Scotland Office

My Department has not incurred any expenditure on external consultants in any of the last five years.

The UK Government is clear that now is not the time to talk about another referendum. Instead, our engagement with the Scottish Government needs to be focused on the collective challenges we face - that means, for example, tackling the cost of living, supporting the resettlement of Ukrainian refugees and growing our economy.

The Scotland Office is a small Ministerial Department which does not employ any staff directly. Those that join do so on an assignment, loan or secondment from other government Departments, principally the Scottish Government and the Ministry of Justice, who remain the employers.

Over the period in question, the Scotland Office did not incur any expenditure on recruitment consultants and as such the remaining questions are not applicable.

The UK Government remains fully committed to improving the mental wellbeing of veterans, which is a key part of our Veterans’ Strategy. My Department works closely with the wider UK Government, the Scottish Government, the Scottish Veterans Commissioner and the Office of Veterans’ Affairs on this matter.

The Scotland Office has a People Group, which supports the delivery of the Departmental People Strategy and the Civil Service People Survey.

(a) Information on FTE staff time is not collected;

(b) The People Group is not allocated a budget.

The Scotland Office has a People Group, which supports the delivery of the Departmental People Strategy and the Civil Service People Survey.

(a) Information on FTE staff time is not collected;

(b) The People Group is not allocated a budget.

I fully support the development of the Eastern High Voltage Direct Current Link.

The UK Government maintains engagement with SSEN Transmission, Scottish Power Transmission and National Grid Electricity Transmission - as well as Ofgem - on this important project.

We have regular discussions with the Scottish Government. The Chancellor boosted small business growth by increasing the Employment Allowance with small business owners saving over £250 from the changes to National Insurance thresholds. We call on the Scottish Government to focus on support for business through an agenda for growth as set out by this government in the Queen’s Speech.

The Scotland Office is in regular contact with colleagues across UK Government and Scottish Government on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is a central pillar of the UK’s ambitious Levelling Up mission. It puts £212 million of new funding for local investment directly into the hands of local partners, who have far greater flexibility to invest in priority areas and to target funds where needed.

Allocations for each Local Authority in Scotland were made using a needs-based assessment, including a specifically tailored proportion for rural areas in Scotland.

Local leaders are empowered to design their own investment plans in line with the levelling up missions. We are determined to boost productivity, pay, jobs and living standards across the whole of the UK.

The National Shipbuilding Strategy encourages exports, the uptake of green technology, and support to increase shipyard’s productivity and competitiveness. The National Shipbuilding Office (NSO), which is closely engaged with the shipbuilding enterprise in Scotland, has a clear focus on maximising UK content wherever possible. I was also pleased to see that the NSO plans to open an office at Queen Elizabeth House, the UKG hub in Edinburgh to ensure there is a direct link to the shipbuilding enterprise in Scotland.

Colleagues across Cabinet are delighted that the UK and Scottish Governments have made a landmark agreement to establish two new Freeports in Scotland.

With up to £52 million of UK government funding, freeports will support regeneration of communities across Scotland by creating higher quality, better-paid jobs whilst helping achieve our Net Zero agenda.

This builds on the UK Government's plan to level up the whole of the UK.

Tackling Islamophobia is a matter of devolved competence in Scotland

The UK Government is committed to eradicating anti-Muslim hatred and all forms of religious prejudice, and I know that the Scottish Government shares that commitment.

I have not received any representations from the Scottish Government, Parliamentary or legal bodies, or other bodies on this matter since the Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2021. I note that the hon Gentleman has asked a number of Parliamentary questions on this matter.

The Scotland Office is committed to reducing emissions and energy consumption to reduce costs. Greenhouse gas emissions are published annually in the Greening Government Commitments Annual Reports.

The Government's recently published British Energy Security Strategy will protect the UK from price spikes in the future by accelerating our move towards cleaner, cheaper, home-grown energy.

I have regular discussions with the Secretary of State for Transport on a number of different issues, including the quality of transport links throughout the United Kingdom. The recently concluded Union Connectivity Review (UCR) assessed transport connectivity between the four nations of the UK, and the Government response to the UCR will be published later this year.

I recently met with my hon Friend to discuss how reopening the Burscough Curves could increase connectivity between Southport and Scotland, and I am committed to working with him and the Secretary of State for Transport on this proposal.

The Department does not employ staff directly. All the department's staff are employed by the Scottish Government, Ministry of Justice, or other UK Government departments.

The number of staff working at the department as of 19 April 2022 to deliver the communications functions was 12. Categories with numbers less than 5 cannot be provided, as this would make individuals potentially identifiable.

Departmental spend on communications staff for 2019-20 was £870,159, for 2020-21 it was £906,177, and for 2021-22 it was £944,645.

My office engages regularly with other Government Departments at official and Ministerial level.

