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-26895

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 18 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Siobhian Brown on 26 April 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what work it is doing with faith groups, including churches, to ensure that they understand how the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 potentially impacts on their practice, in light of reports that some faith communities are unsure about what impact the Act could have on them.

As part of its Faith and Belief Engagement Strategy, Scottish Government regularly meets with representatives from a wide variety of faith and belief communities across Scotland to discuss issues of interest to them. This has included discussions with officials developing the Hate Crime Strategy. Those representatives were recently provided with a factsheet, clarifying aspects of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, and which is intended to be disseminated by those representatives through Churches and other places of worship, along with wider faith and belief communities across Scotland.

Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act: factsheet - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Question reference: S6W-26896

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 18 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 26 April 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what elements of human resources functionality are provided to NHS Scotland by private contractors.

Question reference: S6W-26697

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 26 April 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what progress it has made on developing a strategy to consider the concept of 20-minute neighbourhoods in Scotland.

Local Living and 20 minute neighbourhood is one of the national planning policies set out in the Fourth National Planning Framework (NPF4), adopted by Scottish Ministers in February 2023.

NPF4 Policy 15, Local living and 20 minute neighbourhoods supports the delivery of local living, including applying the 20 minute neighbourhood concept in places through local development plans and masterplans.

The 20 minute neighbourhood concept is also recognised in a number of Scottish Government strategies including Housing to 2040, Retail Strategy for Scotland, Infrastructure Investment Plan for Scotland 2021-22 to 2025-26, and Town Centre Action Plan 2.

On 25 April planning guidance on Local Living and 20 minute neighbourhoods was published, setting out a framework and information on how the concepts of local living and 20 minute neighbourhood can be applied in a Scottish context.

Question reference: S6W-26591

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 08 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 26 April 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how many vacancies currently exist within Scottish Ambulance Service’s Integrated Clinical Hub service, broken down by each hub.

The Scottish Ambulance Service are currently in the process of recruiting five clinical advisor vacancies, after which recruitment will commence for one first line manager vacancy.

All staff across all roles in the Integrated Clinical Hub work nationally to support patients throughout Scotland. Whilst they may work in specific locations reflecting their employment base, technology allows them to work seamlessly across the country.

Question reference: S6W-26692

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 25 April 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how often it has met with Professor Marmot in the last three years; what was discussed, and what action it has taken following any such meetings.

Scottish Government (SG) officials have met with Professor Sir Michael Marmot on various occasions during the period April 2021 - April 2024. Professor Marmot’s evidence-based approach to tackle health inequalities underpins the work of our Care and Wellbeing Portfolio and so each engagement has offered important insights into Professor Marmot’s work, helping to inform future policy development.

On 28 June 2022 Government officials met with Professor Marmot to discuss Scottish Government’s Place and Wellbeing Programme and the Care and Wellbeing Portfolio, more broadly, as well as to garner insights into the Marmot cities approach. Since then, officials have engaged with Professor Marmot as part of last year’s Public Health Scotland (PHS) Conference held on 28 November 2023. This included both a short meeting between Professor Marmot and the Permanent Secretary during the conference, plus an evening event in which senior SG officials alongside PHS, Local Government and NHS colleagues discussed priorities to improve Scotland’s health and tackle health inequalities.

In June 2023, SG and PHS soft launched the Care and Wellbeing dashboard as a source of data and intelligence to support the ambitions of the Care & Wellbeing Portfolio. This is structured around the evidence-based Marmot framework Fair Society Healthy Lives (The Marmot Review) - IHE (instituteofhealthequity.org) which looks at the wider social determinants of health, the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age which can lead to health inequalities. Work is underway to integrate this into the Scottish Public Health Observatory ScotPHO profiles (shinyapps.io) (ScotPHO) Online Profiles tool, as a distinct Care and Wellbeing profile, to provide a single repository of public health intelligence to support local action to tackle health inequalities.

The Scottish Government remains eager to learn more from Professor Marmot’s work in our wider ambition to improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.

Question reference: S6W-26897

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 18 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 25 April 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how many NHS Scotland services and departments still use paper-based medical records.

Question reference: S6W-26592

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 08 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 25 April 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what work it is doing to assess the impact of the Scottish Ambulance Service’s Integrated Clinical Hub service on the demand for ambulances, including on waiting times at accident and emergency departments.

Question reference: S6W-26590

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 08 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 25 April 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how many staff work within the Scottish Ambulance Service’s Integrated Clinical Hub service, broken down by (a) each hub and (b) profession.

The Integrated Clinical Hub is made up of a variety of clinical staff, which can flex as demand dictates across a 24/7 model but the core roles are:

41 clinical advisors (Nurse and Paramedic level).
39 GP’s work a range of clinical sessional work every week.
146 Advanced Practitioners spend a third of their time within the Integrated Clinical Hub (ICH).
9 Senior clinical support managers who support the clinicians and oversee clinical activity and quality.
11 staff make up the leadership team who support all aspects of the ICH.

All staff across all roles work nationally to support patients throughout Scotland, whilst they may work in specific locations reflecting their employment base the technology allows them to work seamlessly across Scotland.

Question reference: S6O-03370

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 24 April 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 1 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether it has funded local government adequately to deliver the services that it has responsibility for.

Question reference: S6W-26699

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 05 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 24 April 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what measures it takes to hold public bodies and their leaders to account on the use of public money, in order to ensure that spending is closely aligned to have an impact on reducing inequality and poverty.

Corporate governance and accountability arrangements for public bodies are in place and built around an established series of statutory and administrative mechanisms. These ensure consistent processes and parameters, based on the principles in the Scottish Public Finance Manual, within which public bodies are required to operate in terms of the stewardship of public money, propriety and ethics.

This is supplemented by framework agreements that Scottish Government has in place with most public bodies setting out respective roles and responsibilities, including requirement for bodies to set plans which contribute to achievement of the National Performance Framework outcomes, including tackling poverty. These activities and the sponsorship and relationship arrangements the Scottish Government has with public bodies helps ensure that Scottish Ministers priorities are delivered.

Scottish Government funding to local authorities is allocated using a relative needs-based formula, taking into account disadvantage and various other considerations, including levels of deprivation. While local authorities decide how to spend their available finances they are guided by a set of national and local outcomes, with the Equality Act and associated specific duties providing a framework to help local authorities pay due regard to equality issues.

Specifically, local authorises, and other certain public bodies, in Scotland are subject to the Fairer Scotland Duty, which places a legal responsibility on them to actively consider how they can reduce inequalities of outcome caused by socio-economic disadvantage, when making strategic decisions.