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-11191

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 14 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how much the evaluation of the community health nurse pilot in NHS Tayside will cost.

Question reference: S3W-11184

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 14 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many dental students at the University of Glasgow who received a dental bursary in their final year of study in 2006-07 are now in vocational training in Scotland, broken down by NHS board.

58 dental students at the University of Glasgow who received a dental bursary in their final year of study in 2006-07 are now in vocational training in Scotland. A breakdown, by NHS board, is provided in the following table.

NHS Board	Number of Vocational Trainees
Tayside	2
Forth Valley	4
Grampian	3
Fife	2
Lothian	4
Lanarkshire	16
Greater Glasgow and Clyde	19
Ayrshire and Arran	6
Highland	1
Dumfries	1
Total	58

Question reference: S3W-11002

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 14 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive what the general dental services indicative allowance to NHS Tayside (a) has been in each year since 2004-05 and (b) will be in 2008-09, also expressed at constant prices.

The general dental services indicative allocation to NHS Tayside since 2004-05 has been (also expressed in constant prices):

Year	GDS Indicative Allocation £000	Allocation at Constant Prices (2006-07) £000
2004-05	17,569	18,455
2005-06	18,166	18,687
2006-07	18,525	18,525
2007-08	18,850	18,257
2008-09	N/A	N/A

The actual expenditure on general dental services for NHS Tayside since 2004-05 has been (also expressed in constant prices):

Year	GDS Indicative Allocation £000	Allocation at Constant Prices (2006-07) £000
2004-05	17,208	18,076
2005-06	17,882	18,395
2006-07	19,898	19,898
2007-08	N/A	N/A
2008-09	N/A	N/A

Boards are fully funded for this expenditure therefore any differences between the indicative allocation and actual expenditure does not cause a problem for the NHS board.

Question reference: S3W-11239

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 14 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many alcohol-related admissions of under-18-year-olds there were to the accident and emergency department of Ninewells Hospital in NHS Tayside in each of the last four years.

Information held centrally on attendances at accident and emergency departments does not include the diagnosis of the patient. However, information held on hospital discharges includes information on whether a patient was admitted to hospital with an alcohol-related diagnosis as an emergency.

The following table sets out this information for those under 18 years of age at Ninewells Hospital, for each of the years 2003-04 to 2006-07. These figures are likely to be an undercount as not all those who attend an accident and emergency department will be admitted to hospital.

Number of Discharges^1,2,3 from Ninewells Hospital in NHS Tayside for Patients Aged Under 18 Years with an Alcohol-Related Diagnosis⁴ (Emergency Admissions Only), 2003-04 to 2006-07

Financial Year	Number of Discharges
2003-04	62
2004-05	57
2005-06	70
2006-07	53

Notes:

1. Caution is necessary when interpreting these figures. Where alcohol misuse is suspected but unconfirmed it may not be recorded by the hospital.

2. Information on patients discharged from acute non-obstetric, non-psychiatric hospitals is available from the Scottish Morbidity Record, SMR01.

3. Information in the table is based on date of discharge (rather than date of admission) because the SMR01 dataset is a discharge summary record.

4. Alcohol-related conditions are defined by using the World Health Organization''s International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision (ICD10): Alcohol-related conditions: F10, R780, Y90, Y91, Z637, Z811, Z864, Z714, Z502, T506, Y573, T510, T519, X45, X65, Y15, O354, Q860, P043, Z721, Z133, G621, G721, K860, I426, K70, K292, G312 & E52.

Question reference: S3W-10919

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 9 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing on 22 February 2008 on the implementation of the NRAC recommendations and in particular that “no Board will receive less funding than it does at present and any changes will be phased in over a number of years”, whether the phrase “no Board will receive less funding” refers to increases equal to or greater than the rate of inflation.

Question reference: S3W-11240

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 7 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive what the year-end overspend or underspend has been for NHS Tayside in each of the last four financial years.

