Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-16836

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 April 2023
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it can provide an estimate of how many veterans have used the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework Partnership’s qualifications and skills mapping tool since its launch in February 2022.

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) Partnership's military skills discovery tool formally launched in March 2023 after the completion of work to expand the number of military job roles within the tool as the result of feedback and testing with service leavers. As such there are limited statistics on the number of users to date, but SCQF Partnership are working with Skills Development Scotland, who host the tool on their My World of Work website, to develop usage statistics and to use them to drive future development of the tool.

Question reference: S6O-02102

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 April 2023
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 19 April 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether all farmers will have the ability to apply for, and be granted, all conditionality payments under its new agricultural support scheme.

Question reference: S6O-02055

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government when it will begin to set out its proposals for the NHS Scotland Infrastructure Investment Plan, post-2026, in relation to new-build hospitals.

Question reference: S6W-14908

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 10 February 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angus Robertson on 8 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-13553 by Angus Robertson on 13 January 2023, when it anticipates the work will be completed.

Question reference: S6T-01236

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 March 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the recent comments by the Chief Executive of CalMac, what action it is taking to prevent island residents being impacted by any reliability issues affecting their ferry services over the next two years.

Question reference: S6O-01944

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 February 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 1 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether all victims of crime are given notice in advance of their case going to court.

Question reference: S6O-01842

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 January 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 1 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on when it will start publishing information collected via Scotland’s Census 2022.

Question reference: S6W-13553

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 04 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angus Robertson on 13 January 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-13303 by Angus Robertson on 16 December 2022, whether it will provide the full production costs, including staff costs.

Question reference: S6W-13301

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 16 December 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 11 January 2023

To ask the Scottish Government when all six rural hospitals in Scotland each will have three general surgery consultants.

While the Scottish Government provides the policies, frameworks and resources for high quality healthcare, it is for each NHS Board to decide best how to utilise funding, facilities and staff while taking account of national and local priorities to meet local health needs.

We will develop a Remote and Rural workforce recruitment strategy by the end of 2024. This will support employers to ensure that the Health and Social Care needs of people who live in remote and rural communities are met.

As part of the Scottish Government’s work to develop a sustainable healthcare workforce, we continue to look for opportunities to increase levels of recruitment and retention of healthcare staff in rural areas.

The number of doctors in training is also up 24.3% under the SNP - or 1,295.6 WTE (from 5,336.1 WTE as at September 2006 to 6,631.7 WTE as at Sept 2022). And we have now created the biggest ever expansion of medical training posts – 152 places at £37m over the next four years to help future-proof our NHS. This equates to 2.5% increase in WTE workforce of 6,100 trainees – who make up 42% of doctors in hospitals. This brings the total number of additional places created by Scottish ministers to 725, since 2014.

In all areas of NHS Scotland, a great deal of effort is going into ensuring that services have sufficient capacity to deal with COVID-19, manage other risks and resume planned services as safely and effectively as possible. This includes ensuring that there are sufficient levels of consultant, including general surgeons.

Question reference: S6W-13552

Asked by: Edward Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 04 January 2023
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 10 January 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-13389 by Patrick Harvie on 21 December 2022, what discussions it has had with the private rented sector regarding rent cap provisions under the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022, and whether it is its intention to expire the rent cap provision in the private sector in March 2023.

Chamber and committees