³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-32056 on 25 September 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at

.

This government takes any form of hate crime or prejudice, including anti-English abuse, very seriously. It has a hugely damaging effect on both victims and communities so it’s important that everybody plays their part to challenge it at all times.

We published our Tackling Prejudice and Building Connected Communities Action Plan in June 2017 and I chair an Action Group to take this work forward. Among other things, this group has prioritised raising awareness of hate crime and encouraging reporting through, for example, campaign activity.

We encourage anyone who has experienced or witnessed hate crime to report it to Police Scotland or by using a third party reporting centre, details of which can be found on Police Scotland’s website.

We are committed to working across government in order to build a fairer Scotland where there is simply no place for hatred and prejudice and where everyone feels connected, has a sense of belonging and feels valued.

This information is not collated centrally.

This information is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government does not hold the information requested. Whist we have previously published figures on racist incidents or racially aggravated hate crime up to 2017-18, this does not include information on the social group the perpetrator was perceived to be showing malice or ill-will towards.

We made clear during the Showing Solidarity with Anti-Racism debate in parliament on 10 June 2020 that data on police recorded hate crime in Scotland needs to show a greater level of disaggregation. This is being taken forward in two ways. The first is a study by Scottish Government statisticians into the characteristics of police recorded hate crime in 2018-19, based on a review of crime records. The findings will present information on the social groups that perpetrators were perceived to have shown prejudice towards, including an estimate of how many cases were anti-English in nature. This project had been postponed due to COVID-19 as data could not be collected when working from home, however it has now resumed and analysts will announce a publication date in the near future.

As a second action, we are also setting up a cross justice system working group to improve the collection and reporting of evidence on race, whose remit will include identifying how more detailed hate crime statistics can be produced on an ongoing basis. Justice partners and stakeholder groups have been invited to join, with further announcements on the group to follow in due course.

This data can be found in Table 5.2 at the following link:

Note that data is only available for pupils attending publicly funded schools.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on local road maintenance expenditure.

Maintenance of the local road network is the responsibility of local authorities. The vast majority of funding to local authorities from the Scottish Government is provided via a block grant and we do not stipulate how local authorities should utilise their individual allocations. It is therefore the responsibility of each local authority to manage their own budget and to allocate the financial resources available to them on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The Scottish Government has taken exceptional measures in every area of government as we deal with the challenges of COVID- 19 - and that is particularly clear in our support for local services. To date, £379 million of additional funding has been committed to local authorities by the Scottish Government and to avoid any potential cash flow problems we agreed with COSLA to front-load our weekly grant payments to local authorities by £455 million during May, June and July.

The Programme for Government 2020/21 commits to developing and improving the current Scottish Model for Chronic Pain, and to publish a new Framework for Chronic Pain Service Delivery in 2021.

This will involve developing and agreeing pain management pathways that provide more sustainable support for people living with chronic pain by delivering better health outcomes and improving their quality of life.

It is intended that this work will also lead to less variation in the quality and availability of services for people with chronic pain, and support the sharing of best practice.

The following table details the total number of journeys conducted by the Government Car Service since 2007.

Existing information held by Scottish Enterprise grants to life sciences companies is provided in the following table: