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-02734

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 08 November 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 16 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to help schools to support children who wish to pursue a career in the culture and arts sector.

Question reference: S6W-22462

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 26 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the effectiveness of Auditory Verbal therapy in improving outcomes for deaf children whose families want them to learn spoken language.

NHS Health Boards and local authorities are responsible for the provision of, and funding for, services for deaf children. This includes the provision of specific therapeutic approaches.

The Scottish Government funds the Scottish Sensory Centre and CALL Scotland to provide advice and training to school staff on support, including the use of assistive technology, for children and young people with specific communication and sensory needs.

Question reference: S6W-22463

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 26 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that there are specialist practitioners, including (a) Auditory Verbal therapists, (b) BSL teachers and (c) teachers of the deaf, to enable more deaf children to have an equal start at school and the same opportunities in life as their hearing peers.

The teaching standards set by the General Teaching Council for Scotland require teachers to be able to identify and respond appropriately to pupils with difficulties in or barriers to learning. Initial Teacher Educations supports student teachers to be able to support the child in question themselves or to seek specialised information and specialised support if necessary. Scottish Ministers have recently outlined in our Programme for Government 2023-24 our commitment to work with teachers to provide additional professional learning opportunities while seeking to build on the Additional Support for Learning Action Plan.

In 2022-23, the Scottish Government provided over £500,000 to voluntary sector organisations to support children and young people with additional support needs, including sensory loss. This includes funding to the Scottish Sensory Centre to support the training of school staff to provide effective support to Deaf children and young people.

Question reference: S6T-01624

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 06 November 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking following Reform Scotland’s recent report, NHS 2048: Future-proofing Scotland’s Health and Social Care, which found that 11 NHS boards have seen waiting times for hip operations at least double from the point of decision since 2019.

Question reference: S6O-02681

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 01 November 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the rural affairs secretary has had with ministerial colleagues regarding the development of rural skills to help deliver its commitments in relation to peatland restoration in the Programme for Government 2023-24.

Question reference: S6F-02489

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 30 October 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 2 November 2023

To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to ensure that dentists are suitably funded to be able to continue taking on NHS patients, in light of reports that some dentists in Edinburgh are ceasing to accept NHS patients altogether.

Question reference: S6W-21848

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 28 September 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 25 October 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will consider asking Public Health Scotland to audit the data that it holds on the impact of migraine and identify any gaps in reporting across (a) incidence, (b) access to treatments and (c) the interface with health inequalities.

We understand the distress and pain that migraines cause and want to ensure that everyone living with this debilitating condition can access the best possible care and support.

The Neurology Specialty Delivery Group (SDG), commissioned via the National Centre for Sustainable Delivery, has developed a national pathway for headache, including migraine, which will be published and implemented this autumn.

The pathway will aid the diagnosis and management of headache disorders and offer guidance on management. It is aimed towards those working across primary care including community pharmacy and general practice and those working across secondary care including emergency care, acute/general medicine and neurology.

The SDG have also developed factsheets on migraine for use by primary care clinicians.

Through our Neurological Care and Support: Framework for Action 2020-2025 we have funded over £200,000 to The Migraine Trust towards their work with pharmacists in NHS Grampian to help people manage their symptoms and treatments more effectively. The project seeks to improve pharmacists’ knowledge of migraine management, with roll-out to three further NHS boards intended next year.

In December 2022, we published an experimental statistics report, Neurological Conditions: estimating the prevalence in Scotland of selected conditions using GP and Hospital Admissions datasets , containing estimated prevalence of selected neurological conditions in Scotland, including migraine.

Question reference: S6W-21752

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 26 September 2023
Current Status: Answered by Christina McKelvie on 20 October 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what immediate action it is taking to ensure that festivals, such as the Lammermuir Festival, receive any funding that they need, in order for such festivals to be able to continue to bring music to rural areas.

The Scottish Government appreciates the important contribution that rural music festivals such as Lammermuir Festival can make to Scotland’s music sector.

Creative Scotland provides funding for rural music festivals (classed as those not held in cities and with a focus on music) through their Regularly Funded Organisations and Open Funding streams. In 2022-23 they have supported 17 rural music festivals, using both Scottish Government and National Lottery funding to a total of £394,474. This does not include further support that is given to multi-art form festivals that include elements of music in their programming.

In addition the Scottish Government has provided £150,000 to Culture & Business Scotland for their Culture and Business Fund, which promotes collaboration between Scottish businesses and arts and heritage organisations to deliver new arts and heritage projects. Recipients in previous years have included rural music festivals.

Question reference: S6W-21847

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 28 September 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 11 October 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that NHS boards can review the migraine needs of their populations and assess whether existing services meet those needs, including workforce planning.

We have worked to develop and implement a quality assurance programme for the General Standards for Neurological Care and Support. A Self-evaluation tool was published by Healthcare Improvement Scotland in April 2023, to help enable services to measure their own implementation of the standards.

Undertaking this work will identify areas of good practice and improvement across NHS Scotland and help to drive forward better standards of care for people with neurological conditions, including migraine.

Our National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care supports the remobilisation and recovery of health and social care services and sets out priorities for recruitment, training and retention.

Through our National Advisory Committee for Neurological Conditions, we are identifying priorities to strengthen the neurological workforce alongside the National Workforce Strategy, Remobilisation Plans and Rehabilitation Framework. We have scoped neurological workforce priorities and work has commenced to address these with a focus on nursing, allied health professionals (AHPs), neuropsychology and neurophysiology.

Question reference: S6W-21416

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 14 September 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 29 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it can provide a timeline for when a decision on phase 3 of the Learning Estate Investment Programme funding will be made.

I understand that local authorities are keen to get clarity on Phase 3 of the Learning Estate Investment Programme.

We previously wrote to local authorities to explain that consideration of potential Phase 3 projects was still ongoing. It is important to recognise that we are trying to make these important investment decisions against a backdrop of market volatility on current projects, the need to keep Scottish finances on a sustainable trajectory and most recently, RAAC prevalence in school buildings.

These are big decisions, and it is important we get them right. I hope to announce successful projects as soon as possible.