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.

Find out more about parliamentary questions

Filter your results Hide all filters

Displaying 854 questions Show Answers

Order by |

Question reference: S4W-07157

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 May 2012
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 25 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what (a) assistance and (b) financial support it has made available to disabled children and their families since May 2007.

Figures are available only on a financial year basis. Since the start of the financial year 2007-08, over £57.7 million of financial support was provided or committed to support disabled children and their families.

There is also a wide range of policy work with the aim of supporting disabled children and their families.

In addition, there are a variety of funding streams dedicated to supporting all children and their families, from which disabled children will also benefit. For example, the Scottish Government funds a range of organisations to support those who have additional support needs overcome barriers to learning. This could be through direct support such as the Grant Aided Special Schools, who will receive £10.8 million in 2012-13, or through enhancing the capacity of the system to meet their needs.

Furthermore, in the financial years 2007-08 to 2010-11, £153.8 million was provided by local authorities in Scotland for care homes, homecare, daycare and equipment and adaptations for disabled children.

Question reference: S4W-07159

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 May 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 25 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what projects in the West Scotland region have received funding from the Short Breaks Fund.

Question reference: S4W-07250

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 24 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive how many fires in each fire brigade area in each of the last five years have been caused by (a) cigarettes or (b) other materials for smoking.

Data provided below are the total number of primary fires that Scotland’s Fire and Rescue Services attended in the last five years where the source of ignition was recorded as smoking materials. Smoking materials include cigarettes, cigars, tobacco etc.

Fire and Rescue Services	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11^P
Central	26	21	55	33	34
Dumfries and Galloway	12	12	8	17	17
Fife	25	31	47	41	31
Grampian	43	46	70	59	46
Highlands and Islands	21	16	31	12	21
Lothian and Borders	163	177	114	243	199
Strathclyde	244	285	226	233	239
Tayside	53	52	36	55	57
Scotland	587	640	587	693	644

^PProvisional.

Source: IRS Dataset 2010-11 and FDR1 2005-06 to 2008-09.

Note: The information above only relates to primary fires as the source of ignition is not consistently available over the five years for all other types of fires. The main locations for primary fires are dwellings, other buildings, road vehicles and other large fires – i.e. fires involving casualties, rescues or any fires attended by five appliances or more are classified as primary.

Data before 2009-10 was calculated on a weighted sample.

Question reference: S4O-01059

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 May 2012
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 31 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what plans it has to improve the support offered to the victims of crime.

Question reference: S4W-07223

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 14 May 2012
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 23 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive how many hospital discharges there have been with a diagnosis of leptospirosis in each of the last five years, broken down by NHS board.

The following table shows information provided by NHS Information Services Division (ISD), on the number of acute hospital episodes where a diagnosis of Leptospirosis has been recorded by NHS board of Treatment, for the last five years.

Number of acute hospital episodes with a diagnosis of Leptospirosis

by NHS Board of Treatment; years ending 31 March 2007 to 31 March 2011¹

NHS Board of Treatment	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11¹
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	0	0	0	2	0
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	0	4	3	2	0
NHS Forth Valley	0	0	0	1	0
NHS Grampian	2	1	0	2	2
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	3	3	13	0	0
NHS Highland	0	2	0	1	0
NHS Lothian	0	1	0	0	0
NHS Orkney	0	0	0	1	0
NHS Tayside	0	1	0	1	0
NHS Scotland	5	12	16	10	2

Source: ISD Scotland, SMR01.

Note:1. Data for 2010-11 are provisional. Any future revisions to the figures will be small.

Question reference: S4W-07249

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 23 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive how many fires have been dealt with in each fire brigade area in each of the last five years.

Data provided below shows the total number of fires that Scotland’s Fire and Rescue Services attended in the last five years: 2006-07 to 2010-11.

Fire and Rescue Services	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11^p
Central	2,258	2,081	1,772	1,844	1,828
Dumfries and Galloway	845	806	705	676	665
Fife	3,250	2,695	2,152	2,047	1,827
Grampian	3,477	3,287	2,842	2,613	2,423
Highlands and Islands	1,815	1,744	1,822	1,703	1,788
Lothian and Borders	9,072	8,167	6,755	7,055	6,317
Strathclyde	24,647	23,681	21,821	20,251	21,555
Tayside	3,219	3,176	2,701	2,542	2,524
Scotland	48,584	45,636	40,570	38,731	38,927

Source:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/Datasets/FireStatsFire.

Note: ^pprovisional.

Data before 2009-10 was calculated on a weighted sample and may not summate to the Scotland total due to rounding.

Question reference: S4W-07145

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 May 2012
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 22 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what its position is on the findings in the World Health Organization report, Born Too Soon: The Global Action Report on Preterm Birth.

The Scottish Government welcomes this report on the numbers of preterm babies born across the world, which points out prevention strategies and care for premature babies which will improve survival and outcomes.

Scottish data was not specifically reported on in the report, however, figures produced by ISD show that, since 2006 there has been a reduction in the proportion of preterm births in Scotland. The 2010 rate in Scotland is lower than the overall UK preterm birth rate of 7.8% of all births.

Many of the prevention strategies mentioned in the report are already being worked on in Scotland through the Refreshed Framework for Maternity Care, which was published in January 2011. These include improved access to antenatal care and improved antenatal education both for women and families and for health professionals. The Neonatal Expert Advisory Group has also developed standards for neonatal care which reflect many of the issues highlighted in the report.

