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-23552

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 27 February 2006
Current Status: Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 10 March 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive how it has measured the success of direct payments since the implementation of the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002.

Since 2001 take up of directpayments has been monitored by local authorities completing a quarterly return thatasks for the number of clients receiving direct payments, split by age and clientgroup. The range of questions has been expanded for the survey of the current year2005-06, results of which will be available in September. The 2004-05 statisticsrelease is available at Http://www.scotland.gov.uk/74529.A copy is also available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib.number 37408).

Question reference: S2W-23548

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 27 February 2006
Current Status: Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 10 March 2006

To ask the Scottish Executive how many community care assessments were carried out in each year since 1999 for disabled people seeking direct payments, broken down by local authority.

Question reference: S2W-21565

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 09 December 2005
Current Status: Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 19 December 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-19463 by Malcolm Chisholm on 18 October 2005, what funding has been allocated to Perth and Kinross Council from (a) the Vacant and Derelict Land Fund and (b) capital resources made available to carry out identification and remediation of contaminated land; whether Perth and Kinross Council was one of the 19 local authorities allocated end-year flexibility funding in December 2004 for specific derelict and contaminated land projects and, if so, how much it received.

No resources have been allocated to Perth and Kinross Council from the Vacant and Derelict Land Fund. The capital resources made available to Perth and Kinross Council for carrying out its responsibilities under the contaminated land regime over the years 2000-01 to 2007-08 are as follows:

Year	Amount (£000)
2000-01	22
2001-02	77
2002-03	77
2003-04	77
2004-05	77
2005-06	77
2006-07	77
2007-08	77

In addition, the council received a further £261,000 of end-year flexibility funding in 2002-03 to carry out remediation work at the Horse Cross development area in Perth.

Following a successful bid for resources from the end-year flexibility funding announced in 2004-05, the council was awarded £475,000 in December 2004 for remediation of the former Dalcrue Landfill Site at Pitcairngreen, Perth.

Question reference: S2W-20588

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 November 2005
Current Status: Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 23 November 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether the Minister for Health and Community Care will report to the Parliament on the outcome of the deliberations of the Stakeholder Advisory Group ELF EMF.

At present, the work of the Stakeholder Advisory Group Extremely Low Frequency Electric and Magnetic Fields (SAGE) is being progressed by two working groups, the Electrical Equipment and Installations Working Group and the Power Lines and Property Working Group. There is no firm timetable for reporting but it is expected that the two current working groups will make recommendations to the main group early in 2006. The subsequent recommendation of the main SAGE Group will then be made available through the Scottish Parliament Information Centre.

Two new working groups on issues related to the lower voltage elements of the external electricity distribution system and on railways and other issues will then be established.

Question reference: S2W-20587

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 November 2005
Current Status: Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 23 November 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive who represents its Health Department at meetings of the Stakeholder Advisory Group ELF EMF; how many meetings there have been; how many meetings have been attended by its representatives, and what issues were discussed at each of the meetings.

The Scottish Executive is represented on the Stakeholder Advisory Group on Extremely Low Frequency Electric and Magnetic Fields by a senior scientific adviser from the Scottish Executive Health Department. The group has met twice, November 2004 and July 2005. The Scottish Executive representative has attended one meeting and will attend the next meeting to be held in December 2005.

A wide range of issues have been discussed at the main group meeting and the meetings of the two established sub-groups Electrical Equipment and Installations Working Group and the Power Lines and Property Working Group.

Question reference: S2W-20589

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 November 2005
Current Status: Answered by Allan Wilson on 22 November 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether the outcome of the deliberations of the Stakeholder Advisory Group ELF EMF will be taken into consideration when the proposed Beauly to Denny transmission line comes before the Executive for a planning decision.

The application in respect of Scottish and Southern Energy plc and Scottish Power Transmission Ltd’s joint proposal for an overhead transmission line between Beauly and Denny was received by the Scottish Executive on 28 September 2005.

When determining the application ministers will have regard to all material considerations, this would include any conclusions arising from the Stakeholder Advisory Group on ELF EMFs.

Question reference: S2W-20590

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 November 2005
Current Status: Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 21 November 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answers to questions S2W-19573 and S2W-19572 by Malcolm Chisholm on 17 and 19 October 2005, how many new homes will be approved under the Homestake shared equity scheme in the Perth and Kinross Council area in 2005-06 and 2007-08.

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

The following Homestake projects are planned in the Perth and Kinross Council area.

2005-06:

Forty-six units by Perthshire Housing Association in Perth

Two units by Perthshire Housing Association in Old Struan

Total – 48 units.

2006-07:

Twenty-five units by Perthshire Housing Association – site to be designated

eleven units by Perthshire Housing Association in Highland Perthshire

eleven units by Perthshire Housing Association in Bridge of Earn.

Total – 47 units.

Other parts of the Perth and Kinross Council area are likely to benefit from the scheme when new development opportunities arise.

Question reference: S2W-20569

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 November 2005
Current Status: Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 21 November 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what consideration is being given to extending protection to volunteers to give them some of the rights of employees in difficult situations with voluntary sector management.

Question reference: S2W-19713

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 October 2005
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 3 November 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how many requests have been received by Disclosure Scotland since its inception to provide criminal record checks on individuals from (a) Scotland, (b) the rest of the United Kingdom, (c) the rest of the European Union and (d) non-EU countries.

Question reference: S2W-19710

Asked by: Roseanna Cunningham, MSP for Perth, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 October 2005
Current Status: Answered by Colin Boyd on 3 November 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how many reports of (a) murder, (b) culpable homicide, (c) assault to severe injury, (d) assault and (e) offences involving the possession of a bladed weapon have been referred to the Procurator Fiscal in Perth in each of the last five years.

The information requested is set out in the following table. Information is not available for periods prior to April 2002¹.

Number of Charges Reported to the Procurator Fiscal at Perth^2,3

Charge Group	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05
a. Murder	2	0	0
b. Culpable Homicide	1	2	0
c. Assault to severe injury⁴	54	38	62
d. Assault⁴	788	908	1,262
e. Possession of bladed weapon⁵	24	21	35

Notes:

1. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service completed an upgrade of its electronic Case Management System in April 2002. Only case records created after that date contain complete data which is capable of electronic analysis. If a Procurator Fiscal amends a charge submitted by a reporting agency the database will record details only of the amended charge.

2. The information in this table has been extracted from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service’s Case Management Database. The database is a live, operational database used to manage the processing of reports submitted to procurators fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies.

3. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service’s Case Management Database is charge-based. The figures in the table therefore relate to the number of charges rather than the number of incidents that gave rise to such charges.

4. There are 124 separate charge codes containing the word “assault”. The results in this table are restricted to the following charges: Assault includes - assault; assault injury. Assault to Severe Injury includes - assault to danger of life; assault disfigurement; assault severe injury; assault severe injury and danger of life; assault to severe injury, disfigurement; assault to severe injury, disfigurement, danger of life; assault to severe injury, disfigurement, impairment; assault to severe injury, impairment; assault to severe injury, impairment, danger of life

5. The results in the table are restricted to offences under the following sections of the Criminal Law Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1995 – Section 49 (possession of a knife), Section 49A (possession of a knife in school premises), and Section 47 (possession of an offensive weapon). Charges under Section 47 have only been included where the weapon in question was a knife, an axe, scissors or an open blade razor. It should be noted however that 72% of the charge records for offences under Section 47 do not contain any code to categorise the weapon involved.