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-09072

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 28 January 2008
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 19 February 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive when it will make a decision on the suitability of funding the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route through the Scottish Futures Trust.

Question reference: S3W-20367

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 30 January 2009
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 19 February 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive what its assessment is of Operation Cougar in tackling gang culture in Manchester, as reported by the Home Office on 29 January 2009.

The Scottish Government welcomes the efforts taken by others to tackle gang violence and is interested in any initiative that has a positive impact. We are therefore looking carefully at Operation Cougar and will consider what action, if any, could be replicated in Scotland. In the meantime, we are continuing to take direct and innovative action to tackle this problem. The next phase of the Violence Reduction Unit''s anti-violence campaign in March will see the police across Scotland delivering intelligence-led coordinated action on gangs, and the groundbreaking Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) project currently being delivered in Glasgow, for which we are providing £1.6 million funding, is providing co-ordinated and intensive services to over 700 gang members to encourage and support them change their lives.

Question reference: S3W-09222

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 18 February 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive what plans it has to raise awareness in Grampian of the symptoms and causes of strokes.

The Stroke Managed Clinical Network (MCN) in NHS Grampian works with public health teams, service users and their carers to provide information on stroke at public events. It also promotes awareness of the risk factors which lead to strokes, and continues to work closely with Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland (CHSS) to promote the Face, Arm, Speech Test (FAST) campaign, which has been developed to identify very quickly whether someone has had a stroke.

Question reference: S3W-09223

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 18 February 2008

Information on deaths from complications related to stroke is not available because it is not possible to establish, from centrally held data, the causal relationship between the original stroke and any subsequent, potential complication.

The numbers of deaths which occurred in NHS hospitals where stroke was recorded as the underlying cause of death were as follows:

Year	Stroke Deaths
2002	2,640
2003	2,441
2004	2,415
2005	2,164
2006	2,157

Source: ISD analysis of General Register Office Scotland mortality data.

Question reference: S3W-09075

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 28 January 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 11 February 2008

The information requested isshown in the following table. Figures for 2007 will not be available until August2008.

Deaths from Heart Disease¹in NHS Grampian Hospitals, Deaths Registered 2002-06

	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Heart Disease¹	699	683	638	602	560
Chronic rheumatic heart diseases²	8	8	10	7	8
Ischaemic heart diseases³	545	542	508	456	413
Pulmonary heart diseases and diseases of pulmonary circulation⁴	18	25	18	23	21
Other forms of heart disease⁵	128	108	102	116	118

Source: General RegisterOffice for Scotland.

Notes:

1. ICD10 codes I05-I52excluding I10-I15.

2. ICD10 codes I05-I09.

3. ICD10 codes I20-I25.

4. ICD10 codes I26-I28.

5. ICD10 codes I30-I52.

Question reference: S3W-09074

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 28 January 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 11 February 2008

The number of people who diedfrom lung cancer in NHS Grampian hospitals registered during the period 2002-06are in the following table. Data for 2007 is not yet available.

Year	Count
2002	224
2003	214
2004	217
2005	228
2006	175

Source: General Register forScotland.

Question reference: S3W-08311

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 January 2008
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Stevenson on 7 February 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how much funding in the spending review will be allocated to developing rail projects in Grampian.

Question reference: S3W-08804

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Current Status: Answered by Maureen Watt on 6 February 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many pupils at (a) primary and (b) secondary schools were suspended or expelled for bringing knives into school buildings in (i) 2002-03, (ii) 2003-04, (iii) 2004-05, (iv) 2005-06 and (v) 2006-07, broken down by local authority.

This informationis not held centrally.

Information on the number and type of incidentswhich led to school exclusion in each year requested is available from:

2002-03: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/02/18912/33196.2003-04: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/02/20735/53114.2004-05: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/01/30144545/0.2005-06: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/01/30100624/0.

2006-07:http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00623.

Question reference: S3W-08916

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 January 2008
Current Status: Answered by Maureen Watt on 6 February 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many incidents were recorded at (a) primary and (b) secondary schools in each local authority where pupils were caught taking a class A, B or C drug during (i) 2002-03, (ii) 2003-04, (iii) 2004-05, (iv) 2005-06 and (v) 2006-07.

Question reference: S3W-08909

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 January 2008
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 5 February 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how much (a) heroin, (b) cocaine and (c) cannabis has been seized in each year since 2002, expressed in pounds (i) weight and (ii) sterling, also broken down by community justice authority area.

The information requestedon quantities seized of various illegal drugs from 1995-96 to 2005-06, is givenin tables 5, 7, 15 and 17 of “Drug Seizures by Scottish Police Forces, 2004-005and 2005-2006” published by the Scottish Government in January 2007, copies of whichare available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 42386).http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/02/09094216/0.

Please note that theinformation on quantities of drugs seized is presented in kg and not in pounds,and that figures can only be broken down geographically to police force area level.

Data on the valueof seizures is not held centrally.