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: S5W-22607

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 10 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 1 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to publish details regarding the process for agreeing commercial and data collection arrangements for medicines that are subject to the new ultra-orphan pathway.

Question reference: S5W-22549

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 1 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how real world evidence will be used following the interim funding period as part of the assessment of medicines subject to the new ultra-orphan pathway.

Question reference: S5W-22547

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 1 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government when it will publish details of the process for agreeing commercial and data collection arrangements for medicines subject to the new ultra-orphan pathway.

Question reference: S5W-22548

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 1 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what framework will be used following the interim funding period to assess medicines subject to the new ultra-orphan pathway.

Question reference: S5W-22509

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 1 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government (a) how many and (b) what percentage of newborns have received a baby box each year.

Scotland’s Baby Boxes began distribution on 15 August 2017.

In the first full year (15 August 2017 to 15 August 2018) we distributed 52,065 Baby Boxes.

The total distributed up to 5 April 2019 is 83,199 Baby Boxes.

In terms of uptake rates, this is difficult to calculate as APS (the Baby Box Delivery Agent) only collects data on expected due date (since the boxes are delivered 4-6 weeks prior to the due date) but not the actual birth dates. The following table shows Baby Box registrations with babies due within each quarter compared to NRS recorded birth figures within each quarter. In the absence of actual date of birth, we consider due date registration data to provide the best figures to use to analyse take up. It can however only provide an indication of take up and should be treated as an indicative figure only.

NRS Birth records by Quarter	Dates	Births	Registrations with Babies Due within quarter	Take up – Babies due as a % of Scottish births
Quarter 3 2018	1 July – 30 September	13,077	12493	96%
Quarter 2 2018	1 April – 30 June	12,973	12006	93%
Quarter 1 2018	1 January – 31 March	12,713	11417	90%
Quarter 4 2017	1 October – 31 December	12,821	11730	91%
Quarter 3 2017	1 July – 30 September	13,847	6171 *	-

Please note the figure for Quarter 3 2017 includes priority due dates 01-01-2017 (65 babies) and 15-08-2018 (171 babies) where due dates may have been prior to 01-07-2017.

Question reference: S5W-22633

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 11 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 30 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking in response to reports that an estimated one in three people with blood cancer see their GP at least three times before being referred for diagnosis.

The Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer were revised in January 2019 and support Primary Care clinicians in identifying patients who are most likely to have cancer and therefore require urgent assessment by a specialist.

The Detect Cancer Early programme first pan-tumour campaign ‘Survivors’, was launched in September 2018, was set out to target those in the most deprived areas, to reduce fear around cancer and encourage people to get checked early.

The Scottish Cancer Coalition was consulted on the campaign’s development – Bloodwise and Leukaemia Care are both members of the forum. A symptom-checker tool was developed to coincide with the campaign to increase awareness and education of possible signs and symptoms of cancer, regardless of the tumour type.

Officials continue to work closely with Health Boards to ensure that the revised referral guidelines are embedded into routine clinical practice.

Question reference: S5W-22632

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 11 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 30 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what the average waiting time is for people with blood cancer to receive their first treatment following diagnosis.

The Scottish Government does not collate waiting times for all haematological cancers. However, Lymphoma is included in the current cancer waiting times standards.

Latest published data from Q4 2018 show that 96.1% of Lymphoma patients waiting less than 62 days from urgent referral to first treatment with the median wait being 35 days. In addition once a decision to treat has been made the median wait to first treatment for lymphoma patients was 2 days.

Question reference: S5W-22348

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 25 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 25 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is regarding increasing coverage in cities as part of the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) programme.

The vast majority of premises in Scotland’s cities can access fibre broadband, with coverage as high as 99.3% in Dundee and 98.6% in Edinburgh.

EU State Aid legislation requires public funding for broadband deployment only to be used in areas of market failure. In order for DSSB to be granted State Aid approval, it was necessary for the city centres of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow to be removed from the scope of the programme.

DSSB does, however, deploy to the wider city areas with around 30,500 premises in Aberdeen, 32,700 premises in Edinburgh and over 91,300 premises in Glasgow capable of accessing fibre broadband as a result of Scotland’s £400 million DSSB programme.

Dundee, Stirling, Inverness and Perth city centres are all within scope of the DSSB programme and across the Scottish Parliamentary region of Lothian, DSSB has been able to directly support access to fibre broadband to 62,944 premises and, among these, 61,282 are able to achieve speeds of 24 megabits per second or better.

In parallel with further deployment under DSSB, there continues to be significant private sector investment in broadband across Scotland’s cities with City Fibre, Virgin Media and Openreach prominent in delivery services in Edinburgh.

Question reference: S5O-03156

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 24 April 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 1 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what proportion of graduates from Scottish medical schools go on to work in the NHS in Scotland.

Question reference: S5W-22532

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 24 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the benefits of the new clinical decision support system were it to be rolled out throughout the NHS.