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Local Authorities regulate food labelling standards. The data FSS holds on food standards interventions indicates that there have been 1209 contravention letters, detention and seizure notices, advice letters and Compliance notices relating to food standards law from 2018 to end of January 2025. FSS does not hold breakdown data on the nature of these breaches.

The Scottish Government Resilience Room has been activated 5 times in 2020; 5 times in 2021; 11 times in 2022; 8 times in 2023; 9 times in 2024; and once in 2025 to date. Of these 39 activations, 25 were for co-ordinating the response to severe weather. The remainder of the activations cover a range of civil contingencies emergencies, such as Covid-19; the 2022 power disruption on Shetland; protests threatening to disrupt fuel supply in the summer of 2023; or the worldwide IT outage in July 2024.

During the response to a civil contingencies emergency, the Scottish Government Resilience Room (SGORR) will usually engage with resilience partnerships formed by relevant categorised responder agencies (e.g. local authorities and other public bodies relevant to the response). SGORR engages with these resilience partnerships via liaison officers and/or through direct engagement with responders. Members of the Civil Contingencies Division Civil Contingencies Liaison Team and/or SGORR may deploy as Scottish Government Liaison Officers (SGLOs) to the partnerships, supporting the two-way flow of information and situational awareness so that emerging issues and trends are quickly identified and handled as appropriate.

Supporting effective liaison with responders at all levels in Scotland and with the UK Government is key to the Scottish Government Resilience Room’s (SGORR’s) co-ordination of the Scottish Government response to civil contingencies emergencies. For civil contingencies emergencies with cross-border impacts, SGORR closely co-ordinates activities with the relevant UK Government response structures and other UK Government departments relevant to the response. SGORR’s role includes supporting the sharing of information as appropriate both on official and ministerial level, supporting the co-ordination of response activity with cross-border aspects, or facilitating the co-ordination of resource as required for the response.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6W-34075 on 18 February 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government works with the SCTS in line with the Framework Document agreed between the SCTS and the Scottish Ministers.

The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) is a non-ministerial office established by the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008. Scottish Ministers do not oversee the performance of the SCTS. The SCTS is accountable to the Scottish Parliament .

As part of the Scottish Administration, the SCTS is subject to the accountability and audit provisions of Part 2 of the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000 and adherence to the guidance contained within the Scottish Public Finance manual .

As required by the 2008 Act, the SCTS prepares a draft corporate plan every 3 years for approval by Scottish Ministers. The corporate plan informs the development of a separate annual business plan with key targets and milestones, a copy of which is sent to Scottish Ministers.

In addition, the SCTS publishes an annual report of its activities together with its audited accounts after the end of each financial year. The annual report and accounts are laid before the Scottish Parliament and cover the main activities and performance against agreed objectives and targets for the previous financial year.

In 2015, FSS took the decision to establish the Scottish National Database (SND). as part of its strategic commitment to address recommendations of the Scudamore Expert Advisory Group, which was established by Scottish Ministers in February 2013, to review the lessons learned from the Horsemeat incident.

The report recommended that:

“The New Food Body should ensure that integrated IT systems are in place for recording data relating to official controls and other interventions at food businesses. These systems should be mandated for use by all competent authorities in Scotland”.

Following successful pilot of SND the system was rolled out across all 32 Scottish Local Authorities with completion in January 2018.

SND allows the real time collection of food law intervention data direct from the Local Authority Management Information Systems via a secure portal.

This technology allows:

• Data information can be used in a more strategic way, to enable datasets to be linked and give new insights and analysis.
• Significant reduction in the administrative burden placed on LAs in preparing and sending data to FSS.
• LAs in Scotland already have well established MIS systems and procedures, the approach was implemented without impacting on the day to day operations of their systems.
• A toolset for reporting has been introduced. This provides the means for FSS and LAs to co-create a comprehensive suite of dashboards and reports to serve across all of the enforcement community.
• The Food Law enforcement community in Scotland should be more robust and adaptable to future changes in the regulatory landscape, by having a flexible means to collect expanded datasets and a more effective means of horizon scanning.

FSS is currently working with Scottish Government Digital teams under the CivTech Programme to explore a digital system that will be open to businesses and Local Authorities to provide effective means to enhance our digital systems.

The Scottish Government does not collect data on the audiology workforce.

Responsibility for delivery and commissioning of services lies at a local level - with local authorities, NHS Boards and integrated health and social care partnerships. Operational decisions, including whether there is a need for audiologists, are therefore matters for those bodies to make and should take into account the numbers of patients in their local areas.

It is not possible to separately identify which convictions for assault were specifically for assaults on doctors

As outlined in the Scottish Government’s IT Code of Conduct attempts to access, active accessing, downloading, displaying, storing and the distribution of pornographic, racist or other offensive material, or material relating to illegal activities is considered a disciplinary matter.

Under the Scottish Government’s discipline policy, line managers are expected to deal with concerns about inappropriate behaviour at an early stage and where appropriate, on an informal basis. Informal action could include addressing concerns through discussion, feedback, training and coaching. There is no requirement to report informal action to HR. However, where an allegation of misconduct is more serious, formal disciplinary procedures would apply.

Since 2018, there have been two formal disciplinary cases taken in response to incidents of accessing or attempting to access pornography on Scottish Government devices or computers. One outcome was a 6-month formal written warning, and the other outcome was a one-year written warning.