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: S5W-02955

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 19 September 2016
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 23 September 2016

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will conduct an (a) equality and (b) environmental impact assessment of the proposed rail link between Glasgow Airport and Glasgow Central station.

Question reference: S5W-02957

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 19 September 2016
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 23 September 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what its estimate is of the number of jobs that will be created in (a) rail, (b) aviation and (c) other industries in Scotland by the construction and delivery of the proposed rail link between Glasgow Airport and Glasgow Central station.

Question reference: S5W-02954

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 19 September 2016
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 23 September 2016

To ask the Scottish Government when it expects work to start on constructing the proposed rail link between Glasgow Airport and Glasgow Central station.

All aspects of the delivery of the Glasgow Airport Access Project through the Glasgow City Region Deal, including developing the business case, reporting on equality and environmental issues, determination of project costs and programme, are the responsibility of Glasgow City Council and Renfrewshire Council.

The Glasgow City Region Deal has £1 billion available to fund this project and it is critical that any investment of public funds is as a result of a robust business case to allow well informed decisions to be made. Glasgow City Council and Renfrewshire Council have advised that their business case will be available by the end of this year. I have also set up a high-level steering group involving both councils.

Question reference: S5W-02952

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 19 September 2016
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 23 September 2016

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will ensure that trade unions are represented on the high-level steering group overseeing the proposed rail link between Glasgow Airport and Glasgow Central station.

Question reference: S5W-02956

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 19 September 2016
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 23 September 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what its estimate is of the (a) total cost and (b) delivery date for the proposed rail link between Glasgow Airport and Glasgow Central station.

Question reference: S5W-02652

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 September 2016
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 21 September 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the UK Government since 2010 regarding the number of platform train interface accidents involving passengers boarding or alighting rail services at stations in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has not had any discussion with the UK Government regarding the number of platform train interface accidents involving passengers boarding or alighting rail services at stations in Scotland.

Accidents on the mainline rail network are relatively rare and the small number of accidents is such that accident statistics are collated and published on a UK network-wide basis and are not available as Scottish specific data.

Question reference: S5W-02653

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 September 2016
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 21 September 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how many platform train interface accidents there were in Scotland involving passengers (a) boarding and (b) alighting services run by (i) ScotRail and (ii) other train operators in each year since 2005-06.

Accidents on the mainline rail network are relatively rare and the small sample size is such that accident statistics are collated and published on a UK network-wide basis and are not available at either a Scottish or train operator level.

The range in severity of injuries is such that the agreed rail industry approach is to combine injuries of differing levels of seriousness into one composite measure based on ‘weighting’ a multiple number of less serious events as being ‘equal’ to one fatality. The composite measure is termed ‘fatalities and weighted injuries’ or FWI, for short.

Using these weightings, the number of platform train interface accidents occurring across the whole of the UK mainline rail network in each year since 2005-06 are:

Year	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16
FWI	5.0	4.3	4.4	5.3	5.8	6.3	6.9	6.0	5.5	5.9

To put this level of harm into perspective, there are now over 1.65 Billion passenger journeys per year, which equates to over 3.3 Billion safe traverses between platform and the train each year.

Question reference: S5W-02651

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 September 2016
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 21 September 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions it has had with (a) the UK Government and (b) Network Rail regarding the funding of (i) the building of new and (ii) improvements to existing stations in Scotland.

As the principal funder of infrastructure enhancements in Scotland, the Scottish Government has had no recent discussions with the UK Government concerning the funding of new railway stations or improvements to existing stations in Scotland. In terms of engagement with Network Rail, the Scottish Government is in regular dialogue concerning new or improved stations, whether linked to the delivery of major rail projects or in terms of bids made to the £30 million Scottish Stations Fund which was introduced to widen and improve access to the railway network. Most recently this has included discussions regarding the on-going redevelopment of Glasgow Queen Street station.

Question reference: S5F-00147

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 05 September 2016
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 8 September 2016

To ask the First Minister, whether the Scottish Government will convene a working group of ScotRail representatives, passenger and disability groups and trade unions to review and report on the delivery of safer train services.

Question reference: S5W-01802

Asked by: Elaine Smith, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 August 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 1 September 2016

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the proposed closure of trauma and orthopaedic services at Monklands Hospital, what discussions it has had with NHS Lanarkshire regarding the official response to the proposals from the Scottish Ambulance Service.