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-41263

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 6 November 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much Disclosure Scotland has spent on overtime payments to employees due to staff shortages in the last 12 months.

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

In the past 12 months, Disclosure Scotland spent £300,321.94 in overtime payments.

Overtime allows us to be agile and responsive to changing demand, including handling application peaks, as we are a demand-led organisation.

Disclosure Scotland does not hold information on the reason for overtime; however, the use of overtime has been to respond to changing demand and higher than expected volumes in applications – for example, as a result of the Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020 introducing the legal requirement to be in the Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme if carrying out a regulated role.

Question reference: S6W-41225

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 6 November 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the current average spend per child is on play provision in Scotland, and how this compares with England and Wales.

The Scottish Government does not hold information centrally on average current spend on play per child in Scotland and does not hold such data for England or Wales.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all children across Scotland can access high quality play opportunities in a range of settings that will aid their growth, development and wellbeing. In March 2025 we published Scotland’s Play Vision Statement and Action Plan 2025-2030 that builds on our 2013 play strategy and emphasises our commitment to play and our vision for the future of play in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is also making the following investments in programmes that support play opportunities for children across Scotland:

£60 million to renew play parks during the course of this Parliamentary term;
£500,000 in 2025/26 for the Outdoor Community Play Fund to increase play opportunities for children and families in disadvantaged communities;
£1.8 million funding to Scottish Book Trust to deliver the Bookbug Programme in 2025-26;
£645,000 funding to Smart Play Network for the delivery of PlayTalkRead programme in 2025-2026;
£250,000 funding to Actify, Inspiring Scotland and partners to explore how the reach and impact of Active Play can be extended across Scotland;
Through the CYPFEI & ALEC and CYPFAL third sector funds we fund organisations that promote play, such as Starcatchers (£157,500), Play Scotland (£210,000), Outside the Box (£34,125), Learning through Landscapes (£52,500) and the Yard (£94,500);
In a joint initiative with the Scottish Football Association, £5.5 million to fund the ‘Extra Time Programme’ in 2025-2026, supporting local football clubs and trusts to provide before, after school and holiday clubs to targeted primary school children from low-income families.

Question reference: S6W-41258

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 4 November 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many requests for respite care have been declined due to a lack of staff availability in the last year.

Question reference: S6W-41257

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 4 November 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many disabled children who are assessed as being eligible for a care package do not currently receive one.

Health and Social Care Partnerships provide Public Health Scotland (PHS) with a weekly snapshot of the current demand for Care at Home services. The data includes information on the number of people waiting on an assessment for a package of care to allow them to live at home or in the community, the number of people assessed and waiting on Care at Home and also the number of hours of care that people have been assessed for but not yet delivered. The data is published monthly on the PHS website. The data does not break the figures down by either client group or age. Therefore, the Scottish Government does not collect or hold information on disabled children awaiting a care package centrally.

Question reference: S6W-41236

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 4 November 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many families are currently on waiting lists for respite care.

Question reference: S6W-41235

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 31 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what mechanisms exist to evaluate complaints from children about their experience in public services.

The Scottish Public Service Ombudsman (SPSO) has a statutory function in relation to complaints handling for most public bodies. If children and/or their representatives are not content with the way a public service within SPSO’s jurisdiction has dealt with their complaint they can escalate it to SPSO. When required to investigate complaints, SPSO highlight mistakes and failures in the complaints handling process and make recommendations to remedy those. SPSO also have legal powers to make a declaration of non-compliance if the public authority has failed to ensure their procedures are consistent with a model complaints handling process.

With extra funding from the Scottish Government, SPSO have created child friendly complaints handling principles and child friendly complaints handling process guidance to help public bodies under their jurisdiction to implement a model complaints handling procedure in a way that upholds children’s rights under the UNCRC.

The Scottish Government is also working with external stakeholders to co-develop data collection to help understand children and young people’s experiences of raising an individual rights issue to identify if and where children and young people encounter barriers and gaps in support, information, and services that they need to claim their rights.

Question reference: S6W-41218

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 31 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many kinship carers have appealed decisions regarding financial support in the last 12 months.

The Scottish Government does not collect data on the total number of appeal decisions made by kinship carers regarding financial assistance.

Decisions regarding financial support, including any appeals, are managed by individual local authorities in accordance with their statutory duties. The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman is the final stage for complaints about public service organisations, and it publishes the outcome of complaints, including appeals on kinship care, at Decision Reports | SPSO.

Question reference: S6W-41248

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 28 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many official complaints have been submitted by care-experienced young people about their treatment in the care system in the last year.

Question reference: S6W-41237

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 October 2025
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don-Innes on 21 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what proportion of child protection concerns raised by health visitors have been escalated to formal investigation in each year since 2016.

Question reference: S6T-02704

Asked by: Martin Whitfield, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 06 October 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 October 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to meet the interim and final child poverty reduction targets, in light of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s finding in its report, Poverty in Scotland 2025, that current levels remain largely unchanged since 2021.