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.

Find out more about parliamentary questions

Filter your results Hide all filters

Displaying 1344 questions Show Answers

Order by |

Question reference: S3W-19230

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 18 December 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 6 January 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it plans to develop a national strategy on a metastatic breast cancer clinical nurse specialist service following the introduction of such a service by the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh.

It is the responsibility of individual NHS boards to decide what particular model of service delivery best fits the need of their patients.

The Scottish Government has recently published Better Cancer Care: An Action Plan which sets out a national strategy to improve care for all cancer patients. There are therefore no plans to develop a separate national strategy for a clinical nurse specialist metastatic breast cancer service.

Question reference: S3W-19228

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 18 December 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 6 January 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how the Scottish Cancer Registry will be included in plans by the National Cancer Intelligence Network to start collecting information on the incidence of metastatic breast cancer.

Information Services Division (ISD) is in discussions with the National Cancer Intelligence Network about how best to include information from the Scottish Cancer Registry in their work. It is likely that ISD will contribute an anonymised extract of cancer registry data linked to hospital data, which could be used to study some of the patients who develop metastatic disease. Any such agreement will depend on the establishment of satisfactory information governance arrangements.

Question reference: S3W-18289

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 November 2008
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 8 December 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-16790 by Stewart Maxwell on 28 October 2008, how many (a) off-the-shelf units and (b) land acquisitions are currently being progressed.

The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing announced a second tranche of the accelerated £30 million programme for 2008-09 on 28 November 2008. From both tranches announced to date there are 28 units (three projects) of off-the-shelf units being progressed and 16 sites with the capacity for 475 units are being progressed for acquisition. There are also 538 units of accelerated construction being progressed. A further announcement is still to be made on the remaining funding available for 2008-09.

Question reference: S3W-18273

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 November 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 8 December 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive what its view is on whether the UK Government’s planned legislation to enshrine in law its commitment to end child poverty by 2020 should apply in Scotland.

Question reference: S3W-18272

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 November 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 8 December 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive what discussions it has had with the UK Government about its plans to enshrine in law its aim to end child poverty by 2020 and whether the Scottish Government supports such plans.

Question reference: S3W-18274

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 November 2008
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 8 December 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive when it will make a statement on the action it is taking to address the issues faced by the Gypsy/Traveller community in Scotland.

On Monday 8 December the Minister for Communities and Sport officially launched the Scottish Government Race Statement. The statement lays out the Scottish Government''s approach to race equality over the next three years and the issues faced by Gypsies/Travellers have been considered.

We are aware that this community is one of the most disenfranchised in Scotland and we will take specific action to address the issues that they face.

Question reference: S3W-18275

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 November 2008
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 8 December 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive when it intends to publish a statement on race equality.

Question reference: S3W-18290

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 November 2008
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 8 December 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-16651 by Stewart Maxwell on 27 October 2008, when it expects discussion on detailed budget consequences for individual local authorities to be completed.

COSLA have advised that leaders agreed at their meeting on 21 November 2008 that the £40 million local authority contribution to the accelerated Affordable Housing Investment Programme will be shared pro rata between all councils based on their shares of the formula used to distribute General Capital Grant in the local government finance settlement.

All local authorities will therefore make a contribution to the £20 million in 2008-09 and £20 million in 2009-10 which will be returned to them in 2010-11 on the same basis. The details of each local authority''s share of the £20 million/£20 million will be available publicly in a Local Government Finance Circular which we will issue when the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth makes his announcement to the Parliament on the Local Government finance settlement on 11 December 2008.

Question reference: S3W-18004

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 November 2008
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 27 November 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive what priority will be given to applicants for funding for Gypsy/Traveller sites in local authority areas that do not have residential or transit sites.

The invitation to local authorities to apply for funding from the Gypsy/Traveller Site Grant 2008-09 to 2009-10 indicated that bids for new residential or transit sites would be particularly welcome. It also indicated that where strong bids for these purposes were received they may be given priority for funding. The decision to encourage bids for new sites responds to evidence of unmet demand in some areas and that investment in recent years has been dominated by refurbishing existing sites.

