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As this requires several tables of data to answer, a response has been provided through the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 63198). Across all crime and justice-related statistics, house burglary is not identified separately from housebreaking. As such each table shows actual and attempted crimes for theft from a motor vehicle by opening a lockfast place, theft of a motor vehicle, theft by opening a lockfast place and theft by housebreaking, including housebreaking ‘with intent’.

Table 1 shows crimes recorded by the police between 2011-12 and 2020-21. We do not hold information on the number or percentage of these crimes that were reported to the police by the public. For information the Scottish Crime & Justice Survey includes estimates of how many property crimes were committed over 2008-09 to 2019-20, and the percentage of them that were reported to the police. Further information on this has been provided alongside the tables. All crimes presented in Table 1 will have been investigated by the police as a crime was recorded by them. Table 2 and Table 3 show the number and percentage of these crime types that were cleared up the police.

Table 4 shows charges brought by Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

Tables 5 and 6 show the number of people proceeded against and the number of people convicted respectively, for these crime types over 2009-10 to 2019-20, and the overall percentage is shown in table 7. The 2020-21 National Statistics will be published later this year.

Care should be taken when comparing different data sources relating to the criminal justice system. For example recorded crime statistics count crimes and offences at the time that they came to the attention of Police Scotland while criminal proceedings statistics report on cases which have concluded in court. This means that a crime may be recorded by the police in one year, charges brought and court proceedings concluded in subsequent years. In addition, a person may be proceeded against for more than one crime, or a set of crimes with more than one victim, in a proceeding, but only the main charge is counted in these court proceedings statistics. There is also the possibility that the crime recorded by the police may be altered in the course of judicial proceedings.

Transport Scotland officials engage regularly with CalMac and cover a range of operational topics including staff and crew not only for the Arran Ferry services but the whole of the Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Services network. I recently met with representatives of CalMac’s senior management team and discussed a range of issues including the Arran service.

At the time of response, there are 11 entries on the contributors list.

The list of contributors is a published list available on the gov.scot website and will be updated upon further contributors joining the scheme.

Scotland’s Redress Scheme has been running for twelve weeks and Redress Scotland have begun to make decisions and offers of redress payments. As this process is in its infancy, completed applications and financial payments have not yet reached a level to enable us to disclose payment amounts without comprising the applicants’ data privacy.

It should also be noted that although determinations have been made, all associated payments may not yet have been processed as a fundamental aspect of the scheme is to ensure that applicants have suitable time, up to 6 months following determination, to consider the offer and seek legal advice prior to accepting any payment and signing any necessary waiver relating to their application. Further information regarding payments will be available in due course as more determinations are made, and in line with the reporting responsibilities included in the legislation.

The Scottish Government does not routinely collect statistics on wider international parental child abduction cases outwith the 1980 Hague Convention On The Civil Aspects Of International Child Abduction. The Scottish Government’s Central Authority has been involved with 110 cases between 2015 and 2021, where an application under the 1980 Hague Convention On The Civil Aspects Of International Child Abduction has been made to a foreign country to bring a child back to Scotland.

The following table shows how many school-aged children are in each local authority (as at September 2020) and how many devices have been distributed by councils using the £25m digital inclusion funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21.

Local authorities across Scotland have a range of approaches to provision of technology in schools, including some councils who have undertaken to provide cohorts of their school population with devices using their own budgets. We do not hold information centrally on those approaches, therefore, the following table only shows devices distributed through the funding made available by Scottish Government in 2020-21.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all school-aged children and young people in Scotland have access to a digital device by the end of this parliament.

The Scottish Government has provided the Violence Reduction Unit with the following funding:

 *includes a one off payment for additional funding to VRU

Funding for devices was provided to local authorities by the Scottish Government. As such, local authorities undertook their own procurement exercises and devices purchased became assets of, and are managed by individual local authorities. Decisions on their use, including around security, are taken locally.

The Scottish Government’s commits to work to ensure that a legitimate and constitutional referendum can be held within this Parliamentary term, if the Covid crisis is over, and that a detailed prospectus for an independent Scotland will be prepared to allow the people of Scotland to make an informed choice over their future.

The work to prepare an independence prospectus is being co-ordinated by the Constitutional Futures Division within the Constitution and Cabinet Directorate. This division is currently comprised of one Senior Civil Servant and thirteen other officials (12.9 FTE).

The work to take forward referendum legislation will be co-ordinated by a team in the Elections and FOI Division, also in the Constitution and Cabinet Directorate. The team is currently comprised of three officials.

The staff numbers may change as the work programme evolves. Both streams of work will also draw on other civil servants who will contribute to varying extents as part of their wider responsibilities in supporting the Scottish Government.

As civil servants are not required to record the time spent on individual tasks we cannot provide a figure for total staff hours spent on taking forward these commitments.

The Scottish Government has today introduced legislation to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004, to ensure the process by which a trans person can obtain legal recognition is simplified, in line with the commitment made in the 2021/22 Programme for Government and the Scottish Government and Scottish Green Party Shared Policy Programme.