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Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-19933

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 7 August 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-08446 by Keith Brown on 20 May 2022, when the cost consultation exercise in relation to taking HMP Kilmarnock back into public ownership will be completed.

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) is developing the operating cost of HMP Kilmarnock post transfer, with initial outcomes expected by the end of September 2023, and final submissions being provided within the usual budget planning process at the end of the calendar year.

SPS is working to agree proposals for a transitional operating model, and a target operating model, which is to be adopted within the first year of the prison transferring to the public sector.

Question reference: S6W-19932

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 7 August 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-08446 by Keith Brown on 20 May 2022, whether it plans to take HMP Kilmarnock back into public ownership regardless of the cost consultation exercise that it is carrying out.

The 25-year contract for HMP Kilmarnock under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) for a privately constructed and operationally managed prison expires on 16 March 2024. The decision to bring HMP Kilmarnock into public management and ownership and not to tender for a new private contract was taken in 2021. This is in line with Scottish Government policy that prisons should be owned and managed by the public sector, which has been in place since 2007.

Question reference: S6W-19936

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2023
Current Status: Answered by Dorothy Bain on 1 August 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many reported cases of rape in each of the last five years have been subject to a diversion from prosecution.

1. Diversion is a process by which prosecutors are able to refer a case to social work or other identified agency as a means of addressing the underlying causes of offending when this is deemed the most appropriate course of action.

2. Such intervention can be particularly effective in cases of children’s offending, changing the direction of young lives for the better and is consistent with the obligations on the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

3. I have ordered a review of how prosecutors deal with diversion from prosecution in cases of serious sexual offences such as rape. The review is timely in ensuring we are continuing to consider the rights of both accused and complainers particularly where they are children.

4. COPFS uses a live, operational database to manage the processing of reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. It is designed to meet business needs in the processing of criminal cases, rather than for statistical analysis, and the information within it is structured accordingly.

5. Due to the way that decisions on diversions are recorded on this database, in order to provide an accurate response to the question regarding rape cases, a manual check of the relevant cases has been undertaken.

6. Based on the results of those manual checks, the following table has been compiled. It includes numbers of cases in which the accused was offered diversion and following that offer, the diversion was considered completed, or is still considered ongoing.

7. The overall numbers of cases containing an allegation of rape (which have not been checked) are provided as a point of comparison.

Year	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23	Total
Number of rape cases where diversion marked as completed or ongoing	1	3	14	14	16	48
Total number of rape cases reported to COPFS	687	741	741	688	698	3,555

8. Of these 48 cases, only 4 related to individuals who were over the age of 18 at the time of the offending.

Question reference: S6W-19937

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2023
Current Status: Answered by Dorothy Bain on 1 August 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many reported cases of sexual offending, other than rape, in each of the last five years have been subject to a diversion from prosecution.

COPFS uses a live, operational database to manage the processing of reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. It is designed to meet business needs in the processing of criminal cases, rather than for statistical analysis, and the information within it is structured accordingly. Due to the breadth of conduct which is covered by the term “sexual offending” and the operational nature the COPFS case management system, the requested dataset is not available.

Question reference: S6W-19490

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 28 June 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 25 July 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what incident led to the reported possession of a firearm in a prison being documented in its recorded crime statistics 2022-23.

There were no incidents of someone being found in possession of a firearm within a prison in 2022-23. When the Recorded Crime in Scotland Statistics 2022-23 were originally published on the 20th June they showed one such case. However, Police Scotland identified an administrative error, whereby this crime should have instead been classified as bringing drugs into a prison. The above statistics were revised to reflect this and re-published on the 1st July 2023.

Question reference: S6O-02445

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 June 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 28 June 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the independent review into the planning for Dargavel Primary School.

Question reference: S6W-18261

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 June 2023
Current Status: Answered by Dorothy Bain on 19 June 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide details of what litigation requires to be concluded before it will initiate a public inquiry into prosecutions relating to the administration of Rangers FC.

