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The concept design for the Small Vessel Replacement Programme is set to be completed by the end of 2022 with the Single Procurement Document (Scotland) set to issue at the same time.

Officials met Unite the Union representatives on 13th July 2022 regarding the pay dispute with Marine Scotland seafarers and subsequently met Union representatives along with Nautilus International representatives on 19th July 2022 for pay negotiations.

Following the 2019 consultation on the future use of the Scottish Ministers’ power under section 5 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 to extend coverage of the Act, the Scottish Government is currently considering all the issues highlighted in the responses. One area of particular consideration is social care services provided on behalf of Scottish public authorities. No decisions have yet been taken. Before making any order under section 5 the Scottish Ministers have a statutory obligation to consult those to whom the order relates, and there would also be wider public consultation on any proposed order.

The Scottish Government publishes monthly and annual information on time held on remand in the Justice Analytical Services Safer Communities and Justice Statistics Monthly Report [1] and the annual official Scottish Prison Population Statistics [2]. Official statistics for 2020-21 were published on 23 June 2022, and the June 2022 monthly figures were published on 30 June 2022.

The latest monthly report shows that on the 1st June 2022, 661 (30.4%) of the 2,176 individuals on remand had held a remand status for over 140 days. It must be noted that the remand population includes individuals whose trial has commenced but not concluded, as well as those awaiting commencement of a trial. As a result, the figures referenced above reflect only that an individual has held the same status for an extended period, but do not reflect the relationship between these times on remand and the ongoing court procedure(s) to which they relate.

The annual official statistics are a compilation of data collected over the full financial year from the Scottish Prison Service prisoner records system. To produce the annual statistics, the data needs to be processed into a longitudinal analytical dataset. This process has not yet commenced for 2021-22, so the Scottish Government does not currently hold the data requested.

[1] Justice Analytical Services Safer Communities and Justice Statistics Monthly Report,

[2] Justice Analytical Services Scottish Prison Population statistics

Access requests to commence fieldwork for the research were sent to the Lord President and Sheriffs Principal in March 2020. However, due to the rapid escalation of the pandemic and national lockdown, the judiciary collectively asked for the research to be paused. At the same time, the Scottish Government suspended all face-to-face social research to ensure public health measures were observed. For these reasons, the proposed fieldwork was paused. Fieldwork resumed in 2021, with the judiciary and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service participating remotely.

An interim findings report is due to be published on Wednesday 27 July 2022, with follow on fieldwork (including other key stakeholders) commencing in summer 2022.

The Scottish Government publish official statistics on the prison population on an annual basis. The most recent annual statistics were published on the 23 June 2022 covering the financial year 2020-21 [1]. The official statistics provide information on the average daily remand population, and the number of individuals held on remand over the course of the financial year. A summary of time held by legal status (untried, convicted awaiting sentence, and sentenced) is also provided.

The annual statistics are a compilation of data collected over the full financial year from the Scottish Prison Service prisoner records system. To produce the statistics, the data needs to be processed into a longitudinal analytical dataset. This process has not yet commenced for 2021-22, so the Scottish Government does not currently hold the data requested.

[1] Justice Analytical Services, Scottish Prison Population Statistics 2020-21

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The National Care Service will allow us to improve standards across the whole of the social care sector. The current model of securing care services will be replaced by a model of ethical commissioning and ethical procurement.

As part of this the entire adult social care workforce experience fair work, introducing national pay bargaining to deliver more equitable terms and conditions. The National Care Service will design its services locally to ensure individual needs and local circumstances are taken into account. This will include continuing to work with specialist charity and third sector providers of care services.

The Scottish Government has no plans to widen the statutory remit of the Care Inspectorate to include working with other public bodies to take assets into public ownership. However, we intend to strengthen the Care Inspectorate’s enforcement powers. This will include the introduction of enhanced fitness of provider requirements and financial sustainability monitoring to act as an early warning system for the deterioration of service quality or failure. These will enable the regulator to more quickly take action on poor performing services, and drive up the consistency and quality of care expected across all social care services in Scotland.

The Scottish Government introduced the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill to the Scottish Parliament on 20th June 2022. As part of the approach to the National Care Service, ethical commissioning and ethical procurement will be used to shape all commissioning and procurement decision making.

Local bodies will be required to have a strategic plan, setting out their arrangements and vision for how services will be provided, this will include an ethical commissioning strategy in relation to those services.

Company law and corporation tax are reserved to the UK Government. This means the Scottish Government has no powers to legislate in these areas or to discriminate against firms who take tax avoidance measures that UK rules allow.

The Scottish Government supports measures to ensure that businesses pay a fair amount of tax, such as the development of international, multilateral measures to combat tax avoidance and protect national tax bases. We believe that businesses have an ethical obligation to deal openly with their tax affairs and to avoid engaging in artificial arrangements simply to reduce their tax liabilities.

The dataset on which these statistics is based does not record details of pay or contractual status.

The definition of employment used in school leaver destination statistics includes: those who consider themselves to be employed and in receipt of payment from their employers.