Coronavirus Acts: fifteenth and final report to Scottish Parliament (October 2022)

4. Further reporting

4.1 Coronavirus-related SSIs

Section 14 of the second Scottish Act required Scottish Ministers to report on SSIs made by Scottish Ministers where the main purpose relates to coronavirus. This provision did not apply to SSIs made by Scottish Ministers under the first or second Scottish Acts or the UK Act. For the purpose of the final reporting period, information on SSIs to which section 14 of the second Scottish Act applies is included at section 8 of this report. In this report information has been included on a total of 146 SSIs. No new SSIs were made in this reporting period where the main purpose relates to coronavirus.

4.2 Information about domestic abuse

Section 15A of the first Scottish Act and section 13 of the second Scottish Act required Scottish Ministers to take account of any information about the nature and number of incidents of domestic abuse occurring during the reporting period to which the review relates, given to them, or published by the Scottish Police Authority, or the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Scotland. Further, Scottish Ministers were required to explain in the report on that review, prepared under section 15 of the first Scottish Act and section 12 of the second Scottish Act, how the information was taken into account. The legislation did not require this information to be taken into account in the review of the powers under the UK Act, however where information is available we have made a decision to do so in order to ensure consistency in our approach and ensure the fullest possible consideration is given to this information.

In terms of our requirements under the legislation, consideration has been given to the provisions in the Scottish and UK Acts where domestic abuse may be deemed relevant. Where information on the nature and number of incidents of domestic abuse may be deemed of relevance to a provision, this has been considered as part of the assessment of whether the provision remained necessary. The information used to support the review was published on 9 September 2022, from Police Scotland's Management Information Reports. The data from Police Scotland highlighted that looking cumulatively across the three months from April 2022 to July 2022, domestic abuse incidents were 2% lower than the equivalent period from April 2021 to June 2021 and 10% lower than the equivalent period from April 2020 to June 2020 (15,473 incidents recorded in April 2022 - June 2022, 15,796 incidents recorded in April 2021 - June 2021, and 17,247 incidents in April 2020 - June 2020). The proportion of April 2022 to June 2022 incidents that include the recording of at least one crime or offence was 41.7%, which is lower than for the equivalent period the previous year (April 2021 to June 2021) of 42.9%. Separate figures on crimes recorded under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 are available from the Recorded Crime in Scotland year ending June 2022 National Statistics. There were 1,800 such crimes recorded by the police in the 12 months from July 2021 to June 2022. This is 7% higher than July 2020 to June 2021 (1,682 crimes) and 11% higher than July 2019 to June 2020 (1,623 crimes).

For the purposes of this reporting period, the information on the nature and number of incidents of domestic abuse has not impacted on the outcome of the status of the provisions at the end of the reporting period.

4.3 Additional reporting requirements

Schedule 4, paragraph 12 of the second Scottish Act requires the Scottish Ministers to lay a report before Parliament on their responses to requests for information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2020. The provision expired on 30 September. However, for completeness the Scottish Government has produced a final report covering the period 27 July – 30 September, which is being published alongside this report(^[5]).

Section 6(1) of the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Act 2021 ("Extension and Expiry Act") required Scottish Ministers to include in these reports:

• The measures in place to protect tenants from eviction and any plans for further measures the Scottish Ministers propose to put in place to protect tenants from eviction,
• The number of notices of proceedings issued to tenants in social housing as a result of rent arrears in the period,
• The total value of rent arrears in the social housing sector accumulated during the period, and
• The number of eviction orders because of rent arrears issued by the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland during the period.

This reporting is covered in section 7.1.1.