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: S6W-25813

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 27 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jim Fairlie on 8 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what information it holds on how many dogs that have been taken in by enforcement agencies in each of the last five years were reunited with their owners.

Question reference: S6W-25810

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 27 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jim Fairlie on 8 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has any plans to review the Microchipping of Dogs (Scotland) Regulations 2016, with particular consideration given to enforcement, consistency of processes and punishments across local authorities.

Question reference: S6W-25339

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 6 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-24723 by Fiona Hyslop on 5 February 2024, whether it will provide a breakdown of the maximum weight of cars that each ferry in the CalMac fleet is able to transport.

Question reference: S6W-25602

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 4 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how many instances of long child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) waiting times have been raised by the public with (a) each NHS board and (b) the Scottish Government, in each of the last three years.

Information on enquiries to Boards about CAMHS is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. Each NHS Board in Scotland has their own system in place for managing complaints raised by the public.

The Scottish Government records and processes enquiries and correspondence addressed to Scottish Ministers on its Ministerial and Corporate Correspondence (MiCase) System and any correspondence related to CAMHS is answered via this system. Over the last 3 years, 27 cases specifically mentioned CAMHS waiting times.

Question reference: S6W-25597

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 4 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how many patients have been referred to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS); what proportion of patients have waited more than a year on CAMHS waiting lists; what proportion of patients have started treatment within 10 weeks of referral, and how many CAMHS specialists have been available, in each NHS board in each of the last three years.

CAMHS Referrals

Information on patients referred to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) is as follows. The data is not currently available for quarter October 2023 – December 2023. As such the following figures for 2023 only cover January – September. Information for quarter October – December 2023 is expected to be published on 5 March 2024.

	2021	2022	2023 (Jan - Sep)
NHS Ayrshire & Arran	2131	2620	2241
NHS Borders	696	860	639
NHS Dumfries & Galloway	1261	1591	1185
NHS Fife	3178	2910	2188
NHS Forth Valley	1649	1453	1509
NHS Grampian	3738	3738	2746
NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde	8299	8906	6390
NHS Highland	1838	1678	1203
NHS Lanarkshire	3826	3575	2517
NHS Lothian	6989	7880	5636
NHS Orkney	16	114	122
NHS Shetland	134	152	95
NHS Tayside	2076	2404	1719
NHS Western Isles	164	158	95

One-Year Waiting Lists

We have seen transformational improvements in CAMHS waiting lists in the last year, and this has continued during the latest quarter. Children waiting over 52 weeks has decreased by 88% since end September 2022 – a reduction of 1,105 (down from 1,252 to 147).

Waiting list data for CAMHS is taken at the end of each month, and only contains data of the number of patients waiting within specific wait bands at that point. As such it is not possible to identify individual patients journey within the present Public Health Scotland publication PHS CAMHS Waiting Times . This publication provides data on waiting lists at the end of each month and for each health board.

Treatment Within 10-weeks of Referral

Patients starting treatment are divided into 4 wait bands 0-18 weeks, 19-35 weeks, 36-52 weeks and 53 weeks plus. Information therefore on patients starting treatment within 10 weeks is not available. Boards continue to respond to high demand for CAMHS, with statistics showing that 1 in 2 people referred to CAMHS start treatment within 10 weeks. Further data information on CAMHS patients starting treatment is publicly available via Public Health Scotland: PHS CAMHS Waiting Times .

CAMHS Specialists in Each Board

Child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) workforce data is publicly available in NHS Education for Scotland (NES) Turas Data Intelligence at: NHS Scotland Workforce Data . This provides data on staff joining and leaving rates by Health Board.

Question reference: S6W-25599

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 4 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has been advised by NHS Tayside that child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) waiting times are expected to worsen.

Scottish Government Ministers and officials are aware of the current challenges faced by NHS Tayside in meeting waiting time standards set out for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

NHS Tayside are receiving additional support which includes providing access to professional specialist advice, making sure that they have robust improvement plans place and are continually monitoring their implementation. Regular and structured engagement with NHS Tayside at both Ministerial and official level is continuing. This is in addition to requesting formal quarterly written updates.

In addition all Boards have been asked to submit trajectories setting out a timeline for clearing long waits. These will be updated annually and used to inform further targeted improvement work to ensure all Boards meet CAMHS waiting times standards.

Question reference: S6W-25598

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 4 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how much has been invested in clearing any long waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), and how any such targeted support has affected waiting times, in each NHS board in each of the last three years.

The NHS Recovery Plan 2021-2026 refers to the support for CAMHS included in the £120m Mental Health Recovery and Renewal Fund. In total, £34m of the Fund was invested in 2021/22 to improve access to and quality of CAMHS services.

This fund was superseded in 2022-23 by the Mental Health Outcomes Framework, which bundled funding to Boards for improvements to CAMHS, psychological therapies, eating disorder care, primary care and children and young people’s neurodevelopmental services, as well as ongoing innovation and service reform.

The intention behind bundling was to allow Boards flexibility to align spending to local priorities, based on this it is not possible to separate out the specific CAMHS funding provided to each Board from 2022-23 onwards. We have allocated £48.6 million of supplementary funding to Boards so far this year via the Mental Health Outcomes Framework. This is in addition to £36.7 million allocated to Health Boards via the Outcomes Framework in 2022-23; and to the total package of core funding that Health Boards receive.

So far 13 out of 14 CAMHS services have effectively eliminated their long wait lists (where 3% or fewer of all waits are over 1 year). Full data information on for each Board on CAMHS patients starting treatment is publicly available via Public Health Scotland: PHS CAMHS Waiting Times .

Question reference: S6W-25600

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 4 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what tailored support it is providing to NHS Tayside, in addition to headline funding, to reduce any long waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

Question reference: S6W-25601

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 4 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how many specialist child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) staff have (a) been recruited and (b) left the health service, in each NHS board in each of the last three years.

Question reference: S6O-03176

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 28 February 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to reduce the number of assaults by pupils in schools.