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: S6F-04120

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 27 May 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 29 May 2025

Question to be taken in Chamber.

Question reference: S6W-37085

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 20 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 27 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the reported ministerial pay rise of almost £20,000, whether it will publish the evidence base underpinning the reported comment by the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport that “it won’t cost the public purse a penny extra”.

The Scottish Government has already published the estimated financial contribution made to public spending by the voluntary Ministerial pay freeze since it was established on 1 April 2009. Between 1 April 2009 and 31 March 2025, Ministers made an estimated £2.2 million available for public spending from their own pay packets. This is public funding that would not have been available had Ministers not voluntarily decided to return a proportion of their pay. In 2024-25, Ministerial pay was 30.4% below where it would otherwise have been. From 1 April 2025, the MSP element of the pay of all Ministers except the First Minister was equalised with that of all other MSPs, while the freeze on the Ministerial element of their pay continues for a seventeenth consecutive year. In 2025-26, Ministers will make an estimated £166,000 available for public spending from their own pay packets and, as such, public funds this year will again be higher than they would have been without the pay freeze. This is the point that the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport was making.

Question reference: S6W-37641

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 27 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what urgent steps it is taking in light of reports that nearly one in five people abandoned their call to NHS 24 in 2024.

Calls to the 111 service can go unanswered for a variety of reasons, including callers choosing to end their call after being connected to the automated messaging service and hearing the options available to them – including an NHS 24 callback service during busier periods.

Other options include accessing self-care advice via the NHS Inform website or contacting another area of the health service which may be more appropriate to meet their needs.

We continue to support NHS 24’s ongoing work to help reduce unanswered calls, including recently revising NHS 24’s key performance indicators to better reflect and understand the current demands on the service.

This work allows the Service to capture any unmet demand, and any potential risks where callers have made multiple attempts to access 111 without success.

In addition, over the past two financial years NHS 24 has received additional funding of £28.3m to support their wider role in the re-design of unscheduled care. This has allowed the service to boost their staffing numbers with 22 WTE additional clinicians recruited this year and the Service now almost at desired capacity in terms of call handlers.

Question reference: S6W-37635

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 27 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reported findings from a survey by Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce that more than two thirds of voters want the UK and Scottish governments to adopt a "pragmatic, domestic-first approach" to energy.

Offshore oil and gas licensing, as well as consenting and the associated fiscal regime, are all matters that are currently reserved to the UK Government.

The Scottish Government has been clear in our commitment to achieving net zero by 2045. Any further extraction and use of fossil fuels must be consistent with Scotland’s climate obligations and just transition commitments and we have advocated for a licencing approach that has a Climate Compatibility Checkpoint as well as taking energy security into account. It is vital that we take an evidence-based approach to the energy transition. At the heart of our approach is ensuring a just transition for Scotland’s valued and highly skilled oil and gas workforces whose skills will be critical to the success of Scotwind and other low carbon energy projects.

Question reference: S6W-37026

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 27 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to its public service reform programme, what proportion of its planned £280 million savings by the end of 2024-25 will have come from reductions in pay costs for the board members of (a) public sector and (b) other non-departmental bodies.

The Scottish Government is committed to driving key efficiency programmes such as Scottish Single Estates, Commercial Value for Money (CVfM), Collaborative Procurement frameworks, the Intelligence Automation Centre of Excellence, and Digital programme. There has been strong progress across these programmes which are expected to reach up to £280 million of cost avoidance and cash releasing savings over a two-year period by the end of 2024-25. This figure is not related to pay costs for board members of public sector or other non-departmental bodies.

Question reference: S6W-37743

Asked by: Ariane Burgess, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 27 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on when the outcomes of the Inshore Fisheries Management Improvement Programme will be published, and when the public consultation will open.

We received an excellent response to the Inshore Fisheries Management Improvement Programme call for evidence which ran for twelve weeks from 26 November 2024. We intend to publish an analysis in due course. The responses are both numerous and voluminous and have required longer than anticipated to fully analyse and report upon. The scale of the responses has however provided a detailed insight into the views of our stakeholders on numerous aspects of inshore fisheries management. These will be invaluable as we begin to develop proposals for a new inshore fisheries management framework, which we intend to consult on in early 2026.

Question reference: S6W-37693

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 16 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 27 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many pupils in (a) primary and (b) secondary schools have needed catheterising in each year since 1999, also broken down by local authority area.

Question reference: S6W-37695

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 16 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 27 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to address any regional variation in the uptake of home dialysis among patients in renal centres, in light of reports that this ranges from 7.2% to 26.2% across different NHS boards.

The decision to offer home dialysis to patients is primarily a matter for NHS Boards. Last year, we agreed a national policy to reimburse patients for the additional electricity costs of home dialysis so that patients are not exposed to the impact of high energy prices. It also removes the financial disincentive to making a choice for home dialysis over in-centre treatments, allowing personal choice in where and how to receive treatment.

Question reference: S6W-37515

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 16 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 27 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to establish a working group to investigate and consider any health impact on women due to exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES).

The Scottish Government has the utmost sympathy to the women who were prescribed diethylstilbestrol (DES) and the impact it had on them and their families.

However, Scottish Ministers have no plans to establish a working group on this issue as the regulation for the licensing, safety and efficacy of medicines is reserved to the UK Government and is the responsibility of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Question reference: S6W-37708

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 16 May 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 27 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many compensation payments for wrongful imprisonment have been made in each of the last 10 years.

The Scottish Government operates two schemes to pay compensation to people who have suffered a miscarriage of justice: the statutory scheme and the ex gratia scheme.

The statutory scheme applies where a person's conviction has been reversed on appeal made ‘out of time’ and the appeal was successful because a new fact shows beyond reasonable doubt that there has been a miscarriage of justice. The ex gratia scheme applies where a person has spent a period of time in custody following wrongful conviction or charge and the wrongful conviction or charge was either the result of serious default on the part of the police or another public authority, or there are other exceptional circumstances justifying the payment of compensation. As such, while it is a condition of eligibility for the ex gratia scheme that the applicant has spent a period of time in custody as a result of wrongful charge or conviction, it is not a condition of the statutory scheme that the applicant was imprisoned for the offence for which they were wrongfully convicted.

Because of the small number of people to whom compensation has been paid to over this time period, there is a risk that information about the amounts paid to individuals could be identified from information about the number of individuals who received compensation in a given year, together with the amount of compensation paid in that year. Within this context, information is provided split into two five year periods.

In the period 2015-16 to 2019-20, five people have been paid compensation under the statutory and ex gratia compensation schemes with the amount paid totalling £1,196,259.

In the period 2020-21 to 2024-25, two people have been paid compensation under the statutory and ex gratia compensation schemes with the amount paid totalling £1,995,468.