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Arrangements for the Victims Taskforce are currently being finalised, with a view to holding the first meeting before the end of 2018. Membership of the task force will be confirmed at the first meeting, but is likely to include Scottish Government, Justice Agencies, Third Sector victim representatives, legal profession and academia.

The Scottish Government are actively considering the funding of prison visitor centres for 2019-20 and beyond, and will continue to engage with the National Prison Visitor Centre Steering Group and the third sector organisations which run these services. The overall budget in 2019-20 will reflect the outcome of the upcoming spending review.

Decisions on the individual applications for funding from each Centre (including any requests for any extra funding for additional services, such as the transport service developed by the centre at HMP Grampian) will be considered by a Funding Group comprising representatives of the SG, SPS and external stakeholders.

The following table contains the number of Common Assault of an Emergency Worker offences recorded by the police in each of the last five years. It should be noted these figures will not include all police recorded attacks on emergency workers (for example should an emergency worker be the victim of a serious assault, this would be recorded as a serious assault).

The Scottish Government does not hold this information by type of emergency worker. This is because the figures provided by Police Scotland are a simple count of the number of offences recorded in each local authority.

Police Recorded Common Assault of an Emergency Worker, 2013-14 to 2017-18

In order to ensure effective operation of the victim surcharge in Scotland, an Order under section 104 of the Scotland Act 1998 (‘the 1998 Act’), is required to amend section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 (‘the 1991 Act’), which is reserved.

Section 24 gives the Secretary of State the power to introduce a process, via subordinate legislation, whereby courts can apply for a deduction from an offender’s benefits to pay for a fine or compensation order. This currently applies to the victim surcharge in England and Wales but does not extend to the new victim surcharge in Scotland.

We are therefore seeking an Order under section 104 of the 1998 Act, to amend section 24 of the 1991 Act, to facilitate recovery of the surcharge via deduction from benefits and bringing Scotland into line with powers that already exist in England & Wales.

The UK Government have agreed in principle to this Order and have estimated that, once all the necessary steps are completed, it will come into force in summer 2019, subject to UK Parliamentary timescales. The Victim Surcharge (Scotland) Regulations, which will implement the surcharge, will be laid before the Scottish Parliament, as soon as practicable after the section 104 Order comes into force.

The pay and conditions of police staff, including custody staff, are a matter for the Scottish Police Authority. SPA and Police Scotland have been taking forward an extensive programme of work to harmonise staff pay and conditions and I understand negotiations with the relevant unions have been positive and are at an advanced stage.

The information available is provided in the following tables. A breakdown by the type of emergency worker is only available where the actual charge contains reference to the specific type of emergency worker involved.

Prisoners in Scotland are not paid by external employers (as happens in England and Wales) and receive earnings at a range of between £5 and £33 per week, with the majority being paid at the lower end of this scale. We have no plans to use money deducted from prisoners’ earnings to contribute toward a fund for victims of crime.

We estimate that up to 11,000 additional staff (headcount) will be required to deliver the expansion to 1140 hours from 2020, based on local authority returns submitted in March 2018. This total includes managers, practitioners, specialists and auxiliary staff, although the majority of additional staff required will be at the practitioner grade.

The following table shows numbers of entrants on primary teaching initial education courses from academic year 2014-15 to 2017-18.

The Independent Review commenced in September. The Independent Review has confirmed that several introductory meetings have been held with leaders and senior representatives of key organisations. The Lord Advocate and I have also met with Dame Elish Angiolini DBE QC. We understand that investigative meetings with operational staff are now being scheduled and a call for evidence to the public will be published shortly, to enable the wider public to participate.