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In accordance with the Terms of Reference for the Aberdeen to Central Belt Reference Group and the Memorandum of Understanding (for the additional investment for the Aberdeen City Deal), the Scottish Government ensures that all relevant parties are regularly apprised of the progress of the work undertaken by the group.

An initial training needs analysis has been completed by Police Scotland and is being further developed. Detailed costings will form part of that further work.

Good progress has been made on the development of cross-border provisions which has involved close working with both Police Scotland and BTP. It is the intention of BTP and Police Scotland to jointly test the operation of these provisions in various operational scenarios.

The Scottish Government believes that the transfer falls within the exclusion in regulation 3(5) of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (TUPE) Regulations 2006, because it is a transfer of administrative functions between public authorities. Accordingly, it is not a relevant transfer for the purposes of the TUPE Regulations and those Regulations therefore would not apply.

The Policy Memorandum to the Railway Policing (Scotland) Bill explains that it is the Scottish Government's intention to abide by the Cabinet Office Statement of Practice on Staff Transfers in the Public Sector (COSOP). The Scottish Government has made clear that the principles that will be applied here are (i) the transfer (including terms of transfer) will be effected by legislation and (ii) the staff transferred will be treated no less favourably than they would have been had TUPE applied. The Joint Programme Board is now overseeing a range of work to put these principles into practice.

As set out in the update recently provided to the Justice Committee, our planning assumption is that officers will transfer to Police Scotland with their existing status as both constables and employees. This position was reflected in a letter sent by the BTP Authority to all officers in Scotland.

The Scottish Government established and attends the Aberdeen to Central Belt Reference Group, which includes representatives from both ScotRail and Network Rail. The Group is progressing the development of potential options, including double tracking between Usan to Montrose, to improve capacity and journey times along the route. The Group met on 10 October 2017 and the Government last held discussions with both ScotRail and Network Rail on
6 November 2017.

The £200 million additional investment announced alongside the Aberdeen City Region Deal will be used to improve capacity, performance and journey times between Aberdeen and the Central Belt, through identified rail initiatives which support the Scottish Government’s aspirations for this corridor.

The Scottish Government is clear that LGBTI (and indeed any) hate crime is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated. We therefore welcome the Equality Network’s report and its recommendations.

We recently published an ambitious programme of work to tackle hate crime and build community cohesion in response to the Independent Advisory Group on Hate Crime, Prejudice and Community Cohesion. We have established a multi-agency delivery group, which includes the Equality Network, to take this work forward.

On 13 October we launched our ‘Hate Has No Home In Scotland’ campaign to raise awareness of what hate crime is and encourage both victims and witnesses to report it to the police or to a third party reporting centre.

This year we are also providing over £20 million of funding to help promote equality and tackle discrimination which includes organisations specifically working to progress LGBTI equality.

The Scottish Government routinely publishes data on reconviction rates by a range of characteristics, including disposal and length of custodial sentence, and these are available on the Scottish Government website at http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/PubReconvictions.

The Scottish Government does not publish reconviction rates for individual prisons since rates will vary substantially depending on the mix of people who are held in different prisons. Those released from a prison which accommodates people serving long term sentences tend to have lower reconviction rates than those released from a prison which accommodates remand and short term prisoners. People may also be transferred within the prison estate during their stay in custody, for instance, to the open estate to prepare them for release. Therefore, comparisons between different prisons based on raw reconviction rates would be misleading.

Investment in the use of technology and enhancing cyber capability are two of the six strategic objectives contained within Policing 2026, the long-term transformational strategy published by Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority in June of this year.

In order to support delivery of these objectives, work is now being taken forward by the service to develop a dedicated ICT Strategy describing how future-proofed technology which will be used to enhance the delivery of Police Scotland’s operational and corporate functions.

The detail of that Strategy, including any decisions regarding the adoption of specific technologies, is a matter for Police Scotland with oversight by the Scottish Police Authority.