The following litigation requires to be concluded:

Imran Ahmad v the Lord Advocate: Proof before answer was heard by Lord Harrower in respect of quantum between 1-10 March 2023 and Lord Harrower made avizandum. The decision in this case is still pending.

David Grier v the Lord Advocate: On 12 April 2023 the Court of Session refused Mr Grier’s application for leave to appeal to the UK Supreme Court. Mr Grier thereafter filed an application for Permission to Appeal directly to the UK Supreme Court on 9 May 2023.

Shelagh McCall KC has been instructed to independently consider reports of criminal conduct from a legal perspective in relation to the prosecutions connected to Rangers Football Club. This process is in place to ensure that any allegations of criminal conduct are considered fairly and objectively.

The aforementioned cases and the work of Shelagh McCall KC remain ongoing at this time.

The Scottish Government and the Lord Advocate have committed to a process of a judge-led inquiry once all legal proceedings relating to the malicious prosecutions are at an end. The exact form and timing of an inquiry will be determined once all legal proceedings are concluded.

The Justice Directorate has been identified as the directorate to lead on providing advice to Ministers.

Question reference: S6W-18260

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 June 2023
Current Status: Answered by Dorothy Bain on 19 June 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide the details of all expenditure that has been paid to contest concluded civil cases relating to prosecutions arising from the administration of Rangers FC.

The costs are recorded against all the civil cases relating to the prosecutions arising from the acquisition and administration of Rangers FC. The table below details expenditure from both the concluded and pending actions and includes legal costs and expert evidence instructed by the Crown and excludes the settlements (which are detailed in the following table) and staff costs. Please note that staff costs are not routinely recorded against individual cases as staff frequently work across a number of different workstreams concurrently.

Costs directly attributable

to Rangers Civil Cases

2017-18

2018-19

2019-20

2020-21

2021-22

2022-23

Total

Total non-staff costs

excl. settlement

188,848.67

165,715.97

675,538.31

725,587.66

1,397,390.12

2,543,080.38

5,696,161.11

Question reference: S6W-18259

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 June 2023
Current Status: Answered by Dorothy Bain on 19 June 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how much has been paid to litigants from all concluded civil cases relating to prosecutions arising from the administration of Rangers FC, broken down by financial year.

The following table below details the settlement costs and expenses paid to litigants from all concluded civil cases relating to the prosecutions arising from the acquisition and administration of Rangers FC, broken down by financial year.

	2016-17	2019- 20	2020- 21	2021- 22	2022- 23	Total
Concluded Cases
Clark	-	-	11,936,250.00	2,150,000.00	-	14,086,250.00
Green	-	-	140,000.00	6,253,046.00	508,548.50	6,901,594.50
Kroll	-	-	-	-	15,475,000.00	15,475,000.00
Whitehouse	67,043.67	310,000.00	11,969,000.00	2,512,031.05	27,849.78	14,885,924.50
Total Concluded Cases	67,043.67	310,000.00	24,045,250.00	10,915,077.05	16,011,398.28	51,348,769.00

Ongoing cases
Ahmad	-	-	-	122,748.00	220,000.00	342,748.00

Question reference: S6W-18855

Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 08 June 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 16 June 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what the outcomes have been of the engagement by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs with the Scottish Sentencing Council regarding the review of sentencing guidelines produced by the council, and what action the (a) Scottish Government and (b) Scottish Sentencing Council will be taking as a result of this engagement.

I met with the Chair of the Scottish Sentencing Council on 17 May. At that meeting, we discussed a range of matters relevant to the work of the Council. This included the approach that the Council plans to take to the review of guidelines that it produces. It was outlined that when reviewing offence or offender-specific guidelines, the Council will carry out an interim review when a guideline has been in effect for a year, considering data on relevant cases and engaging with sentencers to assess whether the guideline has had the intended effect and identify any unintended consequences. This will be followed by a full review after three years which the Council will publish, setting out the impact of the guideline in the medium term. The review of sentencing guidelines is a role that the Council undertakes independently.