Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government greatly values Muslim communities in Scotland and is committed to tackling Islamophobia in our society. Since the publication of the Report of the inquiry into Islamophobia in Scotland, the Scottish Government has worked towards adopting many of the relevant recommendations made by the Cross-Party Group (CPG), and progress continues to be made in their delivery. We work cooperatively with a wide range of organisations throughout the country to tackle all forms of hatred, including Islamophobia, and promote inclusion. This work is grounded in prevention, early intervention, evidence-based approaches and meaningful interaction with people who have lived experience of exclusion and hate.

SEPA, as Scotland’s hydrometric and flood warning authority, and a civil contingency category one responder, provides a range of real time data including Floodline flood alerts and warnings; rainfall data at over 250 locations and water level data at over 400 locations in Scotland. Through an on-going technology improvement programme, SEPA has increased the timeliness of rainfall and water level real time data.

SEPA continues to develop its data and explore how its use may be expanded including sharing data through Application Programming Interfaces for organisations to ingest into their own websites or systems; prioritising data by internet searches during major flood incidents; and exploring how to better integrate flood warning and water levels information and to simplify real time access to the information.

The following table sets out the number of requests where there has been no disclosure of any information (fully exempted):

COPFS uses a live, operational database to manage the processing of reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. It is designed to meet business needs in the processing of criminal cases, rather than for statistical analysis. This question as currently framed cannot be readily answered by COPFS.

Prosecutors come into contact on a daily basis with individuals living with alcohol use disorder and its consequences. It is appropriate that COPFS staff are trained in relation to the causes and consequences of addiction, including alcohol use disorder, to allow for informed decision-making in the public interest.

Although the role of COPFS is limited in respect of accused persons, when addiction, including to alcohol, has contributed to offending, Prosecutors can consider diversion from prosecution and this may be offered where that would be in the public interest.

COPFS recently hosted a series of online webinars to inform staff of alcohol use disorder, Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and links between addiction and trauma. There are plans for future events and COPFS is exploring opportunities for further engagement with, and input from, Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP).

In addition COPFS internal resources available to all staff include general information about alcohol consumption, alcohol dependency and mental health and signposting for general awareness.

Any level of violence is a concern but it is not correct to say that serious violent crime has almost doubled in a decade. The number of serious assaults and attempted murders recorded by the police has increased by 9% since 2014-15. However, levels have fallen over the past six years, down 21% from 4,361 in 2018-19 to 3,457 by 2023-24. This is replicated in other sources, with the number of hospital admissions related to assault down by a third between 2014-15 and 2023/24. Despite this encouraging progress we are determined to do more.

That is why, through the Violence Prevention Framework; Supporting documents - Violence prevention framework - gov.scot we have provided over £4 million investment over the last two years, to fund a range of targeted prevention and intervention activity across communities. Key actions so far include:

• Extending the support of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, to reach more individuals and communities across Scotland, including North and South Lanarkshire, Fife, Highlands, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
• Extending the Medics Against Violence Hospital Navigator Programme in two Children’s Hospitals in Aberdeen and Glasgow.
• Supporting Medics Against Violence engagement with young people to highlight the consequences of knife carrying and knife injuries in primary schools, youth clubs and secondary schools.
• Supporting the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit to develop a community of practice for over 100 police School Liaison Officers across Scotland.
• Trained over 800 teachers in schools to provide young people with key messages on violence, reaching 19 local authorities across Scotland.
• Supporting YouthLink Scotland to deliver various online and face to face No Knives, Better Lives training sessions to hundreds of practitioners working with young people, in addition to working directly with young people across Scotland.
• Supporting Education Scotland to deliver the Mentors in Violence Prevention programme, in schools across all 32 local authorities.

A joint COSLA/Scottish Government Flood Risk Management Funding Working Group, including representatives from Scottish Government, COSLA, SEPA, local authority Directors of Finance and flood officers has been established to discuss reform of funding and governance for flood resilience actions in Scotland and make recommendations on these issues to COSLA and Scottish Ministers.

Information is not held centrally on the most common way to consume illicit drugs.

In 2023, 14% of all adults had used any of the drugs listed in the Scottish Health Survey in the previous 12 months. The drug most commonly used in the 12 months prior to being interviewed was cannabis (9%) (The Scottish Health Survey 2023 - volume 1: main report - gov.scot). Cannabis is typically smoked.

The Drug and Alcohol Information System (DAISy) captures information on people seeking specialist drug treatment. Public Health Scotland publish statistics annually presenting an overview of initial assessments for specialist drug and alcohol treatment (Drug and alcohol information system (DAISy) overview of initial assessments for specialist drug and alcohol treatment 2023/24 - Drug and alcohol information system (DAISy) - Publications - Public Health Scotland). This includes an analysis of the route of both cocaine and heroin use.

Public Health Scotland also publish information on the provision of injecting equipment (Injecting equipment provision in Scotland - 2022 to 2023 - Injecting equipment provision in Scotland - Publications - Public Health Scotland) along with information from their Needle Exchange Surveillance Initiative (NESI) which aims to measure the uptake of harm reduction services among people who inject drugs in Scotland (Needle Exchange Surveillance Initiative (NESI) 13 August 2024 - Needle Exchange Surveillance Initiative (NESI) - Publications - Public Health Scotland).

The National Flood Resilience Strategy demonstrates our commitment to improving flood resilience through the use of data. It sets out that we will work with partners to review how we can improve the presentation and use of data to drive flood resilient activity. We will also look how to best use data to raise community awareness of current and future flood exposure to inform decision making and support communities on their climate adaptation journeys and explore how developing new datasets may help improve decision making.

The Scottish Government vehicle fleet, broken down by vehicle and fuel type, is provided in the following table.