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: S2W-27453

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 18 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive how many official complaints it has made to the BBC in each year since 1999 regarding its broadcast output in Scotland and to which programmes these complaints related.

Question reference: S2W-27454

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 18 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive how many official complaints it has made to broadcasters in Scotland, other than the BBC, regarding broadcast output in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S2W-27456

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 18 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive how many official complaints it has made to broadcasters and print media outwith Scotland regarding coverage of Executive policy in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S2W-27438

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 18 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive what additional resources it will commit to ensure that the number of persistent young offenders does not increase next year.

The Scottish Executive is fundinga range of activity to prevent and address youth crime and disorder to the extentof £63 million this year, this having increased from a £3.5 million baseline in2001.

Details of the Grant Aided Expenditure(GAE) are set out in Grant Aided Expenditure (the Green Book) for each financialyear and these are available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib.number 39230).

Local authorities have the discretionand flexibility to distribute resources within the core settlement to meet localneeds and priorities. The total Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) is £9 billion in 2006-07,and £9.2 billion in 2007-08. The GAE figures are used to distribute grant to localauthorities on the basis of need.

Other resources allocated bythe Scottish Executive include around £57 million from the Sure Start programmewhich is intended to provide more integrated services for our most vulnerable childrenand families and the Changing Children’s Services Fund which will provide over £65million to support the modernisation and integration of services for children. Fromthis year, £15 million from the Changing Children’s Services Fund will be includedin GAE with a further transfer of £20 million from 2007-08.

It is the responsibility of eachlocal authority to allocate its total resources to meet local needs and priorities.

Question reference: S2W-27455

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 18 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive how many official complaints it has made to Scottish daily and weekend newspapers or Scottish edition newspapers in each year since 1999, broken down by publication.

Question reference: S2W-27486

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 18 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Robert Brown on 18 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-27082 by Robert Brown on 14 July 2006, whether it will provide “receipt based” statistics on the number of referrals to the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration under section 52(2)(j) of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 in each year from 1999-2000 to 2003-04 and whether it will provide “disposal based” statistics for 2004-05.

The basis for recording referralsto the Children’s Reporter prior to 2003-04 was disposal-based and therefore receipt-basedstatistics for referrals prior to this are not available. For 2003-04 the receipt-basedcount of grounds for children referred to the Children’s Reporter under section52(2)(j) of the Children (Scotland) Act was 1847.

For 2004-05 the disposal-basedcount of grounds for children referred to the Children’s Reporter under section52(2)(j) of the Children (Scotland) Act was 1,540.

Question reference: S2W-27507

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 18 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive what monitoring is carried out in respect of the number of discharged prisoners who are homeless and the period of time that they remain homeless.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:

At the beginning of a prisoner’ssentence accommodation needs including homelessness are identified. Prior to releaseprisoners with identified needs are seen and advised on accommodation issues bya housing worker, generally funded under the rough sleepers initiative.

The SPS monitor the number ofprisoners discharged by measuring: “the numbers of prisoners that leave having securedaccommodation or that have been referred to the relevant housing provider”. Recentrecords indicate that from the 3,334 liberations in the period April 2006 to June2006, 3,040 prisoners left custody with secured accommodation and 292 with an appointmentto meet with their housing advisor.

The SPS do not monitor the periodof time that a prisoner remains homeless whilst in the community.

Question reference: S2W-27506

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 16 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive which local authorities have protocols in place with housing associations in their areas.

I have asked Angiolina Foster,Chief Executive of Communities Scotland to respond. Her response is as follows:

Communities Scotland collectsinformation on protocols between local authorities and registered social landlords(RSLs) in relation to the referral of homeless households for permanent accommodationin accordance with section 5 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001. We do not collectinformation on any other type of protocol between local authorities and RSLs.

As at 31 March 2006 the followinglocal authorities have final or draft section 5 protocols with all RSLs operatingin their area.

Fife	Orkney Islands
Highland	Shetland Islands
Moray

As at 31 March 2006 the followinglocal authorities have final or draft section 5 protocols with some, but not allRSLs, operating in their area.

Aberdeen City	Aberdeenshire	Angus
Argyll and Bute	City of Edinburgh	City of Glasgow
Clackmannanshire	Dumfries and Galloway	Dundee City
East Ayrshire	East Dunbartonshire	East Lothian
East Renfrewshire	Falkirk	Inverclyde
Midlothian	North Ayrshire	North Lanarkshire
Perth and Kinross	Renfrewshire	Scottish Borders
South Ayrshire	South Lanarkshire	Stirling
West Dunbartonshire	Western Isles	West Lothian

Question reference: S2W-27508

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Nicol Stephen on 16 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive how many young people not in education, employment or training were homeless in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.

Question reference: S2W-27448

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 July 2006
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 15 August 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive how many females were convicted of drink driving in each year since 1999, expressed also as a percentage of total drink-driving convictions in each year and broken down by police force area.

The available information isgiven in the following tables.

Females with a Charge Provedin Scottish Courts for Drink Driving Offences^1,2:

Number and Percentage ofTotal Persons with a Charge Proved for Drink Driving Offences, by Force Area, 1999-2000to 2004-05

Police Force Area	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05
	Number
Central	36	43	29	99	55	70
Dumfries and Galloway	16	26	21	24	24	32
Fife	39	55	38	116	64	71
Grampian	109	81	106	129	130	152
Lothian and Borders	120	123	128	210	198	188
Northern	75	20	72	77	77	88
Strathclyde	215	236	235	415	368	401
Tayside	64	78	68	88	105	110
Scotland	674	662	697	1,158	1,021	1,112
	Percentage
Central	10.6	10.6	11.9	13.1	11.7	15.4
Dumfries and Galloway	9.1	13.6	10.4	10.7	9.4	13.0
Fife	11.9	13.4	11.9	14.5	11.3	14.3
Grampian	10.0	14.8	13.7	13.2	13.3	16.0
Lothian and Borders	10.4	10.9	11.3	12.9	15.3	14.6
Northern	9.4	9.6	11.8	11.1	10.3	12.4
Strathclyde	7.3	8.5	9.0	11.4	12.0	12.7
Tayside	11.6	13.1	10.5	11.3	13.3	15.9
Scotland	9.2	10.6	10.7	12.2	12.5	13.9

Notes:

1. Where main offence.

2. Includes driving or beingin charge of a motor vehicle while unfit through drink or drugs; driving or beingin charge of a motor vehicle with blood alcohol content above the prescribed limit;failure to provide a breath specimen at the roadside, and failure to provide a breath,blood or urine specimen at a police station.