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: S4W-19874

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 February 2014
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 6 March 2014

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will list each of the (a) outcomes achieved and (b) action plans developed as a result of the Scottish Government Race Equality Statement.

Question reference: S4W-19876

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 February 2014
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 6 March 2014

To ask the Scottish Government who it has consulted regarding the development of its updated race equality statement.

Question reference: S4O-03012

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 05 March 2014
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 March 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what assistance is available for homeowners and council tenants when structural defects are identified in their homes.

Question reference: S4W-19663

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 07 February 2014
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 4 March 2014

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S4W-19645 by Alex Neil on 7 February 2014, when it expects the warning letter process to be completed.

The Vale of Leven Hospital Inquiry is an independent inquiry. The procedure and conduct of an inquiry is determined by the inquiry’s chairperson in accordance with his or her duties under the Inquiries Act 2005. All warning letters have now been issued and Lord Maclean, Chairman is unable to predict when this process will be completed until all of the responses have been received and considered. The Vale of Leven Hospital Inquiry website will be updated once this process has completed.

Question reference: S4W-19877

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 February 2014
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 4 March 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how many people from ethnic minority backgrounds serve on each public body and what percentage of all public appointments this represents.

We cannot provide figures for individual public bodies as this information is sensitive personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998 as, due to the small numbers of people on each public body, it may be possible to identify individuals.

For those ministerial appointments regulated by the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland 2% of current board members are from a minority ethnic background, rising to 2.2% when you remove those who chose not to record this diversity strand.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the diversity of Scotland’s public boards. For those ministerial appointments regulated by the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland in 2012-13, 4.1% of applicants came from a minority ethnic background, with 2.9% being appointed.

Source:

Baseline diversity exercise of all regulated boards carried out by Scottish Government Public Appointments Centre of Expertise in April 2013.

Public Appointments in Scotland 2012-13 – Regulated Ministerial Appointments

Question reference: S4W-19746

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 17 February 2014
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 3 March 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how much the public inquiry into the Clostridium difficile outbreak at the Vale of Leven Hospital has cost.

As the Vale of Leven Hospital is an independent inquiry, it is for the chairman to decide on the procedure and conduct of the inquiry. The chairman has indicated that he will publish full costs at the end of the inquiry. However, the information held on costs to date by the Scottish Government is currently being collated with a view to publishing them in the near future. I will write to the member as soon as the information is available and a copy will be placed in the Parliament’s Reference Centre (Bib number 55691.).

Question reference: S4W-19520

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 27 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what the (a) prevalence and (b) severity is of female genital mutilation.

(a) It has been estimated that 3,000 women and girls are at risk in Scotland. This figure for Scotland is a pro rata projection based on research by FORWARD in England and Wales in 2007.

According to the 2001 Census data, there were 2,946 women between the ages of 0 -49 living in Scotland and born in one of the 29 countries in which female genital mutilation (FGM) is reported to be a traditional practice.

We will consider data from the 2011 Census which is scheduled for release in the first part of 2014, and that will allow a more-up to date prevalence estimate of FGM to be calculated. However initial data from the census shows that the number of people resident in Scotland who were born in Africa has more than doubled since the 2001 Census (from 22,049 to 46,742), and so the number of women and girls estimated to have undergone FGM is also likely to have increased.

That does not mean that all those women who were born in a country where FGM is prevalent have been abused in this way, only that they may be at risk.

(b) FGM is defined by the World Health Organisation as ‘all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons’. The Scottish Government does not hold any information on severity of such ‘procedures carried out.

Question reference: S4W-19429

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Margaret Burgess on 26 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how much of the £244 million to mitigate the impact of welfare reform is welfare funding devolved to Scotland.

<>As announced in the Budget (Scotland) (No 3) Bill Stage 3 debate in the Parliament on 5 February 2014, the Scottish Government has provided additional provision to mitigate the impact of the ‘bedroom tax’. This means that our planned spending on welfare reform mitigation will increase from £244 million to at least £258 million over the period 2013-14 to 2015-16. Further details are set out in the answer to S4W-19428 on 26 February 2014. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.All of the £258 million funding is devolved and reflects Scottish Ministers’ decisions about allocating resources from within the total Scottish Budget to welfare, following the transfer of a number of relevant functions from the UK Government to the Scottish Government and responding to the adverse effects of the UK Government’s welfare reform on vulnerable people across Scotland.

Question reference: S4W-19428

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Margaret Burgess on 26 February 2014

Our current and planned spending will invest at least £258 million over the period 2013-14 to 2015-16 to limit the damage of the UK Government’s welfare policies on Scotland.

Details are as follows:

Welfare Reform Mitigation activity	2013-14 £million	2014-15 £million	2015-16 £million	2013-2016 £million
Scottish Welfare Fund (£33 million plus admin)	38	38	38	114
Other Welfare Reform Mitigation	7	7	7	21
Council Tax Reduction scheme	23	23	23	69
“Bedroom tax” mitigation*	20	34.85		54.85
Total	88	102.85	68	258.85

*Funding for bedroom tax mitigation for 2015-16 will be determined once Department for Work and Pensions funding for Discretionary Housing Payments is known (estimated to be late 2014 or early 2015).

Question reference: S4W-19521

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 26 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what female genital mutilation clinics are available in each NHS board area.