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-00197

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 8 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what level of increased health risk there would be from the transport and installation of a replacement system for Trident.

Public health risks associatedwith the transport and handling of Defence Nuclear Materials are addressed by provisionscurrently in place.

TheMOD maintains contingency plans to deal with accidents and conducts regular nuclearaccident response exercises designed to test these plans.

The Radiation (Emergency Preparedness and Public Information)Regulations 2001 sets down the requirements and responsibilities of operators, carriersand local authorities in responding to a reasonably foreseeable radiation emergency.

The Scottish Government is opposedto a replacement system for trident.

Question reference: S3W-00313

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 7 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive how many people were defined as homeless in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, broken down by local authority.

The numbers of applicant householdsassessed as homeless under the homelessness legislation by local authorities areshown in the following table.

Number of ApplicationsAssessed as Homeless by Local Authority: 1996-97 to 2005-06

	1996-97	1997-98	1998-99	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06
Scotland	24,700	27,000	29,000	29,900	29,500	32,800	35,067	36,711	34,866	36,625
Aberdeen City	830	920	1,030	1,160	1,080	990	844	806	659	1,099
Aberdeenshire	740	700	690	750	650	660	667	629	731	754
Angus	340	330	450	380	280	320	446	538	531	550
Argyll and Bute	320	260	250	250	230	370	515	561	561	658
Clackmannanshire	150	150	280	320	350	410	376	408	512	600
Dumfries and Galloway	420	450	390	590	530	650	780	801	860	842
Dundee City	630	630	550	510	530	520	415	366	378	342
East Ayrshire	330	400	420	370	400	460	671	692	808	734
East Dunbartonshire	290	260	250	250	250	250	258	321	258	364
East Lothian	390	390	380	390	340	340	435	436	462	561
East Renfrewshire	60	100	100	180	130	150	122	195	246	261
Edinburgh, City of	2,640	2,840	3,150	3,560	3,680	3,700	3,816	4,283	4,192	4,291
Eilean Siar	100	130	70	100	60	70	124	130	173	155
Falkirk	470	570	720	890	940	950	1,021	992	809	1,000
Fife	1,170	1,540	1,940	1,840	1,640	2,020	2,326	2,827	2,626	2,732
Glasgow City	9,320	10,260	10,570	10,250	10,150	12,030	11,038	10,624	8,439	8,634
Highland	370	390	370	380	530	550	791	1,220	1,293	1,352
Inverclyde	250	320	280	200	210	240	364	550	430	510
Midlothian	370	340	390	310	280	330	405	427	494	485
Moray	90	190	110	180	210	270	546	384	412	347
North Ayrshire	420	530	580	700	680	860	1,382	1,296	1,112	1,082
North Lanarkshire	1,030	1,000	1,360	1,080	1,030	1,170	1,649	1,972	2,763	2,881
Orkney	60	70	70	80	60	80	50	65	88	87
Perth and Kinross	130	120	120	230	430	440	654	362	307	391
Renfrewshire	310	270	180	440	630	470	565	652	689	633
Scottish Borders,The	480	390	410	410	420	440	388	598	470	530
Shetland	140	120	100	80	110	120	109	107	76	76
South Ayrshire	640	580	600	640	590	620	551	554	552	546
South Lanarkshire	860	1,070	1,090	1,020	990	1,030	1,335	1,402	1,267	1,402
Stirling	570	660	690	630	510	500	505	455	535	520
West Dunbartonshire	220	290	370	550	590	700	835	860	1,133	1,230
West Lothian	570	710	1,050	1,260	1,040	1,070	1,084	1,198	1,000	976

Source: HL1 returns by localauthorities to the Scottish Executive Communities Analytical Services Directorate.

Notes:

1. All applications within periodassessed as homeless (excluding potentially homeless).

2. Some households may have appliedseveral times during the period, and will be counted more than once.

3. Data prior to 2002 are estimateddue to missing returns (rounded to the nearest 100 for Scotland leveland the nearest 10 for local authority level).

4. Due to the live nature of the data collection system, figures are updated on a continuous basis and the informationpublished here may differ from that published previously.

Question reference: S3W-00115

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by Jim Mather on 7 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive how many people committed suicide in each of the last five years for which figures are available, broken down by (a) gender and (b) age.

In presenting statistics onsuicides it is conventional to combine deaths classified as intentionalself-harm (suicides) with those classified as events of undetermined intent.This is because the majority of the latter are likely to have been suicides.The following table provides information on this basis.

