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-11252

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 30 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 27 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken to work with (a) NHS boards and (b) health and social care partnerships to improve vaccination appointment processes.

Throughout the pandemic we have refined the COVID-19 and flu appointment scheduling system, working directly with Health Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships to incorporate their feedback and improve processes.

We have increased the number of training sessions with scheduling staff, developed comprehensive online guidance that can be referred to at any time and we continue to work closely with Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships where specific issues arise. A dedicated review process is in place for this and any learning is then disseminated to other Boards as required.

Question reference: S6O-01492

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 26 October 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will instruct Scottish Water to freeze water rates for 2023-24 to help with the cost of living crisis.

Question reference: S6W-11471

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 10 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 26 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what data it holds on the level of unmet need in adult social care, as of 1 April 2022.

A range of published data sources provide information related to the level of unmet need in adult social care in Scotland:

The Health and Care Experience Survey collects data on unmet need for care and support. This survey runs every two years, and the latest version, published in May 2022 covers 2021-2022.
The Social Care Eligibility Criteria And Waiting Times publication presents information on new clients meeting eligibility criteria for social care support, and the waiting times between first contact, completion of a community care assessment and delivery of a new personal care service. The latest edition, published in May 2022 covers the years 2012-2021. We are working with Public Health Scotland on approaches for improving the completeness and robustness of these data.
Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes Delayed Discharge data on a monthly basis. The accompanying Excel workbook on standard delay reasons provides the number of patients delayed in hospital at a monthly census point for patients delayed for health and social care reasons. Health and social care reasons includes those delayed due to issues with assessment, funding, place availability, care arrangements & transport. It should be noted that patients delayed in hospital are just a subset of all individuals with unmet social care needs. The latest edition includes figures up to and including August 2022.
The Independent Review of Adult Social Care describes two indirect approaches to assessing level of unmet need, one of these involves comparing level of provision in different areas across Scotland and determining where areas are below the Scottish average level. The latest data on care provision is available in the PHS Insights into Social Care publication.

The Scottish Government is currently working with stakeholders at PHS and Health and Social Care Partnerships to collect robust data on the number of people waiting for assessment for Care at Home services and the associated number of hours to be provided. The first publication of these figures is expected from PHS later this year.

Question reference: S6W-11470

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 10 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 26 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has undertaken a cost-benefit analysis of implementing a pay increase to £15 per hour for social care staff in tackling delayed discharge.

The Scottish Government has undertaken analysis into the costings of implementing a pay increase to £15 per hour for social care workers.

An increase in pay from the current rate of £10.50 per hour to £15 per hour for adult social care workers providing direct care in commissioned services would be in the region of £1.2 billion per year. To also include workers within Children’s and Justice commissioned services would be in the region of £1.75bn.

It is important to note that this does not include any costs for uplifting the pay of social care workers employed within Local Authority settings who have existing pay arrangements, which are devolved to Local Authorities and COSLA.

Raising the hourly rate for social care workers to £15 per hour would likely cause significant issues of parity across public sector pay, as well as within Local Government.

The Scottish Government are considering all options to tackle delayed discharge and officials will continue to engage with external partners to develop appropriate approaches.

The Scottish Government have also announced significant additional funding to address delays in discharge. This includes for 2022-23:

£124m to enhance care at home
£200m to increase the hourly rate of pay to £10.50
£20m to support interim care arrangements
£40m to enhance multi-disciplinary teams

Since 2020 we have invested more than £4.5m to scale up Hospital at Home services, now established within 20 HSCPs. A further £3.6m is available for 2022-23, taking our total investment to over £8m.

Through expanding our virtual capacity we have avoided or saved bed days equivalent to adding a large district general hospital. This has already saved 45,000 hospital bed days this year and is being further rolled out over the coming months.

Question reference: S6W-11406

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 07 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 25 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has established the short life working group tasked with making recommendations on how clinically-appropriate use of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) equipment in the provision of NHS community eyecare services can be more effectively supported, and, if so, what the membership of the group is, and when the group last met.

Question reference: S6W-11407

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 07 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 25 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has established the short life working group tasked with undertaking a national review of domiciliary eye care services provision, and, if it has, what the membership of the group is, and when the group last met.