Jobcentre Plus, working with Skills Development Scotland’s ‘Partnership Action for Continuing Employment’, has deployed their Rapid Response Service to the Dawnfresh site at Uddingston. This is to give access to Jobcentre Plus’ services to those affected, ensuring full support, by both of Scotland’s Governments, is available to all those affected.

The Government monitors and reports on its greenhouse gas emissions - information on this is published in the Greening Government Commitments Annual Report.

We are continuing to work at pace with the Borderlands partners to agree project business cases. Business Infrastructure falls within the Scottish Government investment in Borderlands. However, I can advise that progress is being made between SG and partners and it is anticipated that the Coldstream business infrastructure project could draw down Deal funding in 2022/23.

There is no place in our society, including within higher education (HE), for antisemitism. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition is an important tool in tackling antisemitism. Adopting the widely recognised definition sends a strong signal that HE providers take these issues seriously.

HE in Scotland is devolved and responsibility for policy, for the most part, rests with the Scottish Government. The decision on adoption of the definition rests with individual providers. However, the UK Government has urged HE providers in England to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and ensure the HE is a genuinely fulfilling and welcoming experience. I am sure that many HE providers in Scotland will also choose to adopt the definition and I would support them in doing that.

Greenhouse gas emissions are published annually in the Greening Government Commitments Annual Reports.

The Scotland Office is committed to reducing emissions and energy consumption wherever possible, as part of the UK’s transition to net zero. The Government’s current targets to make progress on reducing emissions have been published, as part of the Greening Government Commitments.

The Government published the Net Zero Strategy in October 2021, which sets out policies and proposals for decarbonising all sectors of the UK economy to meet our net zero target by 2050.

The new Government Curriculum will include modules on the implications of Net Zero, climate change and wider environmental issues for government. In the first phase, the Government Skills & Curriculum Unit (GSCU) is working with other Departments (including BEIS, DEFRA and FCDO) to create an awareness level training resource for all civil servants. This will be piloted from April 2022. In the next phases, GSCU will look at tailored provision for specific Functions and Professions, and will signpost the training and other resources on Net Zero, which are already being provided internally at practitioner and expert levels by government Departments.

The Government is committed to making its estate and operations more sustainable and resilient through the Greening Government Commitments. We report on these commitments every quarter. In the Scotland Office, this is led by senior officials.

Forestry is a devolved area of responsibility. However, the UK Government continually engages with the Scottish Government to realise our high ambitions for increasing planting across the UK. We are confident that we are on track to meet the UK-wide target of planting 30,000ha per year by the end of this Parliament.

All of the administrations play a part in delivering the programme and to share best practice and work together on cross-border projects. In fact, Scottish Forestry is leading the review of the UK Forestry Standard, which sets out the UK’s approach to sustainable forest management, and the report is due for publication in late 2022.

The Scotland Office has frequent conversations with our Cabinet colleagues, and I am pleased with the progress made so far relating to the Places for Growth agenda with 1,524 Civil Service roles committed for relocation to Scotland, including senior and policy roles and an increased Ministerial presence in our Scotland hubs.

My office engages regularly with other Government Departments at official and Ministerial level.

Through the Scottish Seafood Industry Action Group, Ministers discuss a wide range of issues that are of interest to the fishing industry, with the Industry itself.

Sustainable fishing underpins our approach to managing our fish stocks, the advice we get from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has guided our decisions on Total Allowable Catch during the recent fisheries negotiations.

The Scotland Office does not operate any professional staff networks or social clubs.

The Scotland Office does not employ any staff directly. Those that join, do so on an assignment, loan or secondment from other government Departments, principally the Scottish Government and the Ministry of Justice, who remain the employers. Scotland Office colleagues have access to the staff networks and social clubs of their employing departments.

The Scottish Government is accountable for exercising its power to top up reserved benefits. Section 24 of the Scotland Act 2016 enables the Scottish Government to introduce discretionary top‐up payments to people in Scotland who are entitled to a reserved benefit.

The Scotland Office, DWP and the Scottish Government have dedicated work programmes to implement the relevant changes following the devolution of welfare powers introduced by the Scotland Act 2016. As my ministerial colleague the Minister for Pensions has previously set out, we work closely together and officials hold regular discussions. In addition, discussions are held at ministerial level through the regular Joint Ministerial Working Group on Welfare and bilateral meetings between the relevant Scotland Office, DWP and Scottish Government ministers take place as required.

The Government has committed to extending the Warm Home Discount to at least 2025-2026 and expanding the scheme spending envelope from the current £350 million to £475 million (in 2020 prices) per year. This will enable us to provide around 3 million rebates each winter across Great Britain, which is an increase of a third compared to the current scheme.

We have consulted on apportioning a fair amount of the overall £475 million annual funding to Scotland for a Warm Home Discount scheme in Scotland from the 2022-2023 scheme year. We are agreeing a position with the Scottish Government on the future scheme and any scheme in Scotland would be consulted on.

