Coronavirus Acts: tenth report to Scottish Parliament (December 2021)

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 129 SSIs – 9 of which are new to this reporting period – 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 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 remains necessary.

The information used to support the review was published on 28 October 2021, as part of the Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services data report on how the coronavirus pandemic has affected the justice system. The data from Police Scotland highlights that looking cumulatively across April to September 2021, domestic abuse incidents were 6% lower than the equivalent period in 2020 and 1% higher than the equivalent period in 2019 (31,689 incidents recorded in April – September 2021, 34,106 incidents in April – September 2020, and 31,689 incidents in April – September 2019). The proportion of April 2021 to September 2021 incidents that include the recording of at least one crime or offence was 42.3%, which is lower than for the equivalent period in 2020-21 of 43.4%.

Separate figures on crimes recorded under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 are available from the Recorded Crime in Scotland monthly Official Statistics. There were 149 such crimes recorded by the police in September 2021, this is 39% higher than September 2020 (107 crimes) but 2% lower than September 2019 (152 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 assessment of whether the provisions remain necessary.

The Scottish Government remains committed to tackling domestic abuse and to coincide with the 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women from 25 November to 10 December we are re-running our domestic abuse public awareness campaign from 2019. We are investing significant levels of funding in front line services and over the past 18 months we have invested an additional £10m to allow rapid re-design of services and address backlogs, supporting organisations such as Scottish Women's Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland. In addition, we have created a new Delivering Equally Safe Fund (£19 million per annum) and have recently confirmed allocations to 121 projects from 112 organisations working to provide services and prevent gender-based violence.

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 ninth '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 10 December 2021.

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

4.4 This reporting is covered in section 6.1.1.