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-03584

Asked by: Karen Adam, MSP for Banffshire and Buchan Coast, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how much of its annual budget is allocated to the provision of BSL services to ensure that the Parliament is accessible to those who use BSL, in light of the 2022 Census results showing that BSL is used by 117,300 people or 2.2% of the population.

Question reference: S6O-03586

Asked by: Ben Macpherson, MSP for Edinburgh Northern and Leith, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it would consider increasing the £500 annual training budget that is allocated to MSP offices for staff training.

Question reference: S6O-03583

Asked by: Lorna Slater, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether any of its contracted catering companies source produce or products from occupied land in Gaza or the West Bank.

Question reference: S6O-03585

Asked by: Tess White, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will review the process for admitting visitors to the public gallery in the chamber.

Question reference: S6W-27739

Asked by: Pam Duncan-Glancy, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 6 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has undertaken an analysis to establish any reasons for students withdrawing from college courses between weeks five and 12 of their courses.

The Scottish Government hasn’t carried out analysis to establish reasons for students withdrawing from college, by week of course.

Information on college withdrawals is collected by the Scottish Funding Council. Some data on the reason for withdrawing is included in the technical annex of the College Performance Indicators publication, though this isn’t broken down to week of course. College Performance Indicators 2022-23 - Scottish Funding Council (sfc.ac.uk)

Question reference: S6W-27710

Asked by: Paul Sweeney, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 6 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will ensure that all mental health hospitals and the State Hospital, Carstairs, have supplies of Samaritans freepost envelopes available to patients.

The Scottish Government is working closely with Samaritans Scotland, as one of our key partners driving the delivery of the suicide prevention Creating Hope Together strategy, to better understand help seeking behaviour and increase signposting to local and national support. We recognise that there may be benefits for some mental health patients in accessing Samaritans’ listening services alongside NHS care.

At present, Samaritans provide pre-printed freepost envelopes in prison settings as part of their broader work to support people in prisons. However, while there is no specific scheme to provide pre-marked envelopes within hospitals, any individual can write to them for free by marking an envelope “FREEPOST SAMARITANS LETTERS”.

Samaritans can also be contacted 24/7 by phone for free on 116 123 and by email at [email protected]. They aim to respond to all emails within 24 hours.

We will continue to work alongside Samaritans Scotland to support any plans to further promote and expand access to its listening services within the NHS estate.

Question reference: S6W-27877

Asked by: Paul O'Kane, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 6 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to the introduction and operation of Carer Support Payment, whether it has made an assessment of the potential merits of taking steps to prevent the accumulation of debt among carers in receipt of Carer's Allowance in Scotland due to (a) delayed investigation and (b) non-investigation of overpayment alerts.

We have taken on board lessons from Carer’s Allowance in designing Carer Support Payment to better prevent overpayments. Information on earnings rules and when to report changes are much clearer. We are making better use of the ability to average out carers’ earnings, and using data from HMRC and scheduled reviews for self-employed carers to check and track carers’ earnings. Our systems use automated decision making for the most straightforward applications, allowing more time and resource to focus on complex cases and earnings processes. We pay Carer Support Payment four weekly in arrears as standard, reducing the potential for overpayments by allowing more time for a change of circumstances to be reported and reflected in a carer’s award. As part of the case transfer process, we also have processes in place to check earnings once carer’s awards are in payment to reduce the risk of inheriting existing overpayments. We are continuing to take feedback from carers and stakeholders to consider how we can continue to improve our earnings processes.

Question reference: S6W-27784

Asked by: Paul O'Kane, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 6 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its proposals for a human rights incorporation bill, when it plans to (a) publish an initial draft of the legislation and (b) introduce any bill to the Parliament, and whether it will provide an update on whether it anticipates that a bill on this issue will be passed during the current parliamentary session.

Question reference: S6W-27806

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Ruth Charteris on 6 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what proportion of hate crime charges or hate crime aggravations have been recorded in Lothian region, to date, under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.

Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) uses a live, operational database to manage the processing of reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. It is designed to meet business needs in the processing of criminal cases, rather than for statistical purposes and the information within it is structured accordingly. Information provided is at date of extract and may therefore be subject to change as data and systems are updated for operational reasons.

From 1 April to 28 May 2024, 170 hate crime charges and 615 charges with one or more hate crime aggravations in terms of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 have been reported to COPFS for the whole of Scotland. The total, therefore, is 785 charges.

From 1 April to 28 May 2024, 33 hate crime charges and 98 charges with one or more hate crime aggravations in terms of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 have been reported to COPFS in the Lothian region. For the purposes of this answer, the ‘Lothian region’ been restricted to charges reported to COPFS from the Edinburgh and Livingston Sheriff Court Districts. The total 131 hate crime charges and aggravations for Lothian region represents 16.7% of the total for the whole of Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-27880

Asked by: Paul O'Kane, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 6 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to reform the threshold element of the Carer Support Payment following the completion of the transfer from Carer's Allowance in Scotland.

As set out in our response to our 2022 public consultation, we are considering options for reform of the earnings threshold as part of longer-term plans for improvements to Carer Support Payment. These include increasing the earnings threshold and introducing a run-on of support to mitigate the earnings ‘cliff edge’, both of which were supported by the majority of respondents to the consultation. Given the range of views on how the earnings rules for Carer Support Payment could work differently from Carer’s Allowance, we are continuing to consider the responses received. We are also considering research, recently published by the DWP in May, on carers’ experiences of claiming and receiving Carer’s Allowance to inform our approach.