NHS Tayside has had a year-end underspend for the last four financial years which are specified in the following table:

Year	£000
2003-04	4,298
2004-05	4,460
2005-06	1,141
2006-07	3,080

Question reference: S3W-11003

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 7 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-9957 by Nicola Sturgeon on 27 February 2008, what the initial allocations of revenue to NHS Tayside were in each year from 2004-05 to 2008-09 expressed at constant prices.

The initial revenue allocations to NHS Tayside from 2004-05 expressed in constant prices have been:

Year	Baseline Allocation	Allocation at Constant Prices (2006-07)
Year	£000	£000
2004-05	429,648	451,311
2005-06	485,260	499,182
2006-07	516,958	516,958
2007-08	549,382	532,089
2008-09	566,400	533,889

Question reference: S3W-11004

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 4 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many NHS general dental practitioners there were in the (a) Dundee and (b) Angus local authority areas in each of the last five years, also expressed as a rate per 100,000 of the population.

The information requested is shown in the following table.

Number of Dentists¹ Providing NHS General Dental Services; in (a) Dundee City and (b) Angus Local Authority Areas; at 31 March

Local Authority Area	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
Angus
Number of dentists (Head Count)	49	47	45	54	56
Dentists per 100,000 population	45.3	43.7	41.5	49.5	50.9
Dundee City
Number of dentists (Head Count)	79	82	84	91	105
Dentists per 100,000 population	54.8	57.3	59.2	64.0	73.9

Source: MIDAS (Management Information and Dental Accounting System). General Registers Office (GRO) mid-year populations estimates as at 30 June 2002-06.

Note: 1. The number of NHS non-salaried and salaried principals, assistants and vocational dental practitioners, based on the location of the dental practice.

Question reference: S3W-10918

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 20 March 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing on 22 February 2008 on the implementation of the NHS Scotland Resource Allocation Committee (NRAC) recommendations, which NHS boards presently (a) above the target allocation will receive smaller annual percentage increases and (b) below the target allocation will receive higher percentage increases, in the unified budget over the period until their NRAC target share is reached.

All heath boards have received a standard increase of 3.15% in 2008-09. In addition, the Scottish Government has provided additional resources to those boards who are below both their current formula and NHSScotland Resource Allocation Committee (NRAC) target allocations in 2008-09 in advance of NRAC''s implementation in 2009-10. These boards are NHS Lothian, NHS Fife, NHS Forth Valley, NHS Grampian, NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Orkney. The average increase is 3.3%.

For future years the exact amounts received by each health board will depend on the overall funding available and their changing relative position when the formula is calculated. Uplift levels, including parity uplifts, will be considered and announced each financial year in line with the parliamentary process and taking into account funding earmarked for Scottish health priorities within the overall Scottish Government financial settlement. This reflects the practice established under the previous SHARE and Arbuthnott formulae. It means that each health board will receive a standard uplift each year to meet inflationary pressures whilst those boards whose actual funding remains below their target level, as indicated by the NRAC formula, would receive an additional parity uplift from within the remaining resources available.

Question reference: S3O-02714

Asked by: Marlyn Glen, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 20 March 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive what progress is being made in developing a system of accreditation for bowel screening colonoscopists and a programme of training to guarantee sufficient numbers of colonoscopists to enable the national roll-out of the bowel cancer screening programme.

NHS Education Scotland (NES) was commissioned in March 2006 to develop a national programme to support the education and training of health care professionals undertaking endoscopy. The estimates of numbers required were 150 clinicians and 25 non-medical endoscopists to help increase endoscopy capacity as part of the preparation for roll-out of the bowel screening programme. Since 2006 NES have trained 171 clinicians and 31 non-medical endoscopists. NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (NHS QIS) Clinical Standards for the Bowel Screening Programme were published in February 2007 for all aspects of the Programme, including colonoscopy. These can be accessed on the NHS QIS website.