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 1042 questions Show Answers

Order by |

Question reference: S2W-19427

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 4 October 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it intends to meet Scottish Prison Service and senior Reliance staff from England to establish and confirm Reliance's commitment to the delivery of an effective service within the Scottish justice system.

Question reference: S2W-19425

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 4 October 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it is satisfied with the measures in place to monitor the performance of Reliance.

Question reference: S2W-19426

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 4 October 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive why seven senior staff of Reliance Security have resigned within weeks of each other.

Question reference: S2W-19424

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 4 October 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it considers, now that Reliance has been providing a service to the Scottish Prison Service for 16 months, that the service provided offers value for money.

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

In short, the answer is yes. We are now seeing the benefits of this contract, not just in terms of a greater degree of transparency in escorting itself and improved performance in meeting agreed targets, but also in the release of police and prison staff to perform the duties they are trained for.

Question reference: S2W-19222

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Peter Peacock on 28 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-18440 by Peter Peacock on 8 September 2005, whether the figures provided for local authority capital expenditure on schools, excluding expenditure funded from revenue, in the financial years 1975-76 to 2004-05 are in cash terms or real terms.

Question reference: S2W-19223

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Peter Peacock on 28 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-18440 by Peter Peacock on 8 September 2005, what figures are available for PPP payments in respect of (a) primary, (b) secondary and (c) special schools in each year since PPP was introduced.

My answer to question S2W-18440 indicated that, in the case of Public Private Partnership projects, the capital expenditure is incurred by the private sector partner, not the local authority.

The estimated amounts of capital spend on school buildings by the private sector during the construction phases of school PPP projects are set out in the table. The information does not differentiate between types of school.

Existing School PPP Contracts (Operational and Signed): Estimated Capital Spend by Private Sector (£ Million in Cash Terms)

1998-99	19.5
1999-2000	41.4
2000-01	142.2
2001-02	243.7
2002-03	82.1
2003-04	26.9
2004-05	51.7

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa/search.

Question reference: S2W-19185

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 12 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Colin Boyd on 28 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive under what statutory authority it is withholding from the public domain the 106 productions to the public inquiry by Lord Cullen into the shootings at Dunblane primary school which are subject to a 100-year closure order.

On the issue of statutory authority, I refer to the answer to question S1W-34924 on 18 March 2003. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa/search.

However, in line with the commitment that I gave in November 2004, officials of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service have completed the review process and have attended to the required editing of those documents. The redacted documents will be deposited with the National Archives of Scotland this week and will be available for inspection by members of the public from Monday 3 October 2005.

The editing involved the removal from the documents the names of living individuals and replacing with individual designations, such as “Witness 1” or “Child A” to preserve anonymity but ensure that the edited documents would still make sense to any reader. The process of simply removing an individual’s name, in some documents, did not preserve anonymity. It was also considered that some of the documents contained distressing information about the victims and it is therefore not possible for each and every document to be released, even in an edited manner. The Closure Order in respect of files one to four will therefore remain in place for the specified period of 100 years. Files one to four contain profiles, photographs, medical reports and post mortem reports of the injured and deceased respectively. All of the other documents, in their redacted format, will be made available to the public.

Question reference: S2W-19366

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 20 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by John Scott on 27 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what the total cost has been of purchasing and installing netting to prevent pigeon access to the Parliament's campus.

Question reference: S2W-19365

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 20 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by John Scott on 27 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what the total cost is of removing pigeon guano from the Parliament building.

Question reference: S2W-18625

Asked by: Mr Brian Monteith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 22 August 2005
Current Status: Answered by Nicol Stephen on 21 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether there will be any restrictions in respect of the companies or institutions that can provide computer training funded under the Individual Learning Account scheme and, if so, what these restrictions will be.

The application process for learning providers applying to become ILA Scotland registered is an open one. There are, however, a number of minimum quality standards and additional quality criteria which individual providers must satisfy before they can be approved.

Learning providers who wish to be considered for ILA Scotland registration must be able to evidence that they meet one or more of the following quality standards:

they are recognised by Scottish Higher Education Funding Council as being in good standing with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)

they are recognised by Scottish Further Education Funding Council as being in good standing with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE), and/or

they have been fully accredited through the Scottish Quality Management System (SQMS) and hold current SQMS certification, and/or

they have been approved as a “randed” learndirect scotland learning centre (ldc) and hold current lds branded status.

There is no distinction between the registration process for those learning providers wishing to provide computer training and those providers who offer other types of training course. Further information on the provider application and registration process is available via the ILA Scotland website, at http://www.ilascotland.org.uk.