Should the UK Government implement a scheme for Scotland, our intention would be to have consulted and have Regulations in place in advance of the summer Parliamentary recess.

The current scheme is continuing to operate across Great Britain for the year 2021-2022.

My Department is not responsible for any critical infrastructure that is reliant on private wire networks for power supply.

The Scotland Office does not have its own departmental Chief Scientific Adviser. Ministers of the Department regularly meet with a wide range of officials across Whitehall on a variety of issues.

The Scotland Office does not employ staff directly. All staff that join do so on an assignment, loan or secondment from other government bodies; principally the Scottish Government and the Ministry of Justice, who remain the employers. However, I am very supportive of the National Disability Strategy and can confirm that:

(a) all Scotland Office colleagues have access to and can fully participate in their Departmental disability networks;

(b) both of our recruiting Departments (Scottish Government and the Ministry of Justice) are Public Sector Leaders in the Disability Confident scheme;

(c) we are fully committed to identifying and removing any barriers that colleagues face including meeting workplace adjustment needs;

(d) in addition to the standard flexible working offer provided by our recruiting Departments, the government is also committed to adopting smarter working, enabling people to work in a variety of locations to best deliver business needs.

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund provides £2.6 billion of new funding for local investment by March 2025, with all areas of the UK receiving an allocation from the Fund via a funding formula, rather than a competition.

This fund will target communities, people and skills, and local businesses - maintaining commitments to match EU funds in Scotland.

At the request of the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Energy Emergencies Committee is undertaking a review of the responses to Storm Arwen, and so is Ofgem; these reviews will inform the electricity industry’s response to future storms across Great Britain, including storms like Storms Malik and Corrie. In Scotland, most of the impacts of such storms are devolved matters for the Scottish Government and other devolved bodies. Scottish Government resilience officials are in regular contact with their counterparts in UK Government departments for the exchange of best practice.

The Government attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of correspondence from MPs, either directly or on behalf of their constituents.

The Scotland Office does not have an MP hotline. The Scotland Office does not have an account management team, and the Scotland Office correspondence team does not hold information on the average response time to enquiries from MPs, as correspondence performance is monitored by the percentage of correspondence responded to within the target response time set by the Department.

Data on the timeliness of responses to correspondence from MPs and Peers for 2019 and 2020 is published on Gov.uk:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-on-responses-to-correspondence-from-mps-and-peers.

The Cabinet Office will publish data for 2021 in due course.

The UK Government engages extensively with the Scottish Government on all fisheries matters, including recent negotiations with the EU and Norway to establish catch limits for shared stocks for 2022.

My Department has held regular meetings with Defra to ensure Scotland's interests were fully represented. The deal between the EU-UK-Norway has given the UK increased catch levels on Whiting, Herring and Haddock, and the deal between the UK and Norway achieved a great outcome for the Scottish fleet, gaining greater access to Norwegian waters.

I regularly discuss issues of importance to Scotland with Ministerial colleagues including Scotland’s renewable energy sector exports.

Scotland is well positioned to become a centre of global excellence in energy and climate technology and the Government is committed to supporting Scotland’s clean energy exports.

We have invited the Scottish Government to work in partnership to support the delivery of UK-wide transport infrastructure.

This is one aspect of how the government is levelling up regional interconnectivity, by improving travel in and between local communities so people can move more easily around the country and access jobs and opportunities.

I am in regular contact with Ministers in the Ministry of Defence about the support provided by our armed forces in Scotland in response to Covid-19.

Currently, service personnel are providing acute care to a number of hospitals in Scotland, driving ambulances and providing other services to the Scottish Ambulance Service, and they are administering vaccinations across Scotland.

Following a robust, specialist-led assessment, the UK Government has identified the Acorn project as the reserve cluster for Track-1 as part of the Carbon Capture Usage and Storage Cluster Sequencing process. Since this was announced, the Government has engaged extensively with Acorn to allow them to continue their development and planning, with the support of over £40m in UK Government funding. As previously stated, there will be further opportunities for Acorn to deploy, including through a future allocation process for ‘Track-2’ clusters.

This information is only held for internal administrative reasons and may not be exhaustive, for example, due to machinery of government changes to departmental structure in the past decade.

In 2018, the Scotland Office completed post legislative scrutiny of the Scotland Act 2012. A link to the review can be found here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/703084/Post_Legislative_Scrutiny_SA_2012_PDF.pdf

The Scotland Office has not completed any post legislative scrutiny of secondary legislation.

This information is only held for internal administrative reasons and may not be exhaustive, for example, due to machinery of government changes to departmental structure in the past decade.

In 2018, the Scotland Office completed post legislative scrutiny of the Scotland Act 2012. A link to the review can be found here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/703084/Post_Legislative_Scrutiny_SA_2012_PDF.pdf

The Scotland Office has not completed any post legislative scrutiny of secondary legislation.