- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 11 August 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 30 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Executive who is professionally qualified to tune hearing aids.
Answer
Audiologists (Medical TechnicalOfficers) within audiology departments are qualified and will carry out tuning ofhearing aids.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 11 August 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 30 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-10218 by Rhona Brankin on 16 November 2004, how many digital hearing aids have been drawn off the central contract in each year since 1999.
Answer
The number of digital hearingaids drawn off the central contract arranged by Scottish Healthcare Supplies since1999 are shown in the following table:
| Period | Number of Digital Hearing Aids |
| April 2000 – March 2001 | 163 |
| April 2001 – March 2002 | 293 |
| April 2002 – March 2003 | 595 |
| April 2003 – March 2004 | 19,079 |
| April 2004 – March 2005 | 38,015 |
| Total | 58,145 |
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 11 August 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 30 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Executive whether there is a prescribed number of tuning sessions for digital hearing aids.
Answer
Guidance on the modernised patientjourney, which is being introduced in all NHS board areas, states that patientsshould receive three appointments, namely an assessment, fitting and then a reviewwhere fine tuning will take place.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 11 August 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by Andrew Welsh on 29 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what measures it has in place to enable the Parliament to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the execution of Sir William Wallace.
Answer
The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body has collaborated with the National Archives of Scotland to stage a temporary exhibition to commemorate the anniversary.
The display, “For Freedom Alone”, is on show in the Main Hall for four weeks from August 15 to September 9. It features three remarkable documents including the Lubeck Letter, which is the only known surviving letter issued by William Wallace. This has been loaned from Germany especially for the display.
Also on display are the Declaration of Arbroath, of 1320, and the Ayr Manuscript, the second-oldest surviving text of laws passed in the Scottish Parliament in 1318, during the reign of King Robert 1.
The exhibition is accompanied by a special commemorative leaflet and the Parliament’s shop will be retailing a poster print of the Declaration of Arbroath. The National Archives of Scotland have produced a set of educational resources linked to the exhibition which can be accessed on line.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 11 August 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by Andrew Welsh on 29 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what discussions it has had with regard to a permanent recognition in the parliamentary complex of the historic importance of Sir William Wallace in the nationhood of Scotland.
Answer
The Scottish Parliament has had a range of requests to support the placing of commemorative works in the parliamentary complex. In order to move forward, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body will consider the issue of commemorative works at a forthcoming meeting. It is anticipated that we will develop a policy on this subject which will clarify our approach taking into account resource and space implications.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 19 August 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Executive whether there are target waiting times for hernia operations.
Answer
The current national maximum waiting time for in-patient and day case treatment, including hernia operations, is nine months. This guaranteed maximum waiting time will be reduced to six months from the end of this year, and to 18 weeks from the end of 2007.
On 30 June 2005, no patient with a guarantee had waited more than nine months for in-patient and day case treatment.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 18 July 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 26 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Executive how many self harm incidents there were in HM Prison Cornton Vale in each year since 1999.
Answer
I have asked Tony Cameron,Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is asfollows:
The information is availablefrom 2002-03 onwards and is as follows:
| Year | Number of Self-Harm Incidents |
| 2002-03 | 115 |
| 2003-04 | 100 |
| 2004-05 | 45 |
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 19 July 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by Hugh Henry on 24 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Executive when the £2 million targeted for the treatment and intervention of offenders with drug misuse problems will be allocated; how many offenders will be covered by this programme, and how the effectiveness of the programme will be monitored.
Answer
The extra £2 million will begin to forge the closer links between our drugs strategy and our plans for reducing reoffending, signalled in the Criminal Justice Plan, published in December 2004, by creating up to an extra 1000 treatment places. The extra money will extend the range of community interventions targeted at those individuals whose drug misuse brings them into contact with the criminal justice system so that we can offer them access to treatment facilities at each stage in the process. I will announce the details in due course. This is an opportunity to make better use of the combined expertise of the health and justice services in such matters and the arrangements for monitoring effectiveness will build on the best of what already exists.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 22 July 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by George Lyon on 22 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Executive how many people have received council tax benefit in each year since 1999 to date, broken down by local authority area.
Answer
The number of recipients of counciltax benefit in each local authority in Scotland are published quarterly by the Department for Work andPensions. These are available from February 2002 onwards from the DWP statisticswebsite at
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/hbctb.asp.
Figures from before February2002 are not held available at local authority level.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 22 July 2005
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Current Status:
Answered by George Lyon on 19 August 2005
To ask the Scottish Executive how many alcohol-related deaths there have been in each year since 1999, broken down by NHS board area.
Answer
The information requested in given in the following table.
Alcohol-Related Deaths in Scotland 1999-20041
| | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 |
| Argyll and Clyde | 109 | 134 | 144 | 155 | 156 | 126 |
| Ayrshire and Arran | 63 | 77 | 76 | 86 | 94 | 85 |
| Borders | 9 | 8 | 13 | 14 | 11 | 17 |
| Dumfries and Galloway | 10 | 17 | 21 | 22 | 25 | 22 |
| Fife | 46 | 65 | 50 | 68 | 52 | 56 |
| Forth Valley | 39 | 50 | 51 | 53 | 54 | 52 |
| Grampian | 68 | 80 | 88 | 73 | 75 | 77 |
| Greater Glasgow | 290 | 305 | 347 | 371 | 370 | 356 |
| Highland | 39 | 57 | 43 | 57 | 48 | 57 |
| Lanarkshire | 122 | 110 | 118 | 149 | 153 | 153 |
| Lothian | 135 | 156 | 170 | 171 | 172 | 171 |
| Orkney | 2 | 5 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 7 |
| Shetland | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Tayside | 73 | 61 | 82 | 88 | 111 | 119 |
| Western Isles | 7 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 13 | 10 |
| All Scotland | 1013 | 1129 | 1219 | 1321 | 1342 | 1314 |
Note: 1. 1999: International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, codes 291, 303, 305.0, 425.5 and 571.0 571.3. 2000 2004: International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision, codes F10.0 F10.9, I42.6 and K70.0 K70.9.
