economy sector invest in training for staff and support a number of initiatives to keep people safe. The Scottish Government has long supported the industry-led Best Bar None Scotland initiative, a unique national accreditation and award scheme, which has been supported by the Scottish Business Resilience Centre – with input from Police Scotland – for a number of years. It is aimed at raising standards and rewarding licensed premises who undertake positive management practices in support of a safe night out. There was an acknowledged impact on the scheme as a result of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis and the Scottish Government will be working with partners to identify options for improving delivery of its core objectives.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-14206 on 2 February 2023. 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 .