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-05651

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 14 February 2012
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 29 February 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what information it has on the extent of human trafficking in Scotland.

Under the DETECT strand of Scotland's Serious Organised Crime Strategy, "Letting Our Communities Flourish" the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency SCDEA have produced a National Strategic Intelligence Assessment in relation to all forms of human trafficking impacting on Scotland. A summary of this assessment is available on its website and confirms that the covert nature of this hideous crime makes it difficult to quantify the scale of the problem.

The most current data available for Scotland from the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre, which is central repository for all data relating to trafficking in human beings, is shown in the following table. The data relates to potential and confirmed victims who have entered the National Referral Mechanism and cover the period 1 April 2009 to 10 February 2012.

Number of Potential and Confirmed Victims^1,2

Year	Referrals	Positive Reasonable Grounds	Positive Conclusive Grounds
2009	39	27	11
2010	95	80	60
2011	94	77	55

Notes:

1. Source - UKHTC

2. Includes adults and children

3. Data is as at 10 February 2012 and there are outstanding decisions re reasonable and conclusive grounds still to be made for all years.

Question reference: S4W-05652

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 14 February 2012
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 29 February 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S4W-03297 by Lesley Thomson on 2 November 2011, whether it has carried out a comparison between the number of successful convictions for human trafficking in Scotland and the rest of the UK since 2007 and, if so, what the outcome was.

Question reference: S4W-05386

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 February 2012
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 29 February 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive how many empty or underutilised buildings it owns and where they are located.

Question reference: S4W-05384

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 February 2012
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 28 February 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has had discussions with the UK Government about making UK Government-owned empty or underutilised buildings available to small businesses in Scotland.

The Scottish Government’s Property Advice Division liaise with the UK Government’s Government Procurement Unit who operate the Electronic Property Information Mapping System. The e-PIMS system is used to identify vacant space records for both the UK Government within Scotland and the Scottish Executive’s Estate.

e-PIMS does not currently explicitly record underused space.

When a building owned by the Scottish Ministers is declared surplus it is sold on the open market and is thus available for any business interest that wishes to make a bid. With rented space, where this cannot be returned to the landlord, every effort is made to reuse it, usually to public sector bodies needing space.

Question reference: S4W-05385

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 February 2012
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 28 February 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will make empty or underutilised buildings that it owns available to small businesses.

When an owned property is empty and declared surplus the Scottish Government puts it on the open market so that any potential bidder including businesses, small businesses, community groups or individuals may bid for it.

Where a leased property is empty and the lease allows it, it is returned to the landlord. If a leased property cannot be returned and is under occupied in the longer term, the Scottish Government usually backfills the space with public bodies requiring space. Subject to the requirements of the Scottish Public Finance Manual and other operational considerations backfilling or subletting to the private sector may also be considered.

With third parties the Scottish Public Finance Manual requires that underutilised space is let to third parties on the basis of ‘market rent’.

Question reference: S4W-05485

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 07 February 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 22 February 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive whether the drug, ipilimumab, has been made available for patients requesting it through the Individual Patient Treatment Request (IPTR) system and, if not, (a) for what reason the requests were unsuccessful and (b) in light of the drug being available to patients in England, whether it will review how the IPTR system operates.

Information on the numbers of applications to NHS boards for the drug ipilimumab through the Individual Patient Treatment Request (IPTR) arrangements is not held centrally.

Scotland’s robust, independent arrangements for the appraisal of newly licensed medicines focus on patients having access to clinically and cost-effective medicines to treat all conditions, including cancer, throughout all parts of Scotland in accordance with clinical need.

The Scottish Government has given a commitment to keeping the IPTR Good Practice guidance under review.

Question reference: S4O-00716

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 23 February 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what action it is taking to review the effectiveness of the NHS Individual Patient Treatment Request process.

Question reference: S4O-00656

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 2 February 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what assessment it has made of the effects of the proposed public health levy on retail employment.

Question reference: S4W-05106

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 20 January 2012
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 26 January 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive how it will ensure that the proposed public health levy will not negatively affect stores' staff (a) numbers, (b) recruitment and (c) working hours.

Question reference: S4W-05107

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 20 January 2012
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 26 January 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive how it plans to assess the impact of the public health levy once it has been introduced.