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-23380

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 May 2019
Current Status: Answered by Derek Mackay on 4 June 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what effect its plan of increased productivity and balanced wage growth to increase the savings ratio has had on consumption growth.

Scotland’s Economic Strategy sets out the need to pursue a more balanced form of economic growth, through a greater contribution from investment and net trade, rather than consumption in order to achieve growth that is sustainable in the long-term.

Experimental statistics on the growth of GDP expenditure components in real terms were published within the GDP Quarterly National Accounts for Scottish published on the 1 May 2019. These provide emerging evidence that Scotland’s economy is starting to rebalance, with growth in consumption moderating and growth in exports picking up over the last two years. Business investment has fallen over the past year, a trend also observed in the UK as a whole, and which can be attributed to economic uncertainty surrounding Brexit. The statistics can be accessed at https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Economy/QNA2018Q4 .

Question reference: S5W-23405

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 May 2019
Current Status: Answered by Derek Mackay on 4 June 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether the £292.17 million anticipated loss of income tax revenue in the period to 2023-24, as a result of behavioural responses to policy changes in its 2018-19 budget, is avoidable if tax policy is changed.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s’ report [May 2019] shows the latest estimates of losses in income tax revenue due to behavioural change from the 2019-20 policy decision to be £45 million over the period 2019-20 to 2024-25. The same report forecasts the overall revenue gain from the 2019-20 policy change to be £476 million over the same period. Losses from behavioural change are therefore small relative to these gains.

Behavioural change is a consideration for all taxes in all jurisdictions. The Scottish Government takes the matter of behavioural change very seriously. However, the latest forecasts suggest that the tax policy change is not having detrimental effect through lost revenues.

Question reference: S5W-23393

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 May 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 4 June 2019

To ask the Scottish Government when Scottish Enterprise will release its 2019-20 business plan.

Question reference: S5W-23384

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 May 2019
Current Status: Answered by Derek Mackay on 4 June 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what progress it has made in the last year in delivering an affordable, sustainably-funded, public sector pay policy that offers a fair deal for staff.

The 2019-20 public sector pay policy strikes the right balance in delivering a fair deal for public sector workers and value for the public purse in terms of affordability and investing in high-quality public services. It continues the Scottish Government’s commitment to lifting the pay cap, provides job security through our commitment to no compulsory redundancies, and tackles income inequality through progressive measures including the real Living Wage, a guaranteed three per cent increase for lower earners – which in practice benefits almost three-quarters of all staff directly covered by the policy – and a capped increase of £1,600 for the highest earners.

Question reference: S5W-23394

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 May 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 4 June 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on Scottish Enterprise's work to realise major economic opportunities in high-value manufacturing, the digital economy and low-carbon transition.

Question reference: S5O-03294

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 May 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 29 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to improve NHS Grampian’s performance in meeting the 18 weeks referral to treatment target of at least 90%.

Question reference: S5O-03229

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 08 May 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 15 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether all outstanding Agri-Environment Climate Scheme claims from farm businesses in the north east for the 2017 claim year will be paid by the end of June 2019.

Question reference: S5O-03186

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 24 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 2 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason ScotRail's annual average figures record that one in five trains arriving or terminating at Aberdeen station are more than five minutes late.

Performance problems at Aberdeen are particularly disappointing given the unprecedented increase in service level, rolling stock and infrastructure investment for Aberdeen. Over the last few periods, 8 out of 10 trains have arrived at Aberdeen Station within PPM. However it isn’t surprising to note that over half of the performance issues (55%) impacting Aberdeen services over the last year is down to Network Rail’s infrastructure issues. As I have said on many occasions it is critical that all parts of the railway system are delivering on contract and regulatory requirements to improve service reliability for passengers.

Question reference: S5W-22373

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 26 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 30 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-21814 by Jeane Freeman on 5 March 2019, whether it considers that NHS Grampian provides the "best care available" to patients, in light of reports that the NHS is routinely recorded as underperforming.

NHSScotland provides extremely high quality care and is a world leader, internationally recognised, for the improvements in care and safety brought about by our Patient Safety Programme. We will continue to work towards ensuring that every patient receives safe, effective, person-centred care every time they access the health service.

We recognise that there are areas that require further improvement, including NHS Grampian’s performance, which includes waiting times for A&E, cancer and outpatients appointments. To ensure substantial and sustainable improvements are made to waiting times we launched the Waiting Times Improvement Plan in October last year. The Plan sets out actions to ensure future delivery of waiting time standards for patients across Scotland by the Spring of 2021. As part of the implementation of the Plan, initial funding of £26.7 million was allocated to Health Boards earlier this year to support additional activity in 2018-19 - NHS Grampian received almost £0.8 million to reduce waiting times for ophthalmology and endoscopy, whch was in addition to the £4.9 million already allocated in 2018-19 to support an improvemet in waiting times. We have also allocated a total of £710,000 to support cancer waiting times performance in 2018-19 and more than £900,000 to improve A&E performance over the winter period.

We are now working closely with NHS Grampian, and all other Health Boards across Scotland, to prepare plans for 2019-20, which will focus on key areas that require improvement.

Question reference: S5O-03153

Asked by: Tom Mason, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 17 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 25 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many deaths there were in 2018 in the NHS Grampian area that can be attributed in some way to the use of Xanax.