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: S2W-19169

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 09 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 26 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-15914 by Cathy Jamieson on 20 April 2005, how many convictions for assault on a police officer there were in 2004, broken down by police force area.

Question reference: S2W-19304

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 26 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what its total spending on management consultants has been in each of the last five years, broken down by department.

The Scottish Executive does not hold information on total spending under a categorisation of “management consultants”.

However, in the answer to question S2W-18755 on 26 September 2005, we have been able to provide certain details of expenditure on “external consultant fees”. 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-19193

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 21 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-9736 by Hugh Henry on 12 August 2004, how many police operations in 2004 involved issuing firearms to officers, broken down by police force area.

The deployment of firearms is an operational matter for Chief Constables. The following table gives information provided by forces for the number of operations against persons known or believed to be armed.

Police Force	2004-05
Central Scotland	1
Dumfries and Galloway	4
Fife	5
Grampian	6
Lothian and Borders	181
Northern	4
Strathclyde	117
Tayside	3

Source: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.

Question reference: S2W-19050

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 September 2005
Current Status: Answered by Nicol Stephen on 21 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive when the First Minister will respond to Alex Salmond MP's letter to him of 22 July 2005.

Question reference: S2W-17983

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 19 July 2005
Current Status: Answered by Andy Kerr on 10 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how many NHS training places for (a) diagnostic and (b) therapeutic radiographers there were in each year since 1997.

Information on the number of diagnostic and therapeutic training places is available for years 2001 to 2004.This information was not collected by all universities for years 1997 to 2000and information for 2005 is not yet available as the intake has not beenfinalised.

The following is a corrected answer (published on 15 August 2005); see below.

Mr Andy Kerr: Information on the number of diagnostic and therapeutic training places is available for years 2001 to 2004. This information was not collected by all universities for years 1997 to 2000 and information for 2005 is not yet available as the intake has not been finalised.

	2001	2002	2003	2004
Diagnostic	297	335	327	352
Therapeutic	70	87	72	76

Question reference: S2W-17984

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 19 July 2005
Current Status: Answered by Andy Kerr on 10 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how many imaging and radiodiagnostics examinations and tests were carried out in the NHS (a) in total, (b) in imaging departments and (c) in other departments in each year since 1997, broken down into (i) CT, (ii) MRI, (iii) obstetric ultrasound, (iv) non-obstetric ultrasound, (v) radioisotopes, (vi) radiographs with no fluoroscopy and (vii) fluoroscopy.

The information requested isnot available centrally.

Work is currently underwayto improve the information collected about radiology services. A radiologyinformation development group has been established and will be involved inproject managing the introduction of methods to collect the type of informationrequested.

This information willunderpin the monitoring and delivery of the recently announced diagnosticwaiting time standard of a maximum nine week wait by the end of 2007.

Question reference: S2W-17919

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 15 July 2005
Current Status: Answered by George Lyon on 9 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive in how many deaths (a) heroin, (b) ecstasy, (c) amphetamines, (d) other illicit substances, (e) alcohol and (f) tobacco were recorded as causes in each year since 1997.

The number of drug-related deaths where heroin, ecstasy, or amphetamines were known to be involved is given in the following table. As individual deaths may involve a number of drugs, it is not possible to say how many deaths were caused by each specific drug. Because many drugs of abuse may be obtained legally but subsequently used illegally, it is not possible to provide information on “other illicit” drugs. There is no standard definition of alcohol-related deaths. The figures shown in the table cover key causes of death known to be associated with alcohol.

	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004
Drug-related deaths – total	224	249	291	292	332	382	317	356
of which involving
Heroin (incl. morphine) ¹	74	121	167	196	216	248	175	225
Ecstasy	2	3	8	11	20	20	14	17
Amphetamines	6	7	7	3	5	13	10	10
Alcohol related deaths ²	851	912	1013	1129	1219	1321	1342	1313

Notes:

1. The table shows a combined total for heroin/morphine as it is believed that, in the overwhelming majority of cases where morphine has been identified in post-mortem toxicological analyses its presence is as a result of heroin use.

