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: S3W-10741

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Tricia Marwick on 18 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how many freedom of information requests have been made to the Parliament by journalists since the enactment of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, broken down by (a) newspaper and (b) cost of processing.

Question reference: S3W-10740

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Tricia Marwick on 18 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what the cost has been of processing freedom of information requests made to the Parliament by (a) members of the public, (b) MSPs, (c) parliamentary researchers and (d) journalists in each month since the enactment of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

The enclosed tables set out the cost of processing freedom of information requests for the specified categories of requesters based on the time recorded by Freedom of Information Action Officers and Decision Takers who have prepared replies to FOI requests up until 6 March 2008. The time recorded does not include input by staff in SPICe (The Information Centre), the Directorate of Legal Services and the Media Relations Office because expertise in these areas is overarching and not necessarily specific to individual requests. The cost has been calculated at £35.39 per hour, the current hourly rate of a grade 5 member of staff.

2005	Requests by Members of the Public (£)	Requests by MSPs	Requests by Parliamentary Researchers	Requests by Journalists
January	1,481	0	0	10,328
February	336	150	0	4,675
March	941	1,593	0	531
April	1,010	0	725	1,324
May	510	62	0	1,478
June	2,777	0	823	9,632
July	1,796	306	18	9,373
August	73	71	396	3,551
September	2,179	0	0	1,123
October	1,577	0	0	8,679
November	437	0	18	6,781
December	888	0	0	1,331
Total	14,005	2,183	1,980	58,822
2006
January	184	0	0	2,353
February	1,074	71	0	2,663
March	2,552	0	593	7,458
April	754	0	0	1,340
May	5,452	0	0	3,304
June	1,046	0	0	717
July	2,207	0	0	1,770
August	1,067	00	0	796
September	600	1,476	1,239	191
October	110	0	0	727
November	2,821	340	115	3,082
December	2,374	0	106	549
Total	20,239	1,886	2,053	24,950
2007
January	876	0	71	2,858
February	2,601	0	00	5,404
March	379	138	65	3,948
April	889	248	0	2,986
May	156	0	0	2,535
June	230	1,299	0	687
July	1,109	239	328	2,638
August	177	0	0	1,194
September	672	53	0	775
October	274	0	0	1,059
November	18	53	0	1,200
December	257	0	0	159
Total	7,639	2,030	464	25,444
2008
January	319	0	88	53
February	487	35	0	710
March	0	0	0	9
Total	805	0	88	772
Grand Total	42,688	6,134	4,585	109,988

Question reference: S3W-10743

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Tricia Marwick on 18 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether the cost of processing freedom of information requests to the Parliament has risen in the last year.

Question reference: S3W-10739

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Tricia Marwick on 18 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what the cost has been of processing freedom of information requests to the Parliament in each month since the enactment of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

The enclosed table sets out the cost of replying to freedom of information requests based on the time recorded by Freedom of Information Action Officers and Decision Takers who have prepared replies to FOI requests up until 6 March 2008. The time recorded does not include input by staff in SPICe (The Information Centre), the Directorate of Legal Services or the Media Relations Office because input in these areas is overarching and not necessarily specific to individual requests. The cost has been calculated at £35.39 per hour, the current hourly rate of a grade 5 member of staff.

Year	Month	Total (£)
2005	1	14,242
	2	10,033
	3	4,569
	4	3,617
	5	3,979
	6	13,246
	7	11,530
	8	4,192
	9	3,302
	10	10,291
	11	7,660
	12	2,219
2005 Total		88,880
2006	1	2,714
	2	5,124
	3	13,514
	4	2,571
	5	8,977
	6	2,155
	7	3,976
	8	1,991
	9	3,744
	10	1,977
	11	6,358
	12	3,319
2006 Total		56,420
2007	1	3,929
	2	8,005
	3	4,645
	4	4,749
	5	2,715
	6	2,216
	7	4,358
	8	1,690
	9	1,501
	10	1,483
	11	1,280
	12	416
2007 Total		36,986
2008	1	655
	2	1,232
	3	9
2008 Total		1,895
Grand Total		184,181

Question reference: S3W-10738

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Tricia Marwick on 18 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how many freedom of information requests were made to the Parliament by (a) members of the public, (b) MSPs, (c) parliamentary researchers and (d) journalists in each year since the enactment of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

	Requests from Members of the Public	Requests from MSPs	Requests from Parliamentary Researchers	Requests from Journalists
2005
January	22	0	0	18
February	17	1	0	10
March	18	3	0	4
April	4	0	1	7
May	10	2	0	9
June	10	0	2	17
July	7	2	1	10
August	1	1	1	7
September	7	2	0	9
October	12	0	1	20
November	13	0	1	12
December	9	0	0	9
Total	140	11	7	132
2006
January	3	0	0	7
February	7	1	0	7
March	10	0	3	29
April	9	0	0	9
May	14	0	0	4
June	7	0	0	14
July	5	0	0	7
August	12	0	0	4
September	4	1	2	3
October	1	0	0	6
November	12	4	2	10
December	7	0	1	6
Total	91	6	8	107
2007
January	10	0	1	23
February	15	0	0	71
March	6	4	3	114
April	7	4	0	19
May	4	0	0	30
June	4	1	0	10
July	11	2	2	20
August	1	0	0	19
September	6	1	0	7
October	8	0	0	11
November	3	1	0	11
December	3	0	0	2
Total	78	13	6	337
January	3	0		4
February	12	1	1	53
March	1	0	1	5
Total	16	1	2	62
Grand Total	325	31	23	638

Question reference: S3W-10742

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Tricia Marwick on 18 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body on which occasions it has had to employ additional staff to deal with freedom of information requests to the Parliament since the enactment of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and what total costs arose from such action.

Question reference: S3W-11036

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 14 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 16 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive whether there are standard operating practices and procedures in place in the First Minister’s private office for dealing with correspondence from constituents and others and, if so, whether it will publish these practices and procedures.

Question reference: S3W-11042

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 14 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 16 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive who in the First Minister’s (FM’s) private office decided not to bring to the FM’s attention correspondence from Mr Donald Macdonald and an enclosure of correspondence between HBOS and Highland Council stating that without the relevant planning consents the bank would have “no option but to take action to mitigate its financial position…. likely to involve closure of the company and the complete resort operation, including the retail, no later than the middle of January 2008”, which was received from the FM’s constituency office manager; how that decision was reached, and when.

Question reference: S3W-11035

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 14 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 16 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive, in light of the contents of the letter from HBOS to Highland Council dated 23 October 2007 and copied to the First Minister in which it was stated that without the relevant planning consents the bank would have “no option but to take action to mitigate its financial position.... likely to involve closure of the company and the complete resort operation, including the retail, no later than the middle of January 2008”, what the reasons were for the First Minister taking no action other than sending a formal response three weeks later and before personally intervening on 6 December 2007 to assist the consortium involved in the development.

Question reference: S3W-11037

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 14 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 16 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive whether standard operating practices and procedures were applied by the First Minister’s (FM’s) private office in relation to the receipt of correspondence from Mr Donald Macdonald and an enclosure of correspondence between HBOS and Highland Council intimating the prospective closure of the Macdonald hotel company and the complete resort operation, received from the First Minister’s constituency office manager on 29 October 2007.