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-26077

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Thursday, 11 June 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 25 June 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how it will redress the reported imbalance between NHS boards in wealthier areas having consistently shorter waiting times than those in less wealthy areas.

Firstly, all A&E departments across the country strive to achieve the four hour A&E target to ensure the safe and effective treatment of the patient – this is in no way linked to whether the NHS board is located within a wealthy area or otherwise.

To support sustainable performance across Scotland I launched the roll out of a new approach to improving unscheduled care in May 2015. This new approach, which has been welcomed by clinicians, the Academy of Royal Colleges and the Royal College of Nursing, aims to minimise long waits in A&E and assessment units, by improving patient flow throughout all areas of the hospital and in the community. This approach has already underpinned improvements in a number of NHS boards across Scotland, ensuring best practice is installed throughout the hospital system.

This new approach will be progressed by dedicated national and local teams and will ensure that each health board across Scotland will achieve performance at 95%, striving towards 98%.

In addition, the NHS Scotland Resource Allocation Committee formula, which is used in the allocation of around 70% of the total NHS budget between the 14 territorial NHS boards in Scotland and provides funding to NHS boards for the provision of Hospital and Community Health Services and GP prescribing, is based on a weighted capitation approach that starts with the number of people resident in each NHS board area. The formula then makes adjustments for the age/sex profile of the NHS board population, their additional needs based on morbidity and life circumstances (including deprivation) and the excess costs of providing services in different geographical areas.

Question reference: S4W-26076

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Thursday, 11 June 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 23 June 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how it will ensure that NHS Lanarkshire increases the percentage of patients seen within four hours from its current average of 88% to the target of 95%.

The Scottish Government is supporting NHS Lanarkshire to improve its performance against the four hour target through the national unscheduled care programme.

This new focused approach will be progressed by dedicated national and local teams. NHS Lanarkshire is currently in the process of appointing its team and implementing some of the early actions of the new approach, which have already seen significant improvement in Monklands – in fact performance in the week ending 7 June 2015 performance at Monklands was 96.5%. NHS Lanarkshire has received over £800,000 for 2015-16 to support improvements in unscheduled care.

In May 2015 I launched the roll out of a new six essential actions approach to improving unscheduled care nationally. This new approach, which has been welcomed by clinicians, the academy of Royal Colleges and the Royal College of Nursing, aims to minimise long waits in A&E and assessment units by improving patient flow throughout all areas of the hospital and in the community. This approach has already underpinned improvements in other NHS boards across Scotland, ensuring best practice is installed throughout the hospital system.

Question reference: S4W-26075

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Thursday, 11 June 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 23 June 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how it will address reported longer waiting times at NHS Lanarkshire than anywhere else and ensure that people in Lanarkshire receive treatment times on a par with the rest of the country.

Question reference: S4T-01081

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Monday, 22 June 2015
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 23 June 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with Scottish Water regarding the pollution issues reported across North Lanarkshire.

Question reference: S4W-26021

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Tuesday, 09 June 2015
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 17 June 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the findings by Quaker Social Action, which suggest that the average cost of a funeral has risen by 80% in the last decade and that 47% of applications to the social funeral fund are rejected.

Question reference: S4W-26020

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Tuesday, 09 June 2015
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 17 June 2015

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide support to the reported increasing number of people on (a) low incomes and (b) zero-hours contracts who are unable to afford funeral costs.

Question reference: S4W-26043

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Tuesday, 09 June 2015
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 17 June 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how it is tackling the reported increase in funeral poverty.

The Scottish Government recently consulted on proposals for new legislation governing burial and cremation. Funeral poverty was considered as part of this and a range of responses were received. We are currently looking at ways in which funeral-related costs might be tackled through legislation, as well as various other policy routes. For example, we are exploring the development of a leaflet for pensioners on arranging funerals, to help them take control.

Question reference: S4O-04440

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 June 2015
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 10 June 2015

To ask the Scottish Government when officials last met the board of NHS Lanarkshire.

Question reference: S4O-04426

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Thursday, 28 May 2015
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 4 June 2015

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what assessment it has made of the use of business sponsorship for Parliament events.

Question reference: S4W-25341

Asked by: John Wilson, MSP for Central Scotland, Independent
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 April 2015
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 6 May 2015

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S4W-25092 by Keith Brown on 21 April 2015, whether it will provide the (a) names of each project, (b) rate of return for each project on the lower grade debt instruments used to finance them and (c) estimated completion date for each project in Central Scotland.

The information requested is contained in the following table.

Project	Estimated Completion Date	Lower grade debt return to Scottish Futures Trust (SFT)
Central Scotland Non-Profit Distributing (NPD)
City of Glasgow College	August 2016	*
Ayrshire College (Kilmarnock Campus)	May 2016	*
M8/M73/M74 Motorway Improvements	March 2017	*
Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service National Centre	March 2016	*
Royal Hospital for Sick Children/Department of Clinical Neurosciences	August 2017	*
Acute Mental Health and North Ayrshire Community Hospital	March 2016	*
Central Scotland hub
James Gillespie’s High School	July 2016	10.9%
NHS Lanarkshire Bundle	March 2016	10.5%
Redevelopment of Royal Edinburgh Hospital Campus – Phase 1	December 2016	10.8%
Levenmouth High School	July 2016	10.0%
Maryhill Health Centre and Eastwood Health and Care Centre	March 2016	9.8%
Greenfaulds High School	June 2017	10.5%

*SFT does not invest in these projects. They were included in the answer to S4W-25092 for completeness.

Project	Estimated Completion Date	Lower grade debt return to SFT
Central Scotland NPD
City of Glasgow College	August 2016	*
Ayrshire College (Kilmarnock Campus)	May 2016	*
M8/M73/M74 Motorway Improvements	March 2017	*
Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service National Centre	March 2016	*
Royal Hospital for Sick Children/Department of Clinical Neurosciences	August 2017	*
Acute Mental Health and North Ayrshire Community Hospital	March 2016	*
Central Scotland hub
James Gillespie’s High School	July 2016	10.9%
NHS Lanarkshire Bundle	March 2016	10.5%
Redevelopment of Royal Edinburgh Hospital Campus – Phase 1	December 2016	10.8%
Levenmouth High School	July 2016	10.0%
Maryhill Health Centre and Eastwood Health and Care Centre	March 2016	9.8%
Greenfaulds High School	June 2017	10.5%

*SFT does not invest in these projects. They were included in the answer to
S4W-25092 for completeness.