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-21005

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 24 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, whether the information in the article, “Make Friends With Benefits”, which was published in The Scottish Sun on 7 January 2019, which stated that “in the last two months nearly 200 people have already had a combined £103,230 boost after calling the [Financial Health Check service] helpline” is accurate and, if so, whether this information was provided by (a) it or (b) Citizens Advice Scotland.

Question reference: S5W-21004

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 24 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-20751, by Aileen Campbell on 15 January 2019, for what reason it does not plan to publish the service level agreement.

Question reference: S5W-21007

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 24 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government further to the answer to question S5W-20745, by Aileen Campbell on 15 January 2019, how it defines (a) a successful and (b) an unsuccessful evaluation.

The target set for the service is to deliver a Financial Health Check to 15,000 households in Scotland per annum. We will monitor the quarterly update reports provided by Citizens Advice Scotland to gauge whether the service is successful. Our decision will be based on the data submitted for the following agreed key performance indicators:

Number of clients accessing the service

Profile of clients

Client financial gain

Client satisfaction

Client financial confidence

Improved mental health as a result of the check.

Question reference: S5W-21003

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 24 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-20757, by Aileen Campbell on 15 January 2019, whether it will provide the information that was requested regarding what procurement process was conducted for the provision of its Financial Health Check service.

Question reference: S5W-21078

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 24 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-20835 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 16 January 2019, whether it approached each of the senior responsible officers to ask if they would consider releasing their respective reviews prior to the cabinet secretary publishing the response.

Question reference: S5W-21079

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 24 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-20835 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 16 January 2019, whether any of the senior responsible officers have considered requests from other sources to release their respective reviews and, if so, what their response was.

Question reference: S5W-21080

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 24 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-20835 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 16 January 2019, whether any of the reviews have been made available by their respective senior responsible officer (a) internally and (b) to the Social Security Programme Board and, if so, which reviews.

Question reference: S5W-21082

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 24 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-20835 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 16 January 2019, whether a copy of each review has been lodged with its Programme and Project Management Centre of Expertise (PPM-CoE) so that it can identify and share the generic lessons learned and, if so, whether the PPM-CoE has copied summaries of the review recommendations to the relevant accountable officer.

Question reference: S5W-20910

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 11 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 23 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many items listed in the Social Security Programme Board Dashboard, which forms the basis of the Social Security Programme Board Programme Director Progress Report, released under FoI/18/02096, were given a red RAG status, and what these red RAG status items were.

Programme Board Dashboards are part of routine reporting, and as such any RAG statuses are provided for internal discussion and not made public, on the grounds that doing so would inhibit substantially the free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation. The Programme Director’s Update is used to enable critical discussion that in turn supports the delivery of social security for Scotland.

Question reference: S5W-20816

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 17 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-20404 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 20 December 2018, whether it remains its position that the sole role of Police Scotland, as set out at section 5.4 of its document, Social Security Programme - Programme Blueprint, which was published under the freedom of information request, FoI/18/02106, is to "liaise with the agency on matters relating to fraud, organised crime and other areas" and, if so, for what reason this is not referred to in the response.

The original PQ referred to where Police Scotland would act as a Delivery Partner. We have no definition of a Delivery Partner.

However we have been clear that we anticipate that the Counter Fraud function within the Agency will participate in formal intelligence sharing networks (other participants include Police Scotland, HMRC, DWP and many other government departments) and/or collaborative investigations where appropriate. This position is reflected in the Counter Fraud Strategy published September 2018.

Social Security Scotland’s Counter Fraud team are a Specialist Reporting Agency. This means the agency has civilian investigation officers able to investigate allegations relating to the benefit offences introduced by the Social Security Act 2018 to criminal investigation standard, including direct submission of crime reports to the Crown Office for consideration of prosecution action. Police Scotland have the remit to investigate and report alleged criminal activity of any kind, which could include these offences, however should they decide to undertake such an investigation it would not constitute a service provision arrangement.