Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-00287

Asked by: Mark Ruskell, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 16 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many independently verified livestock predation incidents have been recorded by independent veterinary post-mortem testing in each of the last five years.

The Scottish Government and its agencies do not collate or hold information on independently verified livestock predation incidents.

However, as I stated in my answer to S6W-00189 on 11 June 2021, NatureScot has published a report on the predation of lambs by sea eagles which included some analysis of post-mortem results.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Question reference: S6W-00283

Asked by: Pam Duncan-Glancy, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 16 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what mechanisms are in place to enable people to demonstrate their COVID-19 vaccination status, and what its position is on introducing an NHS vaccination card, similar to that provided in England.

Question reference: S6W-00295

Asked by: Oliver Mundell, MSP for Dumfriesshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 16 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that medication is being (a) correctly and (b) timeously administered in care homes.

The Care Inspectorate is the regulatory body for care services in Scotland, which supports improvement. The Care Inspectorate carry out regular comprehensive inspections of all care homes in Scotland, and are accountable to Scottish Ministers. By law all care providers in Scotland must be registered with the Care Inspectorate. The Care Inspectorate looks at the quality of care in care services, including care homes to ensure it meets high standards. Where improvement is needed, it supports services to make positive changes.

In addition, as part of the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer’s strategy for pharmaceutical care in Scotland ‘Achieving Excellence in Pharmaceutical Care’ the Scottish Government committed to improving the pharmaceutical care of residents in care homes. A Scottish Pharmacy Clinical Leadership Fellow has been appointed and is focussing on key improvement areas such as: developing a national pharmacy care home specialist interest group, reducing medicines waste, undertaking a national audit to determine the pharmacy resource to care homes, developing a pharmacy care home training resource with NES, reviewing how care home residents access medicines and investigating the benefits of using information technology in care homes (for example using electronic medicine administration records (eMAR) and medicines, care and review (MCR).

Question reference: S6W-00270

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 16 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will introduce a Test and Release programme, similar to that introduced by the UK Government, for people with a COVID-19 vaccination certificate.

No, in summer 2021 our current vaccination status letters will be replaced by fully digital Covid Status Certificates to be used for outbound international travel. There are no plans at this stage to also use these certificates to introduce Test and Release for inbound international travellers from amber list countries. We are working across the 4 nations to consider the role of Covid Status Certificates for inbound travel .

Question reference: S6W-00721

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S6W-00339

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 June 2021
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 15 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how local authorities will be selected to pilot the policy of fully-funded deferred entry to primary school in 2022-23, and by what date the local authorities selected will be announced.

To progress the implementation of this policy ahead of August 2023, the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) have agreed a Joint Implementation Plan under which five local authorities will pilot early implementation of this obligation in 2021-22. Those authorities are: Angus; Argyll and Bute; Falkirk; Scottish Borders; and the Shetland Islands. The Scottish Government has committed £3 million to support this early implementation.

We have committed to seek to add further pilots in August 2022 to further inform full implementation of the obligation. Local authorities would be selected based on their suitability for evaluation purposes, and on their readiness to deliver the obligation early. We anticipate that the pilot authorities for 2022-23 will be announced in Autumn 2021 following engagement with local authorities and CoSLA.

Question reference: S6W-00311

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 June 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 15 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many women (a) have received private mesh-removal surgery and (b) would be eligible for reimbursement under its proposed legislation.

The Scottish Government does not hold any official information about the number of persons who may have undergone mesh removal surgery privately in the past and as a consequence, cannot confirm how many people may be eligible for reimbursement under the proposed legislation. The Government believes at the moment that there may be a very limited number of persons who have arranged such surgery in the past. If the Parliament approves the legislation that the Government plans to propose, arrangements will be made and publicised to allow for potentially eligible persons to apply for reimbursement.

Question reference: S6W-00502

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 June 2021
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 15 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support local authorities that receive a large number of visitors to help them deal with problems related to litter, vandalism and antisocial behaviour that may increase during the summer months.

While it is for the local authority or national park authority to ensure it has sufficient services in place, the Scottish Government has in recent years supported authorities through its Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund which has helped create new toilets, car parks and waste disposal facilities. To support critical tourism projects in our more remote areas we are more than doubling this Fund to £6.2 million in 2021-22, bringing our total investment to over £15 million.

The Visitor Management Group, consisting of public bodies, National Parks and local authorities, was also established last September and has now developed an interim strategy and a list of associated actions for this year.

A number of actions are already underway including the establishment of the new Better Places Green Recovery Fund by NatureScot. This Fund has provided over £400,000 to 35 community and third sector projects so far, with a new round of £2.75m allocated to deliver additional short-term action for the 2021 season. This includes support for temporary toilets and ranger posts. We are also providing our National parks with an extra £3.6m in 2021 which will support, among other things, seasonal rangers and improved infrastructure to better manage visitors this summer.

Question reference: S6W-00437

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 June 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 15 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has for a nationally co-ordinated solution, either electronic-based or physical, which will enable members of the public to demonstrate that they have received one or more COVID-19 vaccinations, to assist in scenarios where such evidence will be required to allow access to travel, services, entry or participation in a variety of day-to-day activities.

Question reference: S6W-00472

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 June 2021
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 15 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many people have been (a) charged and (b) convicted of altering images or producing deepfake pornographic material in each year since 2017.

This information is not held centrally. Altering images or producing deepfake pornographic material is not a specific offence, therefore:

(a) the Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal service are unable to separately identify such offences from their database and provide number of charges and

(b) The Scottish Government is also unable to separately identify convictions from their database for the same reason.

Altering images or producing deepfake pornographic material is not a specific offence and the production of such material in itself, would probably not amount to a criminal offence. However, the distribution, publication or sale etc. of such material, where it appears to depict a person who has not consented to such a depiction may amount to a criminal offence. Depending on the facts and circumstances, this may be capable of being charged under offences including section 2 of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016 (non-consensual sharing of intimate images), section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 (threatening or abusive behaviour) or section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 (misuse of a public electronic communications network). However, the Scottish Government’s and COPFS data only details numbers of convictions and charges under these acts, and not detailed information on the specific conduct which resulted in the charge or conviction.