In assessing bids, a number of criteria will be taken into account including evidence of need and demand level, the suitability and sustainability of the proposed site and whether it represents good use of money rather than whether a local authority already has other residential Gypsy/Traveller sites (there are currently no transit sites in Scotland).

Question reference: S3W-17840

Asked by: Cathy Jamieson, MSP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 November 2008
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 27 November 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many people have presented themselves as homeless in each month since May 2007, broken down by local authority.

National statistics relating to households applying to local authorities under Scottish homelessness legislation are currently available to March 2008. The following table sets out this information by local authority. It should be noted that not all applications will result in the household being accepted as homeless.

	May 2007	June 2007	July 2007	August 2007	September 2007	October 2007
Aberdeen City	246	233	191	236	178	195
Aberdeenshire	158	142	128	132	115	140
Angus	115	113	72	102	76	102
Argyll and Bute	83	110	79	88	69	96
Clackmannanshire	62	62	83	66	42	52
Dumfries and Galloway	140	129	132	144	136	129
Dundee City	190	170	187	229	178	191
East Ayrshire	84	75	92	101	73	83
East Dunbartonshire	69	57	54	62	50	67
East Lothian	105	87	77	110	74	117
East Renfrewshire	26	23	26	34	23	26
Edinburgh (City of)	507	440	460	481	389	506
Eilean Siar	15	28	30	17	19	21
Falkirk	195	164	189	246	199	255
Fife	325	323	341	295	275	308
Glasgow City	807	847	762	805	694	865
Highland	205	150	244	232	180	197
Inverclyde	69	37	46	50	29	44
Midlothian	58	49	52	67	58	69
Moray	73	63	74	90	73	66
North Ayrshire	123	118	118	118	79	120
North Lanarkshire	268	319	277	340	285	319
Orkney	19	10	11	11	9	9
Perth and Kinross	123	110	126	140	98	87
Renfrewshire	90	93	89	100	77	98
Scottish Borders	91	71	68	93	103	83
Shetland	18	20	23	19	27	20
South Ayrshire	68	83	97	87	62	88
South Lanarkshire	230	261	248	260	198	234
Stirling	93	81	100	69	69	75
West Dunbartonshire	179	221	209	197	159	184
West Lothian	158	146	142	150	131	133

	November 2007	December 2007	January 2008	February 2008	March 2008
Aberdeen City	180	111	241	169	186
Aberdeenshire	125	72	144	142	119
Angus	103	54	110	109	103
Argyll and Bute	87	71	92	96	79
Clackmannanshire	58	38	62	57	50
Dumfries and Galloway	94	79	141	133	113
Dundee City	219	150	204	233	259
East Ayrshire	84	45	89	103	74
East Dunbartonshire	69	24	59	69	57
East Lothian	101	59	106	102	84
East Renfrewshire	32	20	40	37	22
Edinburgh (City of)	423	317	424	432	395
Eilean Siar	16	10	27	22	21
Falkirk	193	133	282	253	211
Fife	282	182	351	314	331
Glasgow City	943	659	946	1,010	892
Highland	165	95	236	210	188
Inverclyde	32	35	38	46	46
Midlothian	48	37	67	97	79
Moray	74	32	91	84	72
North Ayrshire	123	92	153	158	119
North Lanarkshire	304	189	345	308	292
Orkney	7	8	13	14	n/a
Perth and Kinross	104	41	115	88	76
Renfrewshire	92	59	104	76	46
Scottish Borders	108	71	110	103	109
Shetland	16	21	16	23	14
South Ayrshire	81	44	74	78	66
South Lanarkshire	223	139	261	265	218
Stirling	64	35	85	71	78
West Dunbartonshire	198	128	208	198	181
West Lothian	105	86	156	140	155

Due to technical difficulties Orkney data for March 2008 is currently not available.