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-35800

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 31 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will commit to a pilot scheme allowing controlled alcohol sales at selected football grounds to assess its feasibility and potential impact, and what its response is to similar trials in other countries.

Question reference: S6W-35796

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 18 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 31 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what action it is taking to support universities facing financial distress, and whether it will introduce additional emergency funding to protect staff and students at the University of Dundee.

The Scottish Government has made £25m of funding available to the Scottish Funding Council to support the sector. The Scottish Funding Council has allocated £22m of this to the University of Dundee to support the university in addressing its immediate financial challenges.

The Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council will continue to explore all means possible and consider any reasonable asks to further support the University of Dundee as it develops a plan to secure a sustainable future. The Scottish Government will carefully consider any approaches for further emergency funding in relation to the financial challenges faced by the university.

Question reference: S6W-35979

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 31 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many local authorities have (a) reduced or (b) eliminated modern language teaching in (i) primary and (ii) secondary schools in the last five years.

The Scottish Government does not publish local authority level data for the items requested.

Scottish Government does, however, publish related data on language learning and teaching at a national level. The table below provides a summary of data from the biennial 1+2 languages survey, summarising provision of language teaching for the first additional language (known as “L2”) and the second additional language (known as “L3”) in 2019, 2021 and 2023.

	Primary schools		Secondary schools
	L2	L3	L2	L3
2019	88% full*	48%	70% full	83%
2021	98% (69% full, 29% partial)	64%	100% (70% full, 30% partial)	87.5%
2023	99% (68% full, 31% partial)	76%	100% (61% full, 39% partial)	88%

*Note: Full implementation of L2 indicates it is taught continuously from P1-P7 in primary and S1-S3 in secondary. Partial implementation indicates the L2 is offered, but not taught continuously. The 2019 Survey only gathered data on full L2 implementation. The L3 entitlement does not require it to be taught continuously so full/partial figures are not provided.

The full Survey reports are available on the Scottish Government website:

Question reference: S6W-35996

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 28 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many consultants specialising in endometriosis there are, broken down by NHS board.

Question reference: S6W-35995

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 28 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much each NHS board has spent on repairing and maintaining imaging equipment in the last five years, also broken down by how many pieces of equipment have been repaired and/or maintained.

Question reference: S6W-35994

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 28 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the age profile is of MRI, X-ray and CT scanning equipment in use across NHS Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-35983

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 28 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it chose to develop a bespoke NHS Scotland app and did not adopt the NHS England model, which has been operating for several years.

Unlike the NHS App in England, which is currently just for the NHS, our planned service is for both health and social care. The development is also linked into wider digital developments for Scottish public services overall, particularly in relation to a common approach to how the people of Scotland receive official communication digitally. Officials have, however, engaged extensively with NHS England to explore both whether we could use the NHS App and to take learning from the approach to the development of the NHS App.

This engagement confirmed that the NHS App in England was developed specifically in support of NHS Trusts in England and configured specifically for England’s existing IT infrastructure that isn't used in Scotland. We are therefore unable to adopt that product or easily adapt it given our differing structures and requirements. Wales have a hybrid – they are able to use elements of the technology used to create the NHS App, as Wales share a lot of common infrastructure with England, but were also unable to fully use the NHS App in Wales so have also had to create their own app (the ‘NHS Wales App’).

We are, however, keen to learn from that experience, and continue to work closely with NHS England and the other UK nations to share our experiences and encourage common approaches, especially interfacing digital systems that are shared or used commonly across the UK.

Question reference: S6W-35982

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 28 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the deadline is for the NHS Scotland app to be fully operational across all NHS boards, and what contingencies are in place should there be delays.

The online app for health and social care, which is part of our ‘digital front door’ programme, will initially be available to a small cohort of people in Lanarkshire from December 2025. Whilst work continues on preparing for that initial release, we are simultaneously engaging with Health Boards and COSLA to develop the rollout approach beyond Lanarkshire. It is our intention to set this out in more detail from Summer 2025.

Question reference: S6W-35975

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 28 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much NHS Scotland has spent on (a) legal fees, (b) settlements and (c) tribunals related to disputes in the last five years.

Question reference: S6W-35974

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 28 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that NHS board executive pay reflects performance outcomes, such as waiting times and patient care quality.

NHS Board Executive staff are required to set objectives annually which are aligned to the Board strategy and priorities. Executives must have objectives which demonstrate the contributions made to national and regional working, the delivery of the Health and Care strategy and the delivery of specific Board and local objectives. The performance of individual Executive staff is measured against these agreed objectives, with annual pay progression dependant on performance against these objectives.

There is a national governance and accountability process each year overseen by the National Performance Management Committee (NPMC) which provides scrutiny of performance management arrangements for NHS Scotland’s Executive staff. The NPMC requests and reviews evidence from NHS Boards to ensure that performance markings above fully acceptable are robust. Only after this process is complete can Executive staff then receive pay progression.