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-15856

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 8 May 2018

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-15083 by Maree Todd on 20 March 2018, how many of the (a) 126 additional teacher training places and (b) 270 additional BA Childhood Practice places to expand the early learning and childcare workforce were filled in August 2017.

a) HESA data relating to additional teacher training for 2017-18 is not held centrally, and will not be available until after the end of the academic year.

b) All of the additional 270 BA places were filled in August 2017. As noted in my answers to S5W-15849, S5W-15850 and S5W-15851 on 8 May 2018, 2017-18 data is in-year data and full and complete data will not be available until after the end of the academic year.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Question reference: S5W-15854

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 8 May 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what initiatives it has launched since 2014-15 to attract people to the early learning and childcare profession, broken down by the (a) target recruitment figure set and (b) number of people recruited.

The Scottish Government estimates up to 11,000 additional early learning and childcare (ELC) workers will be required to meet the demands of ELC expansion. In order to attract those additional staff we are working with delivery partners on a range of initiatives, all of which will contribute to the collective recruitment effort. These include:

Our national recruitment campaign, which includes advertising across multiple advertising channels in order to ensure messages are delivered to the target audiences. Our advertising encourages people to apply to training or work opportunities, but also addresses societal misconceptions around the ELC sector.
Our advertising for phase one of the national recruitment campaign focussed on school leavers and has been supported by a programme of field events, involving roadshows in schools across the country and activity at all three Skills Scotland national career events. The roadshows directly engaged over 5,000 pupils, encouraging them to apply to training opportunities.
We work with colleagues in local authorities to adapt the national recruitment campaign for local needs and to support local initiatives, such as jobs fairs or sectoral information events.
We are working with colleagues in Skills Development Scotland to ensure the number of Modern Apprenticeships available for the ELC sector is increased by 10% year on year up to 2020. Data for 2017-18 (the first year of this commitment) will be available shortly.
Funding will be available to ensure that all childcare workers delivering funded ELC will be paid the “real” Living Wage from 2020. We are working with a range of delivery partners to ensure new pathways are opened up to enter the sector, in particular for those furthest from the labour market. For example, Glasgow City Council are piloting a new pathway for refugees to join the sector, and Perth and Kinross are exploring innovative ways to recruit males in to ELC. These are new initiatives which may only recruit small numbers of people to the sector, hence no particular targets are set for how many they will directly recruit to the sector. These examples indicate that we are pursuing every avenue to ensure the required workforce is in place for 2020.
Local authorities, as commissioners and providers of their early learning and childcare services, have individual recruitment requirements in line with their local delivery plans. National recruitment initiatives will facilitate the recruitment of additional staff via local authorities and their funded partners. A full monitoring and evaluation framework for the early learning and childcare workforce expansion will be in place this summer.

Question reference: S5W-15855

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 8 May 2018

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-15083 by Maree Todd on 20 March 2018, what progress it has made in each local authority area with recruiting the additional 435 teachers and graduates for nurseries in deprived areas, and whether each of the nurseries will have an additional graduate in place by 31 December 2018.

The Scottish Government is currently working with local authorities to deliver our commitment to provide an additional graduate in nurseries in Scotland’s most deprived areas by August 2018. Up to £18 million has been allocated in 2018-19 to cover the additional staffing costs associated with delivering this commitment. £12 million of this has been initially allocated across local authorities based on their share of the 435 graduate posts, as set out in the Revenue Funding Allocations letter issued to local authorities on 22 February 2018.

Following confirmation of funding allocations in February 2018, local authorities are working towards the recruitment of the additional graduates in line with their Additional Graduate Action Plans to ensure that the additional staff are in place by August 2018. We recently wrote to local authorities to agree their proposals, as set out in their Action Plans, that a small number of the additional posts could be allocated across more than one setting.

Question reference: S5F-02313

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 04 May 2018
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 10 May 2018

Question to be taken in Chamber.

Question reference: S5W-15870

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 12 April 2018
Current Status: Answered by Derek Mackay on 1 May 2018

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-14582 by Derek Mackay on 27 February 2018, on how many occasions the general anti-tax avoidance rule has been deployed as a specific compliance tool, and what the outcome was of each use.

Question reference: S5F-02259

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 23 April 2018
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 26 April 2018

Question to be taken in Chamber.

Question reference: S5F-02218

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 16 April 2018
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 19 April 2018

Question to be taken in the Chamber.

Question reference: S5W-15458

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 20 March 2018
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 10 April 2018

To ask the Scottish Government whether it conducted an evaluation of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (Time for Compliance) Regulations 2016 (a) after one year or (b) at any other time since its introduction; whether it will publish this; which stakeholders it invited to be part of this process and how this was decided, and whether feedback was sought from anyone who had submitted a freedom of information request to the bodies impacted by the regulations.

Evaluation of The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (Designation of Persons as Scottish Public Authorities) Order 2016 was undertaken around a year after the Order came into effect with all newly designated public authorities. It also invited the schools designated to comment on the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (Time for Compliance) Regulations 2016.

The biennial report on the exercise of the Section 5 power under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (as amended) summarises comments received and is publicly available at: https://beta.gov.scot/publications/foi-use-of-section-5-2017-report/ .

Question reference: S5W-15459

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 20 March 2018
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 10 April 2018

To ask the Scottish Government whether it considers that the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (Time for Compliance) Regulations 2016 set a precedent for varying timescales for Freedom of Information requests, and whether it has any plans to pass similar legislation in future.

The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (Time for Compliance) Regulations 2016 apply exclusively to grant-aided and independent special schools. They were made, following the designation of these schools as public authorities for the purposes of Freedom of Information, specifically to take into account holiday periods when the school may be closed and/or staff are not available. There are no plans to bring forward similar legislation.

Question reference: S5F-02162

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 19 March 2018
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 22 March 2018

Question to be taken in Chamber.