Coronavirus Acts: fourteenth report to Scottish Parliament (August 2022)

4. Further reporting

4.1 Coronavirus-related SSIs

Section 14 of the second Scottish Act requires Scottish Ministers to report on SSIs made by Scottish Ministers where the main purpose relates to coronavirus. This provision does not apply to SSIs made by Scottish Ministers under the first or second Scottish Acts or the UK Act. 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 which are in scope for reporting under section 14 of the second Scottish Act.

4.2 Information about domestic abuse

Section 15A of the first Scottish Act and section 13 of the second Scottish Act require 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 are 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 does 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 previous two-monthly reports, the information used to support the review was derived from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Justice Analytical Services data packs. These reports provided information on the impact of COVID-19 on the Justice system, and included the number of Domestic Abuse incidents recorded by the police up to March 2022. With all legal COVID-19 restrictions coming to an end over the Spring, the March 2022 edition of the data pack was the final one.

For the purposes of this reporting period, the information on the nature and number of incidents of domestic abuse has, therefore, not been available for this review.

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 thirteenth 'Coronavirus (Scotland) (No.2) Act 2020: report on the Scottish Ministers' responses to requests for information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2020'^[2] was laid in Parliament and published on 9 August 2022.

Section 6(1) of the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Act 2021 requires Scottish Ministers to include in this report:

• 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.