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-12831

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 December 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 15 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government (a) how many and (b) what value of assets it expects to transfer from local authorities to the National Care Service, broken down by local authority.

The Scottish Government wants Local Government to continue in its role as a direct provider of social care services. This includes continuing to hold and invest in assets and employ staff directly. Ultimately decision on the role will be taken at a local level by individual authorities. It is therefore not possible to provide the detail requested on assets.

More generally an ability to transfer assets is necessary to support the transfer of accountability. It is vital that Ministers will have the ability to step in, or appoint, an operator of last resort as required. That may at some point require the ability for the transfer of Local Government assets and staff. If necessary, assets would be transferred on the most appropriate valuation method. It would therefore be remiss not to include powers to do so on the face of the Bill.

Question reference: S6W-12835

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 05 December 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 15 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will pay market rates to local authorities for any assets transferred to the National Care Service.

Question reference: S6W-12910

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 08 December 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 12 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding has been awarded to businesses in the South Scotland region from the Regional Food Fund, in each year since the Fund was established.

Question reference: S6O-01624

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it still plans to launch a National Care Service in the current parliamentary session.

Question reference: S6O-01569

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 November 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 17 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to expand rail infrastructure in the South Scotland region.

Question reference: S6W-11557

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 3 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to the Audit Scotland report, Self-directed support: 2017 progress report, which of the recommendations were (a) completed in full, (b) partly completed and (c) not completed.

Audit Scotland’s 2017 progress report made seven recommendations for the Scottish Government. Since then, two of the recommendations have been completed in full, four have been partially completed and one has not been completed.

The SDS Implementation Plan 2019-2021 built on the learning from the Audit Scotland report and incorporated the inputs of third sector organisations, COSLA and people with lived experience. The implementation of this plan was disrupted by the emergence of COVID19, and efforts to respond to this included publishing SDS pandemic guidance in July 2020.

The Scottish Government will issue a significant update of the SDS Statutory Guidance later this month, and is currently working with COSLA and a national group of stakeholders to develop an SDS improvement plan to drive improvements in SDS implementation covering the years leading up to the establishment of the National Care Service. This will take into account the recommendations of the Audit Scotland report of 2017 as well as from reports published since then, including the Feeley report of 2021.

Question reference: S6W-11187

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many complaints from (a) passengers and (b) staff have been received by ScotRail regarding train services in the South of Scotland in 2022, broken down by the (i) reason for the complaint and (ii) local authority area.

ScotRail does not record passenger complaints data by region or local authority area, but by rail route. The following table shows ScotRail’s complaints data for routes which serve the South Scotland region from 1 April 2022:

Complaint Type	April	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct
1st Class	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Assisted Travel	0	0	1	0	0	0	0
Capacity	3	3	7	5	1	0	3
Environment	2	2	4	3	6	3	2
Information Provision	1	1	0	0	0	2	2
Policy And Product	6	5	2	0	3	2	1
Rail Replacement	1	0	1	0	0	0	0
Safety & Security	2	0	0	1	0	0	1
Smartcard	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
Staff	4	4	5	3	3	4	6
Station Facilities	2	0	0	0	0	1	0
Ticket Buying Facilities	1	0	0	0	2	1	1
Timetable	0	2	0	5	1	0	2
Train Service Performance	5	17	9	4	2	7	9
TOTAL	28	34	29	21	18	21	27

ScotRail has confirmed that the routes detailed below were included in this data. The member should note that the data reflects complaints which may have occurred at any point on the route:

Ayr - Glasgow
Barrhead - Glasgow
Carlisle - Glasgow
Dumfries - Glasgow / Edinburgh
Edinburgh - Dunbar
Edinburgh - North Berwick
Edinburgh - Tweedbank
Girvan - Glasgow / Edinburgh
Glasgow - Kilmarnock
Glasgow - Lanark
Glasgow - Stranraer
Kilmarnock - Carlisle
Kilmarnock - Dumfries

ScotRail does not record staff complaints and therefore the information is not available.

Question reference: S6W-11189

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 24 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a list of public bridges that are closed in the South Scotland region, broken down by the number of years that they have been closed for.

The Scottish Government has not permanently closed any trunk road bridges in the South of Scotland regions. Decisions on the closure or re-opening of Local Authority bridges is a matter for the relevant Local Authority.

Following consultation, Local Authority colleagues have indicated the following local bridge closures:

Local Authority	Route Number	Location	Bridge	Closure
Dumfries and Galloway Council		Kirtle Water	Cove Footbridge	1 Year
Dumfries and Galloway Council		Over River Annan	Cuthbertson Memorial Footbridge	1 Year
Dumfries and Galloway Council		Over River Annan	Diamond Jubilee Footbridge	1 Year
Dumfries and Galloway Council	B725	Nithsdale)	Brow Well Road Bridge	3 Years
Scottish Borders Council		Kalemouth	Kalemouth Suspension Bridge	2 Years

Question reference: S6W-11186

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 27 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 21 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many complaints it has received about electric vehicle charging points not being (a) operational, (b) accessible or (c) for other reasons in (i) 2021 and (ii) 2022 across the ChargePlace Scotland network, broken down by local authority area.

The Scottish Government have invested over £50 million in ChargePlace Scotland, Scotland’s public charging network, which now has more than 2300 publicly available charge points, over 63 thousand member registrations and over 1,770,000 successful charge sessions recorded in the last 12 months.

Responsibility for repair of charge points lies with the host (also known as the ‘owner’) who procured and installed the charge point. The role of CPS is to advise hosts of faults as they arise.

Most faults on the network are transient and in the majority of cases require no physical intervention. This means that a high proportion are closed down swiftly and effectively. Overall reliability across the CPS network is typically very good and on average 95% - 97% of charge points are operational each day.

The subject of correspondence cases varies. These are not recorded or categorised by reason or by local authority area. Each piece of correspondence is dealt with on its own merit, given careful consideration with appropriate actions taken at the time of responding.

In 2021 we received 124 pieces of correspondence relating to ChargePlace Scotland and 80 in 2022.

Question reference: S6W-11192

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 21 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to increase dentist capacity in the South Scotland region.

We have recently updated the Recruitment and Retention Allowance payments to independent dental contractors providing NHS General Dental Services.

This means that newly qualified dentists that have completed their vocational training and are applying to join the dental list for the first time may qualify for a payment of £25,000 over a two-year period.

We have also extended the allowance to include vocational trainees who may qualify for a payment of £12,500 payable over a one-year period.

The qualifying areas to obtain this allowance includes certain areas within NHS Borders and all of NHS Dumfries and Galloway.