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-06153

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 16 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 31 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding has been provided to each Scottish Ambulance Service regional operational division in each year since 2007.

The Scottish Ambulance Service's budget for each year since 2007 is provided in the following table.

Year	Budget (£m)
2006-07	162.9
2007-08	177.8
2008-09	183.4
2009-10	189.2
2010-11	197.1
2011-12	197.7
2012-13	203.8
2013-14	207.6
2014-15	210.0
2015-16	212.1
2016-17	223.5
2017-18 (draft)	229.3

The decision on how this funding is then allocated to each regional operational division is an operational matter for the Scottish Ambulance Service and the Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Question reference: S5W-06155

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 16 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 31 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what the average time to discharge a patient from an ambulance on arrival at A&E in each Scottish Ambulance Service regional operational division has been in each year since 2011.

Question reference: S5W-06158

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 16 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 31 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on ambulances attending emergencies without shift paramedics having carried out stock checks on the vehicles’ supplies.

Question reference: S5W-05508

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 19 December 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 31 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government whether patients admitted into acute assessment units are counted as admissions.

Patients accessing these units will have been assessed by a senior clinician, either GP or hospital doctor, before being referred to the unit.

These units carry out a wide range of clinical tests and observations, with clinical decisions being taken throughout the pathway of care. For example, for some patients it will be clear from the start that they will require admission to a downstream inpatient bed, while for others it will be clear that they will require admitted to the unit for a short time for ambulatory assessment care before returning home, for other patients’ clinical decisions on admission to an downstream inpatient bed would follow observation and tests.

Under the current statistical definitions patients in these units can be categorised as inpatients, outpatients and ward attenders. Clinicians and data analysts are considering the improvements that need to be made to existing definitions and their application. They will report to the Unscheduled Care Advisory board and Sir Harry Burns’ national review of targets and indicators if required.

Question reference: S5F-00844

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 30 January 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 2 February 2017

To ask the First Minister how many refugees the Scottish Government expects to welcome in 2017.

Question reference: S5W-06151

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 16 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 26 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what funding has been given to hospices for palliative care needs in each year since 2007, broken down by NHS board area.

This information is not centrally held.

It is the responsibility of Health and Social Care Partnerships to plan and deliver services for their area using the integrated budgets under their control. This includes hospice and palliative and end of life care services.

In 2015, the year before integration went live, the Scottish Government published statutory guidance on strategic commissioning setting out that each Partnership's strategic commissioning plan should be based upon a Strategic Needs Assessment of local people, including those with palliative and end of life care needs.

Question reference: S5W-06150

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 16 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 26 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government, further to its news release of 6 December 2016, NHS staffing at new record high, how many of the 11,500 additional staff are whole-time equivalent.

Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) information provides a better indicator of total labour input than a simple headcount. It is useful to support workforce planning and therefore continues to be in demand.

All staffing levels quoted in the Scottish Government press release of 6 December 2016, “NHS staffing at new record high” are expressed as WTE.

Under this Government, the WTE of staff working in NHSScotland has increased from 127,061.9 WTE to 138,651.2 WTE – a record high increase of 9.1 per cent, or 11,589.3 WTE.

The full press release is available at the following link:-

http://news.gov.scot/news/nhs-staffing-at-new-record-high

Question reference: S5O-00614

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 January 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 1 February 2017

To ask the Scottish Government when carer’s allowance will be increased for carers in Glasgow.

Question reference: S5W-06149

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 16 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 25 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how many non-clinical whole-time equivalent staff have been employed by each NHS board in each year since 2007.

Question reference: S5W-06098

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 12 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 25 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the use of agency nurses by NHS boards.

The Scottish Government recognises that agency nurses can provide valuable assistance within an overall strategy of service provision, but expects Boards to minimise their use. The Scottish Government and NHS National Services Scotland have recently launched a nationally coordinated programme for all temporary staffing with a view to more effectively managing spend in this area. Agency nurses represent only a small proportion of the nursing provision in NHSScotland, amounting to 0.4% of total nursing and midwifery capacity in 2015-16. Nursing agency spend in 2015-16 was £23.5 million, which is lower than it was a decade ago in 2005-06 when £26.5 million was spent.