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I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The number of assaults on staff in HMP Barlinnie in the last 5 years are as follows:

The Scottish Government is investing up to £500 million over five years to anchor our offshore wind supply chain in Scotland. This investment will support market certainty, and help create a highly productive, competitive offshore wind economy that supports thousands of new jobs, including in north east Scotland.

The Scottish Government has also invested millions of pounds via the Just Transition Fund for the North East and Moray, including the development and rollout of a digital energy skills passport (£3.7m), investment in a skills hub within the ETZ Skills Campus (£4.5m), support for the National Energy Skills Accelerator (NESA) (£1m), and funding for Net Zero Bottlenecks in Moray (£210k).

We have also convened a ‘Team Scotland’ short-life working group (SLWG) to develop an offshore wind skills action plan at pace which will identify and address gaps in training provision. The SLWG is jointly chaired by the Director of Offshore Wind in the Scottish Government and the CEO of Scottish Renewables, ensuring collaboration between the public sector and industry.

The Scottish Government published ‘Migration - Meeting Scotland's Needs’ in January setting out the economic benefits of migration to Scotland.

Scotland’s has distinct demographic challenges. While the UK’s working population is projected to increase by 0.5% between 2025-75 Scotland’s is projected to fall by 14.7%. Positive net migration increases the size of the working-age population, which is crucial for economic growth as well as fiscal sustainability. The UK Migration Advisory Committee has found that a 1% increase in the migrant share of the workforce is associated with a productivity improvement of between 1.2% and 3%. Research has shown that migrants contribute more to government revenue through taxes than they receive in public services. Migration can help meet the needs of our economy, public services and communities.

The Scottish Government has regular discussions with the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) on risks and contingency plans for the prison estate, including HMP Barlinnie.

In response to recommendations made by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, SPS took forward HMP Barlinnie Programme of Works which significantly improved facilitates within the prisoner reception and healthcare areas. These works concluded in April 2023.

This was a 2-stage procurement process, and 4 contractors bid at the 1st stage Pre-construction phase of the process. These bidders were Balfour Beatty Group, Graham Construction, Kier Construction and Laing O'Rourke.

The Scottish Government are progressing a range of actions to support a sustainable reduction in the prison population, including:

• The passage of the Prisoners (Early Release) (Scotland) Act 2025, which changes the point of release for most prisoners serving short-term sentences of under four years from following 50% of their sentence, to following 40% of their sentence.
• Increasing community justice funding by £14m this year to a total of £148m to further strengthen alternatives to custody.
• Introducing regulations that enable GPS technology to be used to monitor individuals being released on Home Detention Curfew (HDC).
• SPS continue to optimise the appropriate use of HDC which allows certain prisoners who have met the requirements of a risk assessment to spend up to 180 days in the community.
• We intend to bring forward secondary legislation to amend the use of HDC with the intention of increasing the period of time individuals can spend on release under licence conditions.
• We have increased the use of electronically monitored bail which is now available in every local authority and its use is at record levels.
• The establishment of an independent review of sentencing and penal policy which will focus on reducing reoffending and ensuring custody is used at the right time, for the right individuals.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The needs and welfare of all those who live and work in our prisons remains a key priority for SPS, as we continue to manage our highly complex population with a person-centred approach.

Supported centrally by SPS Headquarters, establishments have specific arrangements in place to manage their regime during periods of a high prison population. These arrangements include additional staff on shift to support both operations and residential areas and the application of local staff shortage protocols if there are insufficient staff to run a full regime safely.

Scotland’s strong pipeline of renewables projects and growing supply chain will be vital to achieving a secure, affordable and clean power system, and we welcome the measures in the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan to make progress towards this.

In particular, we welcome the signal the Action Plan provides on support for renewable energy – such as actions to speed up grid connections for key projects, and proposed improvements to Contracts for Difference support for renewables developments.

We expect significant growth of Scotland’s offshore wind capacity to play a key role in achieving clean power by 2030. In 2020, the Scottish Government set an ambition for 8-11 GW offshore wind by 2030, which is being reviewed in light of the significant ambition demonstrated by the private sector in the ScotWind and INTOG leasing rounds, with an updated Offshore Wind Policy Statement due to be published in 2025-2026. We continue to work with the UK government, National Energy System Operator, and Ofgem to ensure Scottish offshore wind projects are developed at pace and support our plans for a just transition.

The requested information is not held centrally. The Scottish Stroke Care Audit (SSCA) does not routinely collect information on posterior circulation strokes or data on whether there has been a FAST “pre-alert” before arrival at hospital.

NatureScot has released correspondence relating to the meetings and discussions through an FOI request.