Questions and answers

Question reference: S6O-04962

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 17 September 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 24 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason Scotland will see the slowest GVA growth of the devolved nations over the next three years, according to the EY UK Regional Economic Forecast 2025.

Question reference: S6W-40225

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 02 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Siobhian Brown on 16 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Scottish Retail Consortium’s suggestion in its Scottish Budget 2026-27 recommendations paper that funding for the Retail Crime Taskforce should be sustained and ideally enhanced for the coming year.

The Scottish Government’s commitment to tackling retail crime was reaffirmed in our Programme for Government, which makes clear our strong support for Police Scotland’s robust approach in addressing this issue.

The Scottish Government has commenced work on the 2026-27 Budget and the Scottish Spending Review in order to set out our spending plans to 2029-30.

Policing is a priority for the Scottish Government, as demonstrated by investing more than £14.6 billion in policing since the creation of Police Scotland in 2013.

Question reference: S6W-40336

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 16 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many Drug Treatment and Testing Orders were imposed in Edinburgh in each calendar year from 2021 to June 2025.

From April 2020 to March 2024 there were 202 Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTOs) imposed in Edinburgh.

Please note, Justice Social Work data is published by financial year. Data for 2024-25 will be published in early 2026.

The breakdown is as follows:

Year	Local Authority	Number of Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTOs) imposed
2020-21	Edinburgh, City of	55
2021-22	Edinburgh, City of	92
2022-23	Edinburgh, City of	26
2023-24	Edinburgh, City of	29

This information is published in the justice social work local authority time series tables – Table DTTO_7.

Question reference: S6W-40337

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 16 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many Drug Treatment and Testing Orders were imposed in each calendar year from 2021 to June 2025, and how many were successfully completed in each of those years.

Across Scotland from April 2020 to March 2024 a total of 1,179 Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTOs) were imposed by the courts. There were 743 DTTOs completed or subject to early discharge from the court on the basis of sufficient progress being observed between April 2020 and March 2024.

Please note, Justice Social Work data is published by financial year. Data for 2024-25 will be published in January 2026.

The breakdown of DTTOs imposed in this period and the number of completions is in the following table. Please also note that orders can be completed in a different year from which they were imposed.

Year		Number of Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTOs) imposed	Number of Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTOs) finished which were successfully completed or had an early discharge
2020-21	Scotland	228	259
2021-22	Scotland	368	170
2022-23	Scotland	303	161
2023-24	Scotland	280	153

The information for years 2020-21 to 2023-24 for Scotland is published in the Justice social work statistics: local authority time series tables - gov.scot– Table DTTO_7 and DTTO_15.

It should be noted that the trend data supplied was affected by the Coronavirus (Covid) pandemic. There were significant public health measures, including two national lockdowns, in place during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 recording years. This means that statistics for most areas of justice social work were impacted in 2020-21 and 2021-22. Caution is advised in comparing data from these two years to other years.

Question reference: S6O-04899

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 September 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 10 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the justification was at the time for the purchase of Glen Prosen by Forestry and Land Scotland in November 2022, with a reported cost to the public of £17.6 million.

Question reference: S6T-02626

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 01 September 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 2 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking in response to the overall increase in recorded crimes in the past year, including rape, violent crime, antisocial behaviour and shoplifting.

Question reference: S6O-04882

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 August 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 4 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what alternatives are being piloted to enable older patients to be cared for outside of hospitals.

Question reference: S6W-39628

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 31 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ruth Charteris on 26 August 2025

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

The Scottish Government publish accredited official statistics annually, which include information on diversions from prosecution and are available on the Scottish Government website. The Scottish Government statistics are not directly comparable to the COPFS figures and the Scottish Government statistics should be preferred for statistical purposes.

COPFS operates a live, operational database to manage reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. This system is designed to support the operational needs of criminal case processing, rather than for statistical analysis, and the information within it is structured accordingly.

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

For consistency, the Scottish Government’s classification of “sexual assault” has been adopted.

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.

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

Year	2022-2023	2023-2024	2024-2025	Total
Number of sexual assault cases where diversion marked as completed or ongoing	44	31	33	108
Total number of sexual assault cases reported to COPFS	1,542	1,568	1,450	4,560

Of the 108 cases, 85 involved individuals who were children (under 18) at the time of the offending

Question reference: S6W-39627

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ruth Charteris on 26 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-19936 by Dorothy Bain on 1 August 2023, how many reported cases of rape in each year since 2023-24 have been subject to a diversion from prosecution.

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 in the public interest.

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.

In July 2023, the Lord Advocate ordered a review of how prosecutors deal with diversion from prosecution and referral to the Children’s Reporter in cases of serious sexual offences such as rape. The review has concluded and as a result, a new Statement of Prosecution Policy, which focuses on cases involving children, was published.

From 28 April 2025, all decision making in solemn level sexual offences cases involving child accused are made by reference to the terms of the new policy.

The Scottish Government publish accredited official statistics annually, which include information on diversions from prosecution and are available on the Scottish Government website. The Scottish Government statistics are not directly comparable to the COPFS figures and the Scottish Government statistics should be preferred for statistical purposes.

COPFS operates a live, operational database to manage reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. This system is designed to support the operational needs of criminal case processing, rather than for statistical analysis, and the information within it is structured accordingly.

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.

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.

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

Year	2023-24	2024-25	Total
Number of rape cases where diversion marked as completed or ongoing	11	2	13
Total number of rape cases reported to COPFS	806	773	1,579

All 13 cases involved individuals who were children (under 18) at the time of the offending.

Question reference: S6W-39629

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ruth Charteris on 26 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many accused persons in each of the last three years have been subject to a diversion from prosecution, and what the 10 most common offences being dealt with were.

The Scottish Government publish accredited official statistics annually, which include information on diversions from prosecution and are available on the Scottish Government website. The Scottish Government statistics are not directly comparable to the COPFS figures and the Scottish Government statistics should be preferred for statistical purposes.

COPFS operates a live, operational database to manage reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. This system is designed to support the operational needs of criminal case processing, rather than for statistical analysis, and the information within it is structured accordingly.

Due to the way that decisions on diversions are recorded on this database, in order to provide an accurate response, a manual check of the relevant cases would be required.

Individuals accused of offences may be reported to COPFS on multiple charges. The table below presents the number of accused persons reported to COPFS where the first substantive marking indicates possible diversion. These figures reflect the number of accused persons, not the number of charges. As it has not been possible to conduct manual checks of this volume of cases, the following table should be taken as indicative.

Year	2022-2023	2023-2024	2024-2025
Total	4,624	6,577	6,267

COPFS statistics include data on diversion for driving offences. In these cases, diversion is not through referral to social work; referral is made to specific, approved scheme service providers to address the underlying causes of this type of offending.

Subject to the caveats provided above, the following list presents the 10 most common offences subject to potential diversion. It is based on the number of accused persons reported to COPFS on a single charge who received a first substantive marking for possible diversion during the period requested. Offences are grouped according to the Scottish Government’s classification system, specifically under Group 2.

Drugs - Possession

Threatening and abusive behaviour

Common assault

Shoplifting

Dangerous & careless driving

Drunkenness & other disorderly conduct

Vandalism

Crimes against public justice

Other theft

Community and public order offences.

Seòmar agus comataidhean