Deaths Caused by IntentionalSelf-Harm and Events of Undetermined Intent¹ Scotland,2001-05

Age and Gender	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
Persons	887	899	794	835	763
(a) by gender
Males	646	676	578	609	549
Females	241	223	216	226	214
(b) by age group
Under 25	129	132	104	101	107
25 - 34	177	208	159	136	142
35 - 44	228	204	194	240	192
45 - 54	149	137	143	163	131
55 - 64	101	110	92	95	96
65 and over	103	108	102	100	95

Note:1.ICD10 codes X60-X84, Y10-Y34, Y87.0, Y87.2.

Question reference: S3W-00202

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 6 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what steps it will take to devolve budgets and decision-making to community council level.

Question reference: S3W-00314

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 6 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what steps it will take to raise outcomes in schools with unacceptable levels of educational attainment.

Question reference: S3W-00312

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 6 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what its definition is of affordable housing.

Affordable housing is broadlydefined in Scottish Planning Policy 3: Planning for Housing as follows“Housing of reasonable quality that is affordable to people on modest incomes. Insome places the market can provide some or all of the affordable housing that isneeded, but in other places it is necessary to make housing available at a costbelow market value, to meet an identified need.”

The main categories of affordablehousing are set out in Planning Advice Note 74, available on the Executive’swebsite at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/03/20796/54073.

Affordability, in terms of therents and prices paid by tenants and purchasers, varies from one location to anotherso should be determined in a way which takes account of incomes at the local level.

Question reference: S3W-00371

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 6 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive whether ChildLine Scotland has increased the number of children it helps since 2003.

Question reference: S3W-00363

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 6 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what resources are available for local authorities to safeguard young runaways who are at risk of harm under section 38 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995.

Specific resources madeavailable by the Executive to local authorities to safeguard young runawaysare:

a guidance pack which issuedto Child Protection Committees in July 2003 on vulnerable children and youngpeople which makes recommendations about the care of young runaways,

funding of £838,661 between2002 and 2008 from the Youth Crime Prevention Fund in support of Aberlour ChildCare Trust’s pilot project, Running Other Choices (ROC), which provides ashort-term refuge for young people aged 12 to 15, and

strengthened ChildProtection Committees as an outcome of the recently-concluded three-year ChildProtection Reform Programme which is improving multi-agency service provisionfor this (and other) vulnerable groups of children and young people.

More generally, localauthorities use their GAE provision to support local services as they see fit,and this includes the flexibility to commission or directly provide servicesfor young runaways on the basis of local need.

Question reference: S3W-00370

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 6 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has increased the level of investment in helplines for young people, including the provision of funding to allow ChildLine Scotland to increase by up to 60% since 2003 the number of children it helps.

The Scottish Executive hasrecently provided additional funding of £536,300 (over 2007-09) to expand thecapacity of Glasgow and Aberdeen Centres and to set up a new base in Edinburgh.

The Executive has alsorecently invested in a freephone national telephone and information gatewayservice which directs the general public to local child protection serviceswhen they call to report concerns about a child or young person. This nationalgateway phone service is intended to complement existing phone-based childprotection counselling services.

The Executive continues tosupport ChildLine’s Anti-Bullying helpline and the enquire helpline (whichprovides advice and information on additional support for learning).

The Know the Score helplineand two other health-related helplines are run on behalf of the Executive bythe Department of Health. The Know the Score campaign, which includes thehelpline, provides drugs information and advice to young people.

Question reference: S3W-00365

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 6 June 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive who the members are of the Working Group on Young Runaways and Children Abused Through Prostitution.

Invitations have recentlyissued to the following organisations for membership of a proposed nationalworking group on young runaways:

Aberlour Child Care Trust

Association of Chief PoliceOfficers Scotland (ACPOS)

Association of Directors ofSocial Work (ADSW)

Association of Directors ofEducation in Scotland (ADES)

Barnardos

Convention of Scottish LocalAuthorities (Cosla)

The Scottish Coalition forYoung Runaways (Edinburgh, Lothian and Borders Child Protection Office (ELBCPO)is the Coalition’s nominee)

Scottish Children’s ReporterAdministration (SCRA)

Scottish Institute forResidential Child Care (SIRCC)

YouthLink Scotland.

A representativeorganisation for the Child Protection Committees is being identified, as is arepresentative for Parenting Across Scotland. Those representatives will beinvited shortly.