Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-33978

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 4 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-32906 by Alasdair Allan on 16 January 2025, whether it has asked the UK Government to introduce a compensatory scheme for people who have installed underfloor foam insulation under the EC04 scheme.

We are continuing to seek further information from the UK Government about consumer protections in respect of the ECO4 and GBIS schemes.

The UK Minister for Energy Consumers made an oral announcement in the Westminster Parliament on 23 January 2025 stating that 39 companies had been suspended as installers for solid wall insulation as part of these schemes.

We have been assured by the UK Government that these issues are particular to solid wall insulation installed under the Energy Company Obligation 4 and Great British Insulation Scheme. However we have asked them to advise Scottish Ministers further about any concerns raised about the quality of retrofit work undertaken in Scotland as part of these schemes.

Question reference: S6W-34029

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 28 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 4 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) plastic, (b) paper, (c) metal and (d) glass straws it has procured in each of the last 10 years, and what the average cost was.

Question reference: S6W-33998

Asked by: Brian Whittle, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 4 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the current capacity within local authorities to assess specialist planning applications such as minerals developments.

We are aware of concerns about the current capacity within planning authorities. The skills and capacity challenges faced by planning authorities are not unique to Scotland and are not restricted to minerals development. The Scottish Government is taking forward a programme of actions to boost planning capacity across Scotland.

Our Investing in Planning consultation last year identified a range of interventions to increase the capacity within planning authorities. In September 2024 we published a blog outlining the proposals we were intending to take forward, those which required further consideration and those which we did not intend to take forward at this time.

The Scottish Government has established the Hydrogen Planning Hub and the Housing Emergency Hub in response to concerns about capacity and skills. We are currently considering the further role that Hubs can play in supporting planning authorities to address the skills and capacity issues they are facing.

The National Planning Improvement Champion (NPIC) is working with individual planning authorities to pilot a new National Planning Improvement Framework. Planning authorities will carry out a self-assessment and work with the NPIC and others to identify areas for improvement and develop an action plan. We expect the first reports will be published shortly.

We also continue to engage with Heads of Planning Scotland to understand the pressures facing planning authorities in Scotland and how they can best be addressed.

Question reference: S6W-33948

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 4 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what measures it has implemented to address violence in schools.

Violence towards anyone is unacceptable and the safety of our children, young people and staff at school is paramount.

Since May 2023, we have responded to schools’ concerns about relationships and behaviour in a number of ways. This includes the publication of new guidance on gender-based violence in March 2024, updating our guidance on mobile phones and anti-bullying, and providing £900k to local authorities to support training of support staff.

In August 2024, we published a joint relationships and behaviour in schools action plan with COSLA. The action plan sets out 20 actions to be taken over the next three years at both national and local level to help support schools to improve relationships and behaviour. This includes a number of actions under the theme of reducing violence and harm in schools.

In addition, through implementation of the Violence Prevention Framework for Scotland, we have invested over £4m in the last two years to help prevent and reduce violence across Scotland. In 2024-25, £2m of this investment is being used to support delivery of prevention activity focussed specially towards young people in collaboration with a range of partners. This includes:

£156,000 to support the delivery of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), a peer mentoring programme , delivered in schools and supported by Education Scotland.
£337,000, to support Medics Against Violence who run a number of violence prevention programmes, including a secondary school programme carried out by volunteer medics, centred around educating young people about the impacts and consequences of violence and how to keep themselves and their peers safe, and;
£56,000, to support the Police Scotland Youth Volunteers Programme, aimed at young people aged 13-18, which provides the opportunity to engage positively within their local community.
£297,000 to support The No Knives, Better Lives engagement programme through Youthlink Scotland, which is focussed on preventing the incidence of violence including knife carrying amongst young people and provides resources, training and support to local partners.
The creation and launch of the Quit Fighting for Likes campaign, for practitioners to use to have conversations with young people, to help them explore the harm caused through the filming and sharing of violent incidents on social media.

Question reference: S6W-33999

Asked by: Brian Whittle, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 4 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support local authorities dealing with specialist planning applications, such as those involving quarrying or mining where no identifiable expertise exists within the local authority planning department.

The Scottish Government is working with stakeholders, on a package of actions to strengthen a range of planning skills across Scotland.

The Scottish Government has established the Hydrogen Planning Hub and the Housing Emergency Hub in response to concerns about capacity and skills. We are currently considering the further role that Hubs can play in supporting planning authorities to address the skills and capacity issues they are facing.

In our Planning and Housing Emergency Delivery Plan, published in November 2024, we have committed to the roll out of a co-ordinated skills and recruitment drive through a coherent National Planning Skills Campaign. We will announce this work soon and deliver it over the coming months.

Question reference: S6W-33963

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 4 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many patients were on waiting lists for cardiology (a) in total and (b) for over a year, in each of the last five years.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes statistics on the length of time patients wait to be seen as a new outpatient or admitted for treatment as an inpatient or day case in the Stage of Treatment (SoT) publication. The latest publication release contains data up to quarter ending 30 September 2024.

Statistics relating to the total number of ongoing waits and the number of waits with a wait length over 52 weeks by specialty from 31 December 2019 can be found in the ‘Waits over 52 weeks’ data table in sheets ‘Table 3.1.1’ for new outpatient appointments, and ‘Table 3.2.1’ for inpatient or day case admissions.

https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/30453/waits_over_52_weeks_nov24.xlsx

Longer trend information can be found in the following tables:

New outpatient appointments (‘1.6 Table’): https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/30080/newop_nov24.xlsx

Inpatient or day case admission (‘2.6 Table’): https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/30452/ipdc_nov24.xlsx

Question reference: S6T-02326

Asked by: Kevin Stewart, MSP for Aberdeen Central, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 03 February 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 4 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that mental health absences among ambulance crews have risen in Aberdeen and other parts of Scotland.

Question reference: S6T-02335

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 03 February 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 4 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the banking sector regarding how to ensure that communities do not lose access to banking services, in light of reports that Lloyds Banking Group plans to close 14 Bank of Scotland branches over the next two years.

Question reference: S6T-02322

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 03 February 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 4 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that the COVID-19 lockdowns might have left a generation of children in Scotland with damaged eyesight.

Question reference: S6F-03781

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 03 February 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 6 February 2025

To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's response is to the Court of Session’s decision regarding the Rosebank oil field and the Jackdaw gas field.

Chamber and committees