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: S4W-19560

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 28 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government whether the SQA's results service systems have been introduced to reduce the number of appeals.

Question reference: S4W-19557

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 28 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason the SQA has replaced its appeals process at the same time that it is introducing a new system of exams.

Question reference: S4W-19551

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 28 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what the impact will be of the SQA's (a) Exceptional Circumstances Consideration Service and (b) Post Results Service for exam appeals charging for (i) clerical checks, (ii) marking reviews and (iii) priority marking reviews; how much it estimates the SQA will receive from each of these charges; who will pay the charges; how it will ensure that neither state nor private schools pass the charges onto pupils either directly or indirectly, and how it will ensure that they do not impact disproportionately on (A) pupils from poorer backgrounds and (B) schools with smaller budgets.

Question reference: S4W-19559

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 28 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason school pupils using the results service systems to appeal their exam results will no longer be allowed to offer alternative evidence to support their appeals.

Question reference: S4W-19550

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 28 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how many school pupils it estimates will appeal their exam results in 2014; how this compares with each of the last 10 years, and how it will ensure that this year’s pupils are treated fairly compared with previous cohorts in being able to access the results service systems to lodge appeals and in their outcomes.

Question reference: S4W-19489

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 30 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 27 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government whether duplicate registrations have ever accumulated on the lists of general medical practitioners and, if so, what action was taken.

The Scottish Government does not manage the patient registration process. Patient registration arrangements are local contractual matters between NHS boards and GP practices whilst The Practitioner Services Division (PSD) of the NHS National Services Scotland helps health boards manage their GP patient registrations.

Practitioner Services uses the NHS Scotland national patient database to keep a note of the GP practice that a patient is registered at. Other non-clinical information is also stored, e.g. patient name, date of birth, address and GP details.

The database is called the Community Health Index (CHI). The unique index number generated for each patient is called the CHI number and this number is used throughout NHSScotland to accurately identify patients. The information is also used across all services throughout NHS to manage the transfer of medical records, make payments to GP practices for medical services provided to patients, and to issue medical exemption certificates and prescription pre-payment certificates.

A patient’s CHI number can only be recorded on one GP list at a time and it would be only if a patient gave two different sets of demographic details to two different practices then they could end up with two CHI numbers.

Where PSD do identify a patient with two CHI numbers registered PSD would check with practices to see what is going on and if need be inform NHS Counter Fraud Services (CFS). Where a patient has two different sets of demographic details and one CHI number, and both records to be registered, usually one would be accurate and the other not. They would be linked so one becomes current and the other a history record.

Question reference: S4W-19481

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 30 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 25 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what action it plans to take if it has not received enough applications for dental vocational trainers to meet demand by 13 February 2014.

Question reference: S4W-19479

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 30 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 25 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government whether and, if so, for what reason it is recruiting dental vocational trainers without interviewing them.

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) has operational responsibility for the recruitment of dental vocational trainers. Following a review of the trainer recruitment process in 2013, NES proposed a revised recruitment process be introduced from 2014. These proposals were presented to relevant stakeholders at a meeting of the Scottish Dental Vocational Training Committee in November 2013, and were approved. This committee is chaired by an independent dental practitioner, and membership is drawn from the British Dental Association, the Scottish Dental Schools, NES and a dental vocational trainee. The removal of interviews followed a detailed analysis of data received from a number of previous year’s annual recruitment debrief meetings, and feedback received from trainers themselves. The conclusion reached was that the process of trainer interviews was a poor discriminator of the quality of new trainers, was not a valuable use of resource, and significantly impacted on both applicants’ and panel members’ provision of dental care to their patients. A raft of new measures were introduced including enhanced in-practice mentoring of new applicants, improved reporting of training and clinical performance, plus a centralised process which eliminates regional inconsistencies in interpretation of the required criteria for the trainer role.

Question reference: S4W-19480

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 30 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 25 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government whether it expects to receive enough applications to meet the demand for dental vocational trainers by the deadline of 13 February 2014.

It is NHS Education for Scotland (NES) which is responsible for the recruitment of dental vocational trainers in Scotland. Recruitment is an ongoing process and, as of today, 180 applications have been received, against a projected demand for 179 dental vocational training (DVT) places.

Applicants do however need to be assessed against robust criteria and that process will likely result in some being rejected. However, as trainer applications are now accepted as part of a rolling process of recruitment, this allows enthusiastic marketing of the role to continue. It is not unusual for current trainers to be undecided at this stage in the year as to whether to offer their incumbent vocational trainee a position within their dental practice and therefore delay application for continued training. The revised trainer approval process will facilitate the speedy appointment of trainers who submit later applications, and NES already has additional train-the-trainer courses scheduled to support applicants who submit applications after the first round cut-off point.

NES is operating on the basis of ensuring that there are sufficient trainers to match the number of applicants for a DVT place in Scotland.

Question reference: S4F-01917

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 24 February 2014
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 27 February 2014

To ask the First Minister, in light of the evidence given by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing at the Public Audit Committee on 19 February 2014, how long confidentiality clauses have been included automatically in NHS settlement agreements.