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-04007

Asked by: Evelyn Tweed, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 20 November 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 27 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the potential impact of the UK Budget on farming and food production in Scotland.

Question reference: S6O-04017

Asked by: Marie McNair, MSP for Clydebank and Milngavie, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 20 November 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 27 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how it is working to protect older people from heightened health risks in colder weather.

Question reference: S6W-28936

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 August 2024
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 20 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the recently reported decision by the UK Government to retract the £800 million of support for the University of Edinburgh exascale supercomputer, and whether it has had any recent discussions with the UK Government regarding this matter.

This is a matter between the University and UK Government, and general UK Government budgeting is continuing to be reviewed. However, the Scottish Government recognises the University’s unique track record and further potential as the UK’s foremost supercomputing centre, and we will continue to work to influence UK Government public finance discussions to positively benefit our economy and key sectors, including computing and AI.

Question reference: S6W-30726

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 October 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the letter of 3 October 2024 from its Directorate for Culture and Major Events to the managing director at The Orcadian, what assessment it made in order to identify "essential need" prior to the freeze on public sector marketing expenditure.

Following the implementation of emergency spending controls (which included the public sector marketing expenditure freeze), a process was put in place across all policy areas to rigorously assess which essential marketing expenditure should still proceed in 2024-25 and what activity can be halted or postponed. This assessment process is aligned with the 4 key priorities of the Scottish Government and with individual policy outcomes. All Scottish Government marketing expenditure with an essential need for 2024-25 is subject to the First Minister’s approval.

For clarity, the Scottish Government has not suspended public health marketing campaigns and remains committed to the importance that campaigns have in communicating public health priorities. It should be noted, however, that marketing is just one of a number of interventions that can affect health outcomes.

Question reference: S6W-30729

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 October 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the statement in the letter of 3 October 2024 from its Directorate for Culture and Major Events to the managing director at The Orcadian that it is advised by procured agencies on the most "cost-effective media mix", what its position is on whether (a) "return on investment" is an appropriate aim for essential public health messaging and (b) maximising lives saved or quality-adjusted life years (QALY) would be a more reasonable aim.

Since the announcement of the freeze on marketing expenditure, the following public health campaigns have subsequently been assessed and approved to run in 2024-25 in line with the process set out in the answer to question S6W-30726 on 20 November 2024, and the desired health outcomes and aims that need to be achieved for each.

• Early Cancer Detection – Detect Cancer Earlier

• Dementia Stigma

• Appropriate Use of NHS Services - Right Care Right Place

• Adult Mental Health

• Organ Donation & Tissue

• Winter Vaccines (delivered by Public Health Scotland)

• The Importance of Home Recovery - Home First

• Sexual Assault Referral Centres

• Abortion Safe Access Zones

All activity is developed and evaluated against SMART objectives to help deliver policy outcomes, which includes actions that contribute to improving or saving lives. Where there is substantial spend on paid-for media, quantitative evaluation is carried out by an independent research agency to assess campaign performance. Return on investment is considered to assess the number of people in a target audience who can be reached, and how frequently, via a particular media channel to ensure campaigns are delivered cost-effectively.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

Question reference: S6W-30727

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 October 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the letter of 3 October 2024 from its Directorate for Culture and Major Events to the managing director at The Orcadian, how it defines "essential need" relative to paid-for media activity.

As part of the process to assess essential marketing expenditure for 2024-25, the use of paid-for-media activity is considered where it is required to help achieve specific policy outcomes. This can include a requirement to reach specific audiences or to ensure audiences are presented with messages a number of times to achieve the desired impact.

Marketing activity and campaigns that are without expenditure, such as no-cost approaches that have no external production, service or media costs, continue to support delivery of policy outcomes as part of the communications mix.

Question reference: S6W-31109

Asked by: Alexander Stewart, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 08 November 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 20 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of reports that most local authorities are unable to deliver instrumental music tuition to all interested school pupils and are operating waiting lists for instrumental music tuition due to capacity issues, what urgent action it can take to resolve this.

The most recent Instrumental Music Services Survey 2023 Instrumental Music Services: Results from the IMS Survey 2023 (improvementservice.org.uk) (published in December 2023) confirmed that the number of pupils accessing free instrumental music tuition was the highest on record since the survey began in 2012.

It is for individual councils to make decisions about their own provision. For those local authorities which do operate waiting lists, it is clearly important that they work to accommodate as many interested pupils as possible.

Question reference: S6W-31033

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 08 November 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has revised its estimate of how many taxpayers fall into each Scottish income tax band since the publication of the 2024-25 Scottish Budget and, if so, whether it will publish this.

Scottish Government relies on estimates of the number of taxpayers by tax band using forecasts provided by the Scottish Fiscal Commission. The most recent estimate for 2024-25 was published in December 2023 and can be found here: Chapter 4 – Tax – Supplementary Figures. The Scottish Fiscal Commission will publish their five-year Economic and Fiscal forecasts alongside the draft Scottish Budget 2025-26 on 4 December which will include updated forecasts for 2025-26.

Question reference: S6W-30782

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 21 October 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-30195 by Shona Robison on 9 October, how much funding has been provided to each of the national public awareness health campaigns that have run since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Financial Year 2023-24

*Paid-for media public health campaigns:

Detect Cancer Earlier	£360,115.02
Dentistry Reform	£213,310.79
Adult Mental Health	£450,109.58
Organ Donation	£32,609.15
Right Care Right Place	£171,433.19
Vaping	£178,292.84
Winter Vaccines	£676,346.72

**Low Cost / No cost public health campaigns:

Women & Girls in Sport Week	£34,658.40
Lyme Disease	£25,041.57
Smoking Cessation	£13,786.72

**Campaigns funded by Scottish Government working in partnership with executive agencies or other public sector organisations:

Childhood Flu – Public Health Scotland	£92,574
Sperm & Egg – NHS Scotland	£50,520

Financial Year 2024-25

*Paid-for media public health campaigns which have so far run in financial year 2024-25 are as follows. These are estimated costs which cannot be finalised until all campaign spend is reconciled:

Dementia Stigma	£410,000
Detect Cancer Earlier	£450,000
Organ Donation & Tissue Week	£30,000
Appropriate Use of NHS Services - Right Care Right Place	£250,000
Sexual Assault Referral Centres	£99,000

**Low Cost / No cost public health campaigns:

Women & Girls in Sport Week	£39,000
The Importance of Home Recovery - Home First	£47,000
Abortion Safe Access Zones	£25,500

**Campaigns funded by Scottish Government working in partnership with executive agencies or other public sector organisations:

Winter Vaccines – Public Health Scotland

£58,200

* publishable spend.

** non publishable spend.

Question reference: S6W-30621

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 October 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it can provide a breakdown by type of employee, for example, communications staff, policy staff, or, for the NHS, frontline health staff, or any other staff category for which data is recorded, for the Public Sector Employment in Scotland Statistics headcount figure for (a) NHS, (b) Devolved Civil Service, (c) Police and Fire Related Services and (d) Other Public Bodies for Quarter 2 in each year since 1999.

The Scottish Government does not collect information on the type of employee as part of the Public Sector Employment data collection.

Some of the trend information on headcount can be obtained from the data sources below:

NHS Scotland Workforce data: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence

Scottish Government Workforce data: Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Police Officer numbers: Police officer quarterly strength statistics: 30 June 2024 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Please note that the statistics on Police Officer numbers are provided in terms of Full-Time Equivalent, not headcount.