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: S6O-01029

Asked by: Jackie Dunbar, MSP for Aberdeen Donside, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 4 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults.

In October 2021 I launched the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults, providing an initial £15 million to support small scale, community mental health and wellbeing activities. In light of the very positive response to the Fund, and the number of high quality bids received, in February I provided an additional £6 million for this work in financial year 2021-22.

Since the launch of the Fund, the Scottish Government has worked with the 32 Third Sector Interface organisations across Scotland to support hundreds of grass roots, community groups to deliver programmes for adults which tackle priority issues such as suicide prevention, social isolation and loneliness.

Projects are being funded across the whole of Scotland, supporting activities involving sport, nature, the arts and community cafes. There is a clear focus on people who are more vulnerable and in need, including those facing social isolation, refugees, the LGBTQ+ community, and carers.

Officials are currently collating learning from year one of the Fund, which will be used to inform a further £15 million investment in the coming year.

Question reference: S6T-00680

Asked by: Emma Roddick, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 May 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the potential impact on households and businesses in Scotland of the National Grid’s locational pricing system, in light of Scottish Renewables' reported assessment that Transmission Network Use of System charges make projects in Scotland almost 20% more expensive than equivalent projects in the south of England.

Question reference: S6T-00678

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 May 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the ruling of the Scottish Information Commissioner that it should release legal advice that it received regarding a second independence referendum.

Question reference: S6T-00671

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 May 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what measures it is putting in place to ensure that Ukrainian families understand the conditions of its Super Sponsor Scheme.

Question reference: S6W-07866

Asked by: Neil Bibby, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-06190 by Jenny Gilruth on 4 March 2022, whether it will provide updated figures on how many young people have now received a free bus pass through the Young Persons’ (Under 22s) Free Bus Travel scheme, broken down by local authority, based on the latest information available.

The following table shows the number of cards produced for the Young Persons Scheme (YPS) by close of business 25 April 2022, broken down to local authority level. This information was supplied by the National Entitlement Card Programme Office (NECPO). NECPO support the 32 local authorities by assisting with the integration of various national and local public services on the National Entitlement Card (NEC) and are the joint controller with local authorities of this data. Please note this data might include a small number of cards produced without the travel product.

Aberdeen City	15,249
Aberdeenshire	14,750
Angus Council	3,878
Argyll and Bute	3,046
City of Edinburgh	42,142
Clackmannanshire	1,683
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar	677
Dumfries and Galloway	4,763
Dundee City	14,151
East Ayrshire	9,574
East Dunbartonshire	4,146
East Lothian	7,761
East Renfrewshire	5,013
Falkirk	5,240
Fife	23,938
Glasgow City	25,066
Highland	8,178
Inverclyde	10,966
Midlothian	5,321
Moray	4,126
North Ayrshire	4,091
North Lanarkshire	13,060
Orkney Islands	596
Perth and Kinross	6,775
Renfrewshire	10,270
Scottish Borders	5,628
Shetland Islands	1,509
South Ayrshire	3,451
South Lanarkshire	7,881
Stirling	3,833
West Dunbartonshire	8,166
West Lothian	9,400

Question reference: S6W-07798

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 04 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the delivery of community access to allotments through the Community Wealth Building strategy.

The Scottish Government has embraced the Community Wealth Building (CWB) approach to economic development as it is geared to helping local businesses and communities own a greater stake in how their local economy functions. The CWB model involves local authorities and their community planning partners ensuring that collective investment decisions focus on how local economies can be helped to grow and flourish. Practical benefits can include more local, good quality jobs; improved access to public contracts for local businesses; more land being placed in community ownership or developed for the benefit of the community; and support being offered to new businesses exploring employee ownership or other innovative models.

We are working with local authorities to help them frame strategic CWB action plans and have committed to introducing CWB legislation during this session of the Scottish Parliament. Our objective is to embed the CWB approach as a strategic economic development policy. Many actions taken across the policy spectrum will contribute to CWB and creation of a national economy striving for prosperity and societal wellbeing in equal measure. Community access to allotments can play a part in this collective effort.

Allotments and their provision are the responsibility of local authorities. That is set out in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. However, since 2012, the Scottish Government has allocated more than £1.4 million to directly support and increase the land that is available for community growing.

Question reference: S6W-07846

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made, regarding the testing available in Scotland, of the decision by NICE to approve placental growth factor (PlGF) testing for expectant mothers in England.

The Scottish Government expects women to receive high quality, safe care including in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of pre-eclampsia.

We are working with the Scottish Perinatal Network to examine the adoption of PlGF testing for pre-eclampsia in Scotland. This will include consideration of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidance on PlGF (DG23) that is currently out for consultation and expected to be published in July 2022.

Question reference: S6W-07791

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 04 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-07145 by Lorna Slater on 23 March 2022, whether it will now provide the information requested on whether Circularity Scotland has entered into signed contracts with partners to deliver the Deposit Return Scheme's logistics, operations and IT systems, in line with the timescale that it set out in December 2021.

Question reference: S6W-07895

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the UK Government to ensure that Ukrainian refugees seeking to come to Scotland and who apply for a visa through the Ukraine Family Scheme can access up-to-date information about the status of their visa application.

We have repeatedly called for the UK Government to waive all visa requirements but, in the absence of this, what we now need is for the Home Office to give people visas quickly and efficiently.

I have held several meetings with Lord Harrington, Minister for Refugees, on the UK response and how our governments work collaboratively. I recently met with Kevin Foster, Minister for Safe and Legal Migration, and raised my many concerns about the significant administrative issues, complex application processes, and unacceptable delays for individuals who have been forced to flee their homeland.

To alleviate confusion with the process, the UK Government should immediately implement automatic status updating for applications (on all routes) that have been outstanding for more than 5 days and an escalation process for applications that have been outstanding for more than one week.

Question reference: S6W-07901

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will introduce treatment time targets for return chronic pain patients.

Chronic Pain services in Scotland are currently unable to gather electronic data on return appointments in a consistent manner and one that could support routine national data collection by Public Health Scotland (PHS).

We have published a draft Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery for public consultation in December 2021 which invited ideas and views on a proposed commitment to continue work with Public Health Scotland to increase national reporting and analysis of data to improve services for people with chronic pain.

Responses to the consultation are currently being analysed and we will publish our response to the findings, including how these views have been used to shape the final Framework and actions to improve pain management data collection and reporting, later this year.

Parliament dissolved ahead of election

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