- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 28 October 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by John Swinney on 3 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what (a) assessment it has made of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, and (b) potential lessons can learned for Scotland.
Answer
The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting all survivors of childhood abuse. We are currently considering the evidence, findings and recommendations which have come out of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales, and will do the same for the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry when it reports the outcome of its investigations in due course. The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry continues to investigate the abuse of children in care in Scotland.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 November 2022
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Current Status:
Taken in the Chamber on 10 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what actions are being taken to end the practice of children living in temporary accommodation, in light of recent homelessness statistics.
Answer
Taken in the Chamber on 10 November 2022
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 28 October 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 2 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to introduce a Help to Buy scheme for veterans, to support veterans and their families when buying a home.
Answer
Veterans who have left the armed forces within the past two years are a priority access group for the Low Cost Initiative for First-Time Buyers (LIFT) shared equity schemes, which includes the Open Market Shared Equity and New Supply Shared Equity schemes.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 28 October 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 2 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government how many people have been helped through the Help to Buy scheme in each year since its introduction.
Answer
Information on how many people have been helped through the Help to Buy (Scotland) scheme can be found under the Monitoring Information Report heading here: https://www.gov.scot/policies/homeowners/help-to-buy/
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 13 October 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Kevin Stewart on 1 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) suicides and (b) attempted suicides have been recorded in mental health facilities in each year since 1999, broken down by location.
Answer
This data is not held centrally by The Scottish Government, National Records of Scotland or Public Health Scotland.
In September 2022 the Scottish Government and COSLA published Scotland’s 10 year suicide prevention strategy and action plan, ‘Creating Hope Together’. This sets out a comprehensive plan to reduce suicide deaths in Scotland.
The initial 3 year action plan will support continuous improvement in the quality of clinical care and support provided by mental health services for people who are suicidal. This includes embedding the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health (NCISH) guidelines into operating practices. NCISH is the UK’s leading research programme into suicide prevention in clinical services, and is supported by the Scottish Government. Data tables from their 2022 Annual Report are available to view here which provides information on location of suicides, but is not broken down specifically to mental health settings.
The new strategy includes a continued focus on rolling out multi-agency suicide reviews across Scotland, which will provide valuable learning about where service opportunities have been missed in preventing a suicide. The suicide reviews will include information on whether the person who died was a mental health services inpatient. It is expected the system will identify the location of death, including whether the person was an inpatient at the time of death. Along with other types of data and insight, the learning from suicide reviews will produce valuable intelligence to inform ongoing service improvements.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 06 October 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom Arthur on 1 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government how much has been reallocated from Scottish Budget underspends in each year since 1999.
Answer
Since 2007 the Scottish Government has retained, and subsequently deployed, any and all net underspends which have been available following the conclusion of the Final Outturn process at the end of each financial year. The mechanism for doing so is via the Scotland Reserve and previously the Budget Exchange Mechanism.
The amount of underspends arising from each year since 1999 was detailed in the answer to question S6W-09370 on 13 July 2022.
All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 06 October 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 1 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what its plan is for stopping the use of National Cancer Medicines Advisory Group recommended medicines that are not Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) approved, and therefore not considered cost effective, when there are SMC approved and cost-effective alternatives available to the NHS boards.
Answer
The National Cancer Medicines Advisory Group (NCMAG) provides advice on the off-label uses of certain cancer medicines, which are out with the remit of the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC). Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCMAG provided rapid national decisions regarding the use of cancer medicines (sometimes out with the licensed indication for the medicine) to help meet the overall aim of reducing patient risk of COVID-19 infection and to mitigate the potential burden on cancer services.
Cancer services remain under considerable pressure, and cancer patients continue to be vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. As a result, it was agreed that existing COVID-19 NCMAG advice would remain in place until the end of March 2023, after which it will be withdrawn. More generally, extant Scottish Government guidance states that unless there is a specific clinical reason, clinicians should not continue to use an unlicensed medicine or a medicine off-label where there is an available licensed medicine, which has been accepted for routine use by the SMC.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 06 October 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 1 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with industry to inform the development of its new cancer strategy.
Answer
We held a public consultation for the new cancer strategy from 12th April – 7th June. Anyone who wished to submit a response was welcome to through Citizens Space, this includes members of the public, professionals working with cancer services, and organisations. The results of the consultation will be published shortly and will feed into the development of the next cancer strategy.
Early insights from the initial consultation report show that organisations in the cancer sector welcome a long-term strategy with broad overarching aims to help achieve structural changes in the delivery of cancer care.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 06 October 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 1 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that any reduced capacity in the cancer services workforce is not limiting patient choice and equitable access to treatment.
Answer
Cancer remains a priority for the Scottish Government with NHS Scotland continuing to prioritise urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) referrals and delivering high-quality care, in the safest possible way, to those who need it most. We’re continuing to invest in cancer pathways to improve waiting times, including through up-skilling nurses and have begun testing the use of Single Points of Contact in cancer pathways to support patients from the point of referral.
In addition, we have stood up a National Oncology Taskforce of NHS Board Chief Executives and Medical Directors to seek national solutions to ensure long term resilience of oncology services in Scotland.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 07 October 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Patrick Harvie on 1 November 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding tenancies that have indexed or fixed rent increases as part of their contractual agreements, whether the provisions set out in the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Bill overwrite these contracts and lease arrangements, and, in instances where rent was previously set to increase after a certain date according to a contract, whether this will still happen, or whether it is now frozen.
Answer
Provisions within Part 1 of the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022, introduce a temporary cap on in-tenancy rent increases, which is set at 0% until at least 31 March 2023.
The following tenancies are not covered by the rent cap:
- some assured tenancies where rent increases are controlled by the contract - if a tenant has an assured tenancy where the way their rent will increase is set out in their contract - and the emergency legislation is still legally in force - then rent will be able to increase in the way agreed in the contract;
- regulated tenancies under the Rent (Scotland) Act 1984 - these tenancies already have strong protections in place, and rents for these tenancies can only increase once every three years;
- common law tenancies - this includes arrangements like agricultural tenancies and lodger agreements (where a tenant lives with a landlord in their home), with the exception of student tenancy agreements; and new tenancies.
