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Police Scotland currently have 69 police station custody suites. However, the Police Scotland custody estate is flexible and the number of custody centres open at any one time may change depending on demand.

The NHS assumed legal responsibility to provide healthcare, including mental healthcare, to persons in police custody in 2014. As such, the Scottish Government does not hold data on the mental health workforce in police custody suites. However, mental health assessments are available to all arrested persons in police custody and are provided either in person in custody, in person at a local hospital, by telephone or facilitated via NHS Near Me video consultation.

Under Action 15 of the Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027, an additional 35.6 whole time equivalent mental health posts have been recruited to police station custody suites.

Identifying the number of individuals monitored electronically in each year is not possible from the data held without significant further analysis to remove from the data, those individuals who may have received multiple orders and licences over the period.

However the number of installations onto electronic monitoring made each year (with the caveats below) is a reasonable proxy for monitored individuals.

Financial Year Apr-Mar

2016-17 3813

2017-18 4457

2018-19 4140

2019-20 4030

2020-21 2831

2021-22 3620

An installation is the action to fit a monitoring tag, irrespective of the licence or order monitored. While most electronically monitored individuals will be installed on an order or licence only once in a year, the same individual may have more than one installation in the course of a year, for example, if they have a subsequent new order or licence in that time period.

The impact of COVID-19 has been felt across all services within the justice system including within courts and prisons. During the financial year 2019-20 the number of installations of those electronically monitored (court orders and licences) was 4030, however the number then significantly dropped during the periods of COVID-19 disruption.

The numbers of those currently monitored are continuing to rise and we are now once again approaching some of the highest levels of monitoring we have seen.

The second part of the question asks for a breakdown by local authority area. This information is not currently held (although breakdown by issuing court area for example is possible). However a recent systems change from June 2022 means this breakdown by local authority area will be possible in future years.

Universal Credit is available as support for those unemployed and there are other benefits such as Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), however these are all reserved to the UK Government. Furthermore Employment Law is also reserved to the UK Government and the Scottish Government has no powers over associated policies.

We have provided £240 million of additional investment over two financial years, and a further £145.5 million of permanent funding from April this year, to support the employment of additional teachers and support staff.

We will also fund 3,500 additional teachers and 500 support staff over this Parliamentary term – over and above the 1,400 teachers recruited during the pandemic.

We will continue to work closely with COSLA regarding the employment of teachers, to maximise the number of jobs available, including permanent posts.

East Linton station is currently scheduled to open by the end of the current Railway Control Period, which ends on 31 March 2024. The station will be served by all ScotRail services on the route. Timetable planning discussions remain ongoing with other train operators, including UK Government train operating companies, and the wider industry to secure an appropriate service for all stations on the East Coast Mainline. Once these discussion have concluded Transport Scotland will be in a position to advise of the proposed timetable at East Linton station.

At a national level, there are two methods for monitoring of flowering plants: changes in plant distribution and changes in plant abundance.

In relation to the first method, the Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI) periodically publishes a complete Atlas of plant distributions, based on 10km square records gathered by volunteers.

Giant hogweed increased its distribution significantly in Scotland between 1930–69 and 1987–99. The increase was greatest in the eastern arable area and less pronounced in the Highlands and south Scotland. BSBI is due to publish its next Atlas in 2023. This will include changes in the distribution of plants between 1987-99 and 2000–2019.

Between 2010 and 2020, giant hogweed was recorded in thirty 10km squares where it had not been previously recorded. Giant hogweed is being controlled in more than half of these locations; the remainder are in locations where there is currently no coordinated control programme in place, and there is already giant hogweed nearby.

In relation to the second method, giant hogweed is not sufficiently abundant in the countryside to be detected by the National Plant Monitoring Scheme. Information on abundance of invasive plants is collected as part of individual control projects and is not collated centrally.

