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-14272

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the recommendation in the paper, Transforming Nursing, Midwifery and Health Professions’ Roles: Review of Clinical Nurse Specialist and Nurse Practitioner Roles within Scotland, what work it has undertaken to explore how to position education for both the nurse practitioner/ advanced nurse practitioner and clinical nurse specialist/ advanced clinical nurse specialist within the education and career pathway.

Question reference: S6W-14270

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the recommendation in the paper, Transforming Nursing, Midwifery and Health Professions’ Roles: Review of Clinical Nurse Specialist and Nurse Practitioner Roles within Scotland, what work it has undertaken to support the development of a generic Level 6 clinical nurse specialist/ specialist nurse practitioner job description, and what impact any such work has had on supporting national consistency.

Question reference: S6W-14267

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-13531 by Humza Yousaf on 23 January 2023, given that the information requested is not held centrally, how it will monitor the impact of its commitment in the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care in Scotland to provide "support for those wishing to join the health and social care workforce through increased use of national schemes such as modern apprenticeships".

I refer the member to the Scottish Government’s second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan. Further to the commitment set out in the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social care, we committed to a new target of creating 500 apprenticeship opportunities across NHS Scotland in 2022-2023, to support those wishing to join the health and social care workforce. We closely monitor NHS Boards progress towards promoting the range of opportunities available and their progress towards this target, including through taking period management information, and in our planning, assurance and scrutiny engagements with health board representatives.

The Scottish Government continues to work with key partners within health and social care to promote NHS careers with a focus on widening access and providing progressive career development pathways including exploration of “earn as you learn” models such as apprenticeships for new and existing staff.

Question reference: S6W-14295

Asked by: Brian Whittle, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-13230 by Lorna Slater on 20 December 2022, according to the modelling done by Zero Waste Scotland, how long on average after the initial investments would local authorities expect to experience a net financial benefit.

Question reference: S6W-14291

Asked by: Brian Whittle, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the suitability of available skills training pathways to enable reverse vending machine maintenance and repair services to employ suitably qualified (a) engineers and (b) technicians, including (i) formal education and (ii) apprenticeships routes.

The Deposit Return Scheme is an industry-led scheme, delivered by industry, led by the scheme administrator, Circularity Scotland Ltd. The Deposit Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations were laid in 2020 and businesses have now had three years to prepare for the launch of the scheme. It is not the role of Government to carry out such assessments.

There are many companies providing these services in Scotland, and an assessment is not considered to be necessary or appropriate for Government to carry out.

Question reference: S6W-14268

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the recommendation in the paper, Transforming Nursing, Midwifery and Health Professions’ Roles: Review of Clinical Nurse Specialist and Nurse Practitioner Roles within Scotland, whether advanced clinical nurse specialists have been included within the Advanced Practice Academies.

Question reference: S6W-14297

Asked by: Brian Whittle, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the availability of suitably qualified (a) engineers and (b) technicians able to provide maintenance and repair services for reverse vending machines, as part of the delivery of the Deposit Return Scheme.

Question reference: S6W-14283

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide the annual operating cost of the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy in each of the final three years in which it ran.

The Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) was an annual sample survey which monitored national performance of school children at P4, P7 and S2 in literacy and numeracy in alternate years. Operating costs are set out in the following table and are broken down by element of spend. As Support Assessors were funded to facilitate group discussions between pupils as part of the Listening and Talking assessment, these costs are only associated with the years that the literacy survey took place.

	£000s	£000s	£000s
	2014 (Literacy survey)	2015 (Numeracy survey)	2016 (Literacy survey)
SQA grant funding	615	774	682
Support Assessors	117	-	117
SG analytical staff costs	175	210	210
Cost of compliance	398	460	394
Total	1,305	1,444	1,403

Question reference: S6W-14580

Asked by: Beatrice Wishart, MSP for Shetland Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 02 February 2023
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on how many operators of vessels have been prosecuted for turning off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) in waters around (a) Scotland and (b) Shetland in each of the last five years.

Question reference: S6T-01171

Asked by: Neil Bibby, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 06 February 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that M&Co will close all of its 170 stores, resulting in almost 2,000 job losses.