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-06687

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 28 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what plans it has to establish a national drugs commission.

Question reference: S3W-06669

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 27 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive how many physiotherapists are employed by the NHS.

There were 2,138whole time equivalent qualified Physiotherapists in NHSScotland at September2006 and the numbers have been increasing by an average of 3.6% over the last fiveyears.Information onstaff employed in NHS Scotland is published on the Scottish Health Statisticswebsite under Workforce Statistics, at www.isdscotland.org/workforce.

Section F givesdetails of therapeutic, health care science, technical, pharmacy and ambulancestaff. In particular, tables F1 and F2 show the whole-time equivalent (WTE) andheadcount of physiotherapists employed in NHS Scotland by year and by NHS boardand region. WTE adjusts headcount to take account of part-time staff. Latestavailable data is at 30 September 2006.

Question reference: S3W-06670

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 27 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has any plans to increase the number of physiotherapists employed by the NHS.

Question reference: S3W-06671

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 27 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive how many physiotherapists it intends to recruit over the period of the current spending review.

Question reference: S3W-06674

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 27 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what support it intends to provide for training in specialist rural areas medicine.

The provision ofhigh quality health care specific to the needs of remote and rural communitieshas been a feature of the work of the Scottish Government’s Implementation Groupfor Delivering for Health.

Supportedtraining placements in remote and rural locations are offered at both undergraduateand postgraduate level. To support this, NHS Education for Scotland has established the Remote and Rural HealthcareEducational Alliance (RRHEAL), to provide educational support and developmentfor the rural-based workforce at the request of the Scottish Government.

Question reference: S3W-06672

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 27 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive when it anticipates being able to issue new guidance to NHS boards on car parking charges.

Question reference: S3W-06542

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 16 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 26 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what the changes are from the 2007-08 baseline for each proposed budget line at levels (a) one, (b) two and (c) three of the Health and Wellbeing portfolio resulting from Scottish Budget: Spending Review 2007, expressed in real (i) cash and (ii) percentage terms for each year of the spending review.

Question reference: S3W-06685

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 26 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what measures it intends to take to make healthy food more affordable.

The ScottishGovernment is considering how it can best improve the affordability,availability and awareness of healthier food options as part of wide-rangingdiscussions on a National Food Policy for Scotland.

The 2007 SpendingReview commits £11.5 million per annum for the next three years to a programmeon diet and physical activity for health and to prevent obesity.

In the meantime,we are continuing to work with a variety of partners including Community Foodand Health (Scotland) and the Scottish Grocers Federation tomake it easier for people in low-income communities to buy healthier foods.

Question reference: S3W-05947

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive whether there has been a rise in the number of babies requiring neonatal care, and, if so, whether it will commission research into the reasons for the rise.

I refer themember to the answer to question S3W-5946 on 15 November 2007. All answers to written parliamentary questions areavailable on the Parliament’s website; the search facility for which can befound at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

It can be seenthat against the rising number of live births there has not been a significantrise in the number of babies requiring neonatal care.

Question reference: S3W-05946

Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 November 2007
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 November 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive how many babies required neonatal care in each of the last five years, broken down by NHS board.

The latest availableinformation is shown on table 1.

Table 1: BabiesCared for within Intensive and Special Care Units^1,2.

NHS Board of Treatment³	2002⁴	2003^4,5	2004⁵	2005	2006
Total	6,150	5,809	5,818	5,853	5,875
Argyll and Clyde	568	487	542	618	676
Ayrshire and Arran	336	340	375	363	360
Borders	114	96	94	95	110
Dumfries and Galloway	197	179	156	196	215
Fife	296	310	326	340	347
Forth Valley	393	328	170	232	258
Grampian	895	780	828	771	609
Greater Glasgow	1,150	894	874	773	973
Highland	254	297	257	260	277
Lanarkshire	802	863	864	832	876
Lothian	799	825	875	856	677
Tayside	346	407	455	511	493
Orkney⁶	-	*	*	*	*
Shetland6⁶	-	*	*	*	*
Western Isles⁶	-	*	*	*	*

Source: SMR11 andSBR for 2002/2003. SBR for 2004-06.

Notes:

1. Includesspecial care baby units, high dependency units and intensive care units. Thereis known to be variation in admission criteria and recording practice.

2. It is notpossible to distinguish between intensive and special care units.

3. The NHS boardin this table refers to where the babies first “high level” of care wasrecorded.

4. There may besome inaccuracy in the results as two data sets were used.

5. These numbersmay differ slightly from previous answer to question S2W-22927 due to duplicaterecords being deleted from the analysis file.

6. *Values lessthan five have not been included for data protection issues.