In 2017, ten Fisheries Trusts supplied information to the Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland (RAFTS) for an evaluation of effectiveness and lessons learned from catchment-scale invasive plant projects. Giant hogweed was the least prevalent and abundant of the invasive plants surveyed. Three Trusts reported it absent and a fourth discovered only one small instance of the plant. In all the other areas infestations averaged greater than 4,000 square metres. In Ayrshire giant hogweed had invaded 188,000 square metres. Giant hogweed is being controlled in all of these river catchments.

Large-scale control across river catchments is an effective way to reduce the biodiversity impacts of invasive plants like giant hogweed. However, it is challenging to eradicate completely and control must be maintained for many years to prevent reinvasion of the catchment.

Eleven of the thirteen Fisheries Trust areas where giant hogweed is widespread have initiated coordinated control programmes. In some areas, such as the River Tweed, invasive plant populations have already been reduced to very low levels. In others, control is at an early stage and concentrated on the upper parts of the catchment.

In 2017, the Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland (RAFTS), carried out an evaluation of effectiveness and lessons learnt from giant hogweed control programmes within seven Trust areas (Horril et al, 2019). All of the projects reported decreases of between 53% and 75% in the area covered by giant hogweed, while the plant was completely cleared from 16% of the infested sites within four years.

The paper highlights that the main barrier to successful control of invasive plants has been the short-term nature of project funding (1-4 years duration). To address this, the Scottish Invasive Species Initiative aims to quantify the level of support and coordination necessary to maintain invasive plant control programmes in the longer term.

The following table provides a summary of Scottish Government funding for Invasive Non-Native Species (INNS) control on riverbanks in each of the last 15 years. Invasive species control projects based on river catchments control a number of species including American mink, Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, Himalayan balsam and American skunk cabbage. It is not possible to disaggregate funding for giant hogweed control alone.

Responsibility for invasive non-native plants rests with landowners and occupiers. Under common law, there is an expectation that land owners should take reasonable steps to prevent invasive non-native plants growing on their land from causing a nuisance or injury to others. However, it is not a criminal offence for an owner or occupier to have invasive non-native plants growing on their land.

NatureScot can make species control agreements and orders to require control of invasive non-native species. This discretionary power is aimed primarily at preventing high impact invasive non-native species becoming established in and spreading within Scotland. For species that are already widespread, such as giant hogweed, NatureScot can offer species control agreements to support coordinated control programmes, where inaction on a particular land holding is jeopardising the success of the programme.

In the last ten years NatureScot has written to twenty-two land owners asking them to control giant hogweed, and to date there have not been any cases where a landowner has ignored such a letter or refused to cooperate with a coordinated control programme. In the majority of cases the landowner has allowed access for a third party to control giant hogweed on their land, or has carried out the control work themselves. In some cases NatureScot has allowed landowners more time to secure funds to control extensive areas of giant hogweed.

For example, NatureScot has entered into one species control agreement to control giant hogweed along the railway line north of Dunblane to prevent the plants from seeding onto the banks of the River Allan. This enabled Network Rail to prioritise plant control along this section of line within its annual maintenance programme. Network Rail’s control programme has been successful in reducing the extent of giant hogweed on the site but a small number of plants remained in 2021. The agreement comes to an end in 2022 and NatureScot will consider whether to extend the agreement or make a species control order.

Abellio ScotRail (at the time), Network Rail and Transport Scotland were all involved in the development work leading to the publication of the Decarbonisation Action Plan ( Rail Services Decarbonisation Action Plan | Transport Scotland ) in July 2020. Battery trains, supported by partial electrification of routes were set out as an option alongside other forms of rail traction.

Transport Scotland and (now) ScotRail Trains Limited are regularly engaged in discussions over planning for the procurement of new zero emission rolling stock.

Work is proceeding to hold a procurement competition for new battery and electric trains to operate decarbonised rail passenger services on the Fife Circle and Borders routes, which will allow replacement of 42 ScotRail Class 156 diesel trains. We will also use the opportunity to secure options for further electric trains in future.