2. Deaths from:

(a) Mental and behavioural disorders due to use of alcohol (ICD10 codes F100 to F109, ICD9 codes 291, 303 and 3050);

(b) Alcoholic cardiomyopathy (ICD10 code I426, ICD9 code 4255), and

It is unusual for doctors to mention tobacco (or smoking) as a contributory cause of death when completing death certificates. For example, of the 56,187 deaths registered in 2004, tobacco/smoking was mentioned on fewer than 300 occasions. However, in Health in Scotland 2004, the Chief Medical Officer reported that some 13,000 Scots die each year from smoking-related illness.

Question reference: S2W-18263

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 01 August 2005
Current Status: Answered by Andy Kerr on 9 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what the average response time to an emergency call to the ambulance service was in each NHS board area in each year since 1997, broken down by NHS board.

The information requested is provided in the following table.

NHS Board Area	1997-98 (minutes)	1998-99	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05
Argyll and Clyde	9.7	10.7	9.9	10.0	10.1	11.0	10.2	11.9*
Ayrshire and Arran	9.2	9.5	9.1	9.4	9.6	9.4	9.5	8.6*
Borders	9.9	9.7	9.7	9.9	9.8	10.0*	8.8*	9.2*
Dumfries and Galloway	9.6	9.5	9.5	9.4	9.2	10.7	9.7	10.1*
Fife	9.2	9.0	8.6	8.7	8.6	8.6*	8.1*	7.9*
Forth Valley	9.0	9.8	9.7	9.7	10.0	9.3*	8.6*	8.6*
Grampian	8.6	9.5	8.7	9.4	9.1	11.3	8.1*	7.6*
Greater Glasgow	10.0	10.4	9.8	10.0	9.5	9.2*	8.6*	8.9*
Highland	9.5	10.1	9.6	9.8	9.7	8.3*	9.0*	9.5*
Lanarkshire	9.7	10.2	10.6	10.9	11.4	10.7*	9.3*	9.6*
Lothian	8.8	9.7	8.8	8.8	8.8	8.8*	7.9*	7.9*
Orkney	11.3	11.5	9.6	11.4	13.3	11.4	10.5	10.3
Shetland	12.5	13.5	11.6	13.7	14.2	13.8	12.2	13.6
Tayside	8.0	8.7	8.7	8.7	8.7	8.6*	8.4*	8.2*
Western Isles	9.7	10.7	10.4	11.1	11.2	11.2	10.5	10.6
Scotland	9.3	9.8	9.5	9.6	9.5	9.8	9.3*	8.6*

Note: *Under Priority Based Dispatch Category A (Life Threatening) calls only. Previously the time was to all emergency incidents.

In some boards the recent decline in the average response time is a reflection of the consequences for the Scottish Ambulance Service of changes made by NHS boards to how they provide hospital services. Where such changes have been made then we have provided for additional resources to be put in by the Scottish Ambulance Service to enable it to manage these consequences. It takes time for the additional staff resources to be trained and deployed and for the impact on service times to materialise. This is also against the background that the ambulance service has responded to 32,257 more emergency incidents in 2004-05 than it did in 2002-03 (332,474 in 2004-05 against 300,217 in 2002-03) an increase of 10.7% over the last two years.

Question reference: S2W-18241

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 29 July 2005
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 1 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how many staff were employed by it, and what the total expenditure was, on communications in 2004-05, broken down into (a) information and communications technology staff, (b) press officers, (c) special advisers and (d) others and what the estimated equivalent figures are for 2005-06.

Question reference: S2W-18240

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 29 July 2005
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 1 September 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what the total travel costs were for (a) ministers, (b) special advisers and (c) officials in each of its departments in 2004-05.