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 3924 questions Show Answers

Order by |

Question reference: S6W-12484

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 8 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many short-term let businesses currently operate in Scotland.

Since short-term lets as a category have not previously been subject to regulation, there are no official statistics on the size of the sector. However, there are a variety of data sources which can provide indirect evidence of how the sector has evolved in recent years, particularly with the growing prevalence of on-line platforms. This is discussed in Section B of our Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment: Short-term lets: business and regulatory impact assessment - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Our licensing scheme will provide data on the number, type and location of short-term lets in Scotland. Licensing authorities must maintain a public register of applications for short-term lets licences which they are required to share with the Scottish Government on a quarterly basis. The Scottish Government will amalgamate licensing authority data to produce a national report. This national report on short-term let activity in Scotland will close a significant gap in knowledge that currently exists.

Question reference: S6O-01679

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 December 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 14 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of how any additional cost of living pressures will impact on the rebuilding of public services, as set out in its Covid Recovery Strategy, in particular public services in Edinburgh.

Question reference: S6W-12571

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 25 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 7 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has recently evaluated infusions and injections for the treatment of chronic pain, and, if so, whether it will provide details of the treatments and methods by which they have been evaluated.

Question reference: S6W-12617

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 7 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many local authority-funded care home places there have been in each year since 1999, and, of those, how many were provided by (a) local authority- or charity-run and (b) independent care homes.

The number of resident places by funding category (i.e. publicly funded) is not available. However, Public Health Scotland have published the estimated number of long stay residents in care homes for older people by funding category and by local authority since 2009.

These figures are available in two parts:

The latest Public Health Scotland Care Home Census for adults publication contains figures from 2012 - 2022. The figures can be found in the “Funding and Charges” section of the dashboard.

The Public Health Scotland Care Home Census for adults 2020 publication contains figures from 2009 – 2011. The figures can be found in Table 13C of the accompanying Care Home Census Data Tables.

a) This information is not held centrally and is not published by Public Health Scotland.

b) This information is not held centrally and is not published by Public Health Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-12496

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 5 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what part infusions and injections will have in future plans to treat chronic pain.

I understand how important infusions and injections are for those patients receiving them, and that work is needed to improve care for people with chronic pain and the sustainability of our pain management services.

It is our intention that people can access safe, effective, evidence-based care and support. Therefore, as set out in the Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery – Implementation Plan which we published in July, we are taking action to develop a more consistent, nationally agreed approach to the provision of specialist medical interventions, such as infusions and injections.

This will take into account existing clinical evidence, the variation in approach between Health Boards and seek to reflect the views and needs of both the patient and clinical community.

Question reference: S6W-12486

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 5 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the debate on chronic pain services on 16 November 2022, during which several members expressed support for NHS specialist chronic pain services being provided as a priority for patients requiring treatment following a referral from a clinician, whether it will clarify whether (a) specialist chronic pain services will be protected and (b) it will analyse relevant staffing levels, in order to decrease waiting times for these services.

The Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery – Implementation Plan was published in July 2022 and sets out the actions the Scottish Government are taking to improve care and services for people with chronic pain.

The Implementation Plan acknowledges the importance of specialist pain management services and includes a number of specific actions to improve access and quality of care provided by these services. This includes convening an expert working group to review pathways into specialist care and identify opportunities to share and promote best practice as well as piloting new digital pathways to improve how people access specialist services.

As part of this work it is expected that challenges around staffing of specialist services will also be explored. This activity will also be informed by a new national pain service managers network which will help to identify and prioritise key issues affecting the resilience and quality of specialist pain services, including workforce. In addition, the Scottish Government will publish, for the first time, projections of required workforce growth across health and social care as part of the National Workforce Strategy. Once generated these will be reviewed annually.

Question reference: S6W-12395

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 21 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 1 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-05564 by John Swinney on 10 January 2017, whether it will provide an update on how many school support staff each local authority has employed in each year since 2010, broken down by category of employment.

Data on school support staff are collected as part of the annual school staff census.

National Statistics on selected categories of school support staff (pupil support assistants, home-school link workers, behaviour support staff, educational psychologists, school nurses and library staff) can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-statistics/

Management information (which are not subject to the same quality assurance procedures by Scottish Government statisticians as Official Statistics) for all other support staff roles for which data is collected centrally can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-management-information/

Statistics for all categories of support staff prior to 2017 are available as part of the Teacher Census Supplementary Data: https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementary-statistics/

The processing and quality assurance of the statistics on school support staff from 2017 onwards has been brought into line with procedures for National Statistics on pupils and teachers. This means that statistics from 2017 onwards are not directly comparable with the data on support staff from previous years.

Question reference: S6O-01652

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what steps are being taken to increase the allocation of police officers in Edinburgh.

Question reference: S6W-12192

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on how many modular homes have been built in each local authority area in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-12193

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many new homes have been built in Scotland in each year since 1999.