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: S6W-11252

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 30 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 27 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken to work with (a) NHS boards and (b) health and social care partnerships to improve vaccination appointment processes.

Throughout the pandemic we have refined the COVID-19 and flu appointment scheduling system, working directly with Health Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships to incorporate their feedback and improve processes.

We have increased the number of training sessions with scheduling staff, developed comprehensive online guidance that can be referred to at any time and we continue to work closely with Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships where specific issues arise. A dedicated review process is in place for this and any learning is then disseminated to other Boards as required.

Question reference: S6W-11254

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 30 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 27 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason there are reportedly insufficient vaccinators to cover the number of people invited for vaccination appointments, in light of reports of this happening in Alexandria on 23 and 24 September 2022.

In instances where staff are sick absences may occur at short notice which cannot be foreseen, and bank cover staff are not always available at short notice to replace staff. Every effort is made to ensure there is sufficient vaccinators on site, however, as appointments are created and scheduled weeks in advance therefore local issues may arise.

Greater Glasgow and Clyde has put measures in place to try and reduce wait times and queues at its clinics by ensuring appropriate measures are in place to manage queues safely and effectively. For example, advising members of the public to arrive as close to their scheduled appointment time as possible to avoid queues.

Question reference: S6W-11253

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 30 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 27 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason multiple appointments for the same time are reportedly being allocated to residents in the Helensburgh area for their COVID-19 booster vaccine.

Question reference: S6W-11203

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 27 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will make funding available for a face, arm, speech, time (FAST) campaign to raise awareness of stroke symptoms in 2023.

The Scottish Government assesses the need for public health awareness campaigns regularly. Scottish Government officials will work closely with the Stroke Improvement Team, which provides support and guidance to Managed Clinical Networks and the National Advisory Committee for Stroke, and other stakeholders to better understand what resources may be required for 2023, including the need for funding for a FAST campaign. Information regarding the symptoms of stroke, including the FAST test, is available on NHS Inform .

Question reference: S6W-11207

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 27 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether the Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme will include a recommendation on bringing back the face, arm, speech, time (FAST) campaign to raise awareness of stroke symptoms.

Question reference: S6W-11204

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 27 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether the £3 million earmarked for Long COVID care in the Programme for Government 2022-23 is the same £3 million announced by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on 19 May 2022 during the Long COVID debate.

Yes. As previously stated during the long COVID debate on 19 th May 2022 we committed to allocate “ funding of £3 million to health boards across 2022-23 to bolster the support that they are already providing to people with long COVID ”. This was confirmed in the Programme for Government 2022-23, published in September 2022, which stated that “ we will invest £3 million this year through the long COVID Support Fund to assist those living with long-term effects of infection .”

Question reference: S6O-01492

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 26 October 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will instruct Scottish Water to freeze water rates for 2023-24 to help with the cost of living crisis.

Question reference: S6W-11471

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 10 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 26 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what data it holds on the level of unmet need in adult social care, as of 1 April 2022.

A range of published data sources provide information related to the level of unmet need in adult social care in Scotland:

The Health and Care Experience Survey collects data on unmet need for care and support. This survey runs every two years, and the latest version, published in May 2022 covers 2021-2022.
The Social Care Eligibility Criteria And Waiting Times publication presents information on new clients meeting eligibility criteria for social care support, and the waiting times between first contact, completion of a community care assessment and delivery of a new personal care service. The latest edition, published in May 2022 covers the years 2012-2021. We are working with Public Health Scotland on approaches for improving the completeness and robustness of these data.
Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes Delayed Discharge data on a monthly basis. The accompanying Excel workbook on standard delay reasons provides the number of patients delayed in hospital at a monthly census point for patients delayed for health and social care reasons. Health and social care reasons includes those delayed due to issues with assessment, funding, place availability, care arrangements & transport. It should be noted that patients delayed in hospital are just a subset of all individuals with unmet social care needs. The latest edition includes figures up to and including August 2022.
The Independent Review of Adult Social Care describes two indirect approaches to assessing level of unmet need, one of these involves comparing level of provision in different areas across Scotland and determining where areas are below the Scottish average level. The latest data on care provision is available in the PHS Insights into Social Care publication.

The Scottish Government is currently working with stakeholders at PHS and Health and Social Care Partnerships to collect robust data on the number of people waiting for assessment for Care at Home services and the associated number of hours to be provided. The first publication of these figures is expected from PHS later this year.

Question reference: S6W-11470

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 10 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 26 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has undertaken a cost-benefit analysis of implementing a pay increase to £15 per hour for social care staff in tackling delayed discharge.

The Scottish Government has undertaken analysis into the costings of implementing a pay increase to £15 per hour for social care workers.

An increase in pay from the current rate of £10.50 per hour to £15 per hour for adult social care workers providing direct care in commissioned services would be in the region of £1.2 billion per year. To also include workers within Children’s and Justice commissioned services would be in the region of £1.75bn.

It is important to note that this does not include any costs for uplifting the pay of social care workers employed within Local Authority settings who have existing pay arrangements, which are devolved to Local Authorities and COSLA.

Raising the hourly rate for social care workers to £15 per hour would likely cause significant issues of parity across public sector pay, as well as within Local Government.

The Scottish Government are considering all options to tackle delayed discharge and officials will continue to engage with external partners to develop appropriate approaches.

The Scottish Government have also announced significant additional funding to address delays in discharge. This includes for 2022-23:

£124m to enhance care at home
£200m to increase the hourly rate of pay to £10.50
£20m to support interim care arrangements
£40m to enhance multi-disciplinary teams

Since 2020 we have invested more than £4.5m to scale up Hospital at Home services, now established within 20 HSCPs. A further £3.6m is available for 2022-23, taking our total investment to over £8m.

Through expanding our virtual capacity we have avoided or saved bed days equivalent to adding a large district general hospital. This has already saved 45,000 hospital bed days this year and is being further rolled out over the coming months.

Question reference: S6W-11466

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 10 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 25 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much it expects to recoup from asking Integration Joint Boards to return any unspent COVID-19 funding.

The majority of Integrated Joint Board reserves are earmarked for specific purposes, in particular the ongoing response to COVID-19 and cannot be used to fund new spending commitments.

Further Covid funding has not been available from the UK Government for Covid related pressures in 2022-23.

Further work will be carried out to assess the amounts to be re-couped from IJBs in line with Covid requirements

More than £1.6 billion has been provided for social care and integration in 2022-23in addition to support for Covid, and we are committed to increasing spend in social care by at least 25% by the end of this Parliament, an increase of over £840 million.