Question reference: S4W-07147

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 May 2012
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 22 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive what action it is taking to improve preterm birth rates.

The Refreshed Framework for Maternity Care was launched last year and aims to ensure that maternity services maximise their contribution to ensuring the best possible outcomes for mother and baby. Care should be individualised to a woman’s needs and women with complex health and social care needs who are at risk of preterm delivery should receive additional support. We expect NHS boards to plan services to suit the needs of their local population in line with this and ensure that care is person centred, safe and effective to help reduce the incidence of premature birth and neonatal admission.

The Scottish Government has recently introduced an access HEAT target for NHS boards to improve rates of early access to antenatal care for all women, as we recognise that lack of antenatal care is a risk factor for preterm delivery and that identification of risk factors is important as early in pregnancy as possible in order to improve outcomes. We have also assisted NHS boards to improve capacity of antenatal services to reach higher risk groups and identify and manage risks during pregnancy to reduce the need for neonatal admission.

For those women who do go on to have a preterm labour and require neonatal care, the forthcoming Quality Framework for Neonatal Care defines the approach to the provision of high quality care for neonates and their families and supports NHSScotland in the delivery of high quality, evidence based, safe, effective and person centred neonatal care.

For women who, sadly, experience stillbirth of their baby, which is often associated with babies who are born prematurely, the Scottish Government convened Stillbirth Group is considering all issues pertinent to stillbirth and will look specifically at improvements in the detection of risks during pregnancy.

Question reference: S4W-07158

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 May 2012
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 22 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive how much funding the Short Breaks Fund has provided to the West Scotland region, broken down by local authority.

Funding from the Short Breaks Fund to the West Scotland region, broken down by local authority, is provided in the following table:

Local Authority	Total
	£000
Argyll and Bute	198,523
East Ayrshire	48,145
East Dunbartonshire	166,701
East Renfrewshire	135,635
Glasgow	217,573
Inverclyde	28,000
North Ayrshire	43,806
North Lanarkshire	64,367
Renfrewshire	37,251
West Dunbartonshire	104,608
Western Isles	23,381
Total	1,067,990

Question reference: S4W-07146

Asked by: Stewart Maxwell, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 May 2012
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 21 May 2012

To ask the Scottish Executive how many preterm births per 100 births there have been in each of the last five years, also broken down by local authority.

Table 1: Number of preterm births per 100 births by local council authority, year ending 31 March, 2006-2010.

	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Scotland	8.2	7.6	7.7	7.9	7.5
Aberdeen City	8.6	9.4	9.2	9.0	7.4
Aberdeenshire	8.8	8.3	7.8	8.6	8.2
Angus	6.6	7.5	8.4	8.4	8.1
Argyll and Bute	9.6	7.8	7.3	7.0	8.5
City of Edinburgh	7.6	7.0	6.8	8.0	7.4
City of Glasgow	9.0	8.5	8.4	8.0	7.3
Clackmannanshire	7.0	6.3	6.1	8.3	9.8
Dumfries and Galloway	8.8	9.3	7.6	6.9	6.7
Dundee City	8.0	8.2	8.8	8.4	8.1
East Ayrshire	10.6	8.4	10.1	7.7	8.4
East Dunbartonshire	7.9	6.3	6.3	7.2	5.5
East Lothian	8.3	8.1	8.8	6.4	6.1
East Renfrewshire	9.7	5.4	5.5	8.9	8.1
Falkirk	7.2	6.5	6.6	7.6	7.7
Fife	6.8	6.9	7.1	7.2	7.6
Highland	7.4	7.3	7.0	7.6	6.7
Inverclyde	10.4	7.3	7.2	7.7	9.0
Midlothian	7.4	6.2	7.7	8.6	8.7
Moray	7.6	4.9	7.5	6.6	5.8
North Ayrshire	10.5	8.9	9.0	8.0	7.4
North Lanarkshire	8.5	7.6	8.1	8.1	7.7
Orkney Islands	4.9	7.4	9.6	8.7	7.9
Perth and Kinross	6.6	7.7	5.8	6.9	7.9
Renfrewshire	8.4	7.4	7.7	9.1	7.2
Scottish Borders	5.9	5.5	7.3	6.7	7.8
Shetland Islands	4.9	7.1	4.6	10.1	7.6
South Ayrshire	8.4	8.9	8.6	7.4	6.1
South Lanarkshire	7.4	6.5	7.4	7.5	6.7
Stirling	6.7	7.3	5.5	7.3	7.8
West Dunbartonshire	9.2	9.6	7.3	8.3	6.5
West Lothian	8.9	7.9	8.1	8.4	7.8
Western Isles	5.4	7.2	4.4	6.5	9.0
Other/Not known	9.9	13.7	13.7	14.4	9.0

Source: ISD Scotland, SMR02.

Notes:

1. SMR02 baby records with missing estimated gestations are excluded from the analysis.

2. Excludes home births and births at non-NHS hospitals.
3. Where four or more babies are involved in a pregnancy, birth details are recorded only for the first three babies delivered.

4. Includes live and stillbirths.

5. Some records could not be assigned to a local council authority.

6. Preterm births are births under 37 weeks gestation.

7. 2010 rates are based on provisional SMR02 data.