Question reference: S6W-11477

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 10 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 25 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much money it expects to spend on the use of private companies in undertaking contracts for work relating to the establishment of a National Care Service in the financial year of (a) 2022-23, (b) 2023-24 and (c) 2024-25, broken down by the purpose of any such spending.

Please see the following table of contracts which have been awarded so far by year, as part of the National Care Service Programme.

Currently, there is no additional budget specifically allocated for procuring external advice from private companies, although the National Care Service Programme will retain flexibility to procure external expertise as necessary to deliver the National Care Service.

Contract	Supplier Awarded Contract	Contract Duration	Contract Dates	Total Contract Value	Contract Purpose
Financial Controls Review	AAB	4 months with the option for a 4 month extension which can be used purely for time to complete, not to add monetary value	25-04-22 – 25-08-22	£45,504 exc. VAT	To provide advice to the NCS finance team on recommendations for improvement where necessary on the financial controls in place, the capacity and capability of the finance team, and the methodology used to provide estimates set-up and running costs for the NCS.
VAT Advice	AAB	12 months	Spring 22-23 – Spring 23-24	£46,749 exc. VAT	To provide advice on necessary VAT preparations for the establishment of a NCS. To provide advice on the VAT impact of different NCS scenarios and recommend any options and/or solutions that could potentially achieve a VAT neutral outcome.
Operating Model and Business Case production	KPMG	18 months	13-12-21 – 13-06-23	£546,000	To produce a Current Operating Model for the current social care sector, a Target Operating Model for the National Care Service and a Programme Business Case.
Provision of Consultation response analysis	PwC	3 months	Dec 21 – Feb 22	£68,360	Contract to undertake analysis and the production of a report for the public consultation on A National Care Service for Scotland. Contract now complete.
National Care Service Operating model design	PwC	2 months	03-09-21 – 03-11-21	£107,020.80	Contract for advice and the production of a report on programme governance arrangements and a Design Authority within the National Care Service Programme. Contract now complete.
Landscape review	Socitim (Society for Innovation, Technology and Modernisation)	12 months	14-02-22 – 14-02-23	£412,624 exc. VAT	A review of the technology and digital architectural landscape across the public, private and third sector organisations who are involved in the delivery of social care services in Scotland to understand what will and will not work in the system
User research	Storm ID	2 months	21-02-22 – 27-04-22	£47,300 exc. VAT	User research to explore how people experience interacting with services in Scotland, and is particularly focussed on what data is important to them. Contract now complete.
International research	Capgemini Invents	2 months	24-02-22 – 15-04-22	£49,000 exc. VAT	Research to understand what digital approaches, services and products have enabled similar services outside of Scotland and what lessons can be learned from both successful and unsuccessful digital projects and programmes. This will focus on the technical and practical elements of work rather than the policy drivers. Contract now complete.
Technical architecture partner	Capgemini Invents	12 months	15-08-22 – 15-08-23	£338,730 exc. VAT	Research to understand in detail how data is currently flowing in the social care and health system and a technical architecture review of existing national digital assets to make a technical assessment to inform design decisions and inform the re-use of assets where appropriate.

Question reference: S6W-11466

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 10 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 25 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much it expects to recoup from asking Integration Joint Boards to return any unspent COVID-19 funding.

The majority of Integrated Joint Board reserves are earmarked for specific purposes, in particular the ongoing response to COVID-19 and cannot be used to fund new spending commitments.

Further Covid funding has not been available from the UK Government for Covid related pressures in 2022-23.

Further work will be carried out to assess the amounts to be re-couped from IJBs in line with Covid requirements

More than £1.6 billion has been provided for social care and integration in 2022-23in addition to support for Covid, and we are committed to increasing spend in social care by at least 25% by the end of this Parliament, an increase of over £840 million.

Question reference: S6W-11472

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 10 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 25 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what modelling it has been undertaken to calculate the updated level of unmet need in adult social care since the publication of the Independent Review of Adult Social Care.

Question reference: S6F-01451

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 24 October 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 27 October 2022

To ask the First Minister what assistance the Scottish Government is providing to those with complex disabilities to cope with the cost of living crisis.