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: S5O-02847

Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 31 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the justice secretary has had with ministerial colleagues regarding the impact of Brexit on matters within his portfolio.

The existing EU arrangements give operational partners access to vital tools and databases to help them rapidly prevent and detect crime. The impact of the UK’s decision to leave the EU has implications in Scotland for how we deliver justice and safeguard the public. Leaving the EU also impacts on businesses, families and individuals in relation to civil law.

I am in regular discussion with my ministerial colleagues regarding the impact of Brexit, including as part of the Scottish Government Resilience Committee, which is meeting each week to consider what needs to be done, to ensure that we are fully prepared for all EU exit eventualities. Stakeholders including Police Scotland, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service are closely involved in work to prepare for EU exit. The Chief Constable of Police Scotland has recently decided to bring forward the recruitment of 120 officers in this financial year to ensure capacity and resilience is in place to prepare against a range of contingencies.

Question reference: S5W-21204

Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 30 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many schools have been built or refurbished in the Stirling local authority area since 2007.

Table 1 provides information on the number of schools built or substantially refurbished in the Stirling local authority area in each financial year between 2007-08 and 2016-17.

Table 1 - Number of schools built or substantially refurbished 1 in the Stirling local authority area, 2007-08 to 2016-17
Year	Number of schools built or substantially refurbished
2007-08	6
2008-09	7
2009-10	1
2010-11	1
2011-12	1
2012-13	1
2013-14	1
2014-15	0
2015-16	0
2016-17	2
1. Only builds or refurbishments with a cost of £500,000 or more for primary and ‎ £1 million or more for secondary and special schools are included.

Question reference: S5W-20844

Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 22 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what percentage of (a) business and (b) domestic properties in the Stirling constituency (i) has access and (ii) is connected to superfast broadband.

The latest Ofcom figures (as of September 2018) for the Stirling constituency show that 78% of all Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) premises and 86% of non-SME premises have access to superfast broadband at the European Commission’s definition of 30Mbps and above.

Figures provided by thinkbroadband show that broadband coverage of 30Mbps and above in the Stirling council area now stands at 89.4% - an increase from just 56.5% in January 2014 - while figures on this basis are not available for the constituency boundary.

Overall access to fibre broadband in the constituency is now over 95%, albeit not all customers will be able to access superfast speeds.

The latest Ofcom figures also suggest that 39% of all lines in the Stirling council area have an active fixed broadband connection in excess of 30Mbps.

Question reference: S5W-20843

Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 22 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many new schools have been built in the Stirling constituency in each year since 2007.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on school estates at constituency level but can provide it at local authority level.

In the collections for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 financial years local authorities were not asked to specify whether a school was built or refurbished. This data was collected for the first time for the 2009-10 financial year, however, not all schools were categorised as being built or refurbished. This data is provided in Table 1. Data on the number of schools built in the Stirling local authority area in each financial year between 2010-11 and 2016-17 is provided in Table 2.

Data at school level is also available in the annual School Estates Dataset publication: https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/schoolestatestats .

Table 1: Number of schools which were built 1 in the financial year 2009-10 in the Stirling local authority area
	Number of schools
Built	0
Not Specified 2	0
1. Only builds or refurbishments with a cost of £500,000 or more for primary and ‎ £1 million or more for secondary and special schools are included.
2. The data collected did not distinguish whether it was a new build or a refurbishment.

Table 2: Number of schools which have been built 1 in the Stirling local authority area in the financial years 2010-11 to 2015-16
Year	Number of schools
2010-11	0
2011-12	0
2012-13	1
2013-14	0
2014-15	0
2015-16	0
2016-17	2
1. Only builds with a cost of £500,000 or more for primary and £1 million or more for secondary and special schools are included.

Question reference: S5T-01449

Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 21 January 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 22 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Prime Minister’s latest statement on how she plans to proceed with the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

Question reference: S5W-20845

Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 17 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many modern apprenticeship places there have been in the Stirling constituency in each year since 2015.

Question reference: S5W-20846

Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 16 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many social and affordable houses have been built in the Stirling constituency in each year since 2007.

The Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) collates information relating to homes delivered at local authority rather than constituency level.

The following table shows the number of social and affordable homes delivered through the AHSP in the Stirling local authority area in each year since 2007.

Year	No. of Social Rented Units	No. of Affordable Units	Total No. of Units Delivered
2007-08	127	9	136
2008-09	122	10	132
2009-10	73	33	106
2010-11	113	39	152
2011-12	103	17	120
2012-13	27	18	45
2013-14	105	44	149
2014-15	135	40	175
2015-16	83	83	166
2016-17	93	25	118
2017-18	55	16	71
Total	1036	334	1370

Please note that as well as new build homes, the AHSP includes rehabilitation projects, off-the-shelf purchases and homes for low-cost home ownership from existing housing stock.

Question reference: S5W-20650

Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 18 December 2018
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 15 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the potential impact on households and businesses in the area, whether it will discuss with Openreach the reports of poor, interrupted and failing phone lines in Crianlarich.

Scottish Government officials have and continue to be in regular contact with BT in respect of the intermittent isolations at the Crianlarich exchange.

The small exchange, servicing around 140 customers, in the Crianlarich area has experienced a number of intermittent issues over the past year which has resulted in short isolations of the exchange. During these outages no outgoing calls from landlines can be made - including to 999, which is clearly a matter of concern.

It is important to clarify that mobile phones would not have been affected. Broadband services are also unaffected.

Openreach maintain that intermittent nature and complexity of the fault has proved challenging. We have been informed that engineers have replaced or upgraded the majority of equipment and are monitoring the exchange 24/7. We have been further informed that Openreach engineers are working with remote monitoring colleagues across the UK as well as equipment suppliers.

As of the 14 January 2019, Openreach say that the exchange has been relatively stable since Friday 11 January 2019 with phone outages now typically lasting a short period and being less frequent. However, clearly I am concerned that any customer might be unable to call the 999 service and we will be keen to see Openreach resolve this with all due urgency.

A payphone linked to another route is available in the unlikely event that customers cannot make calls and want to. Police Scotland and Stirling Council have shared this information at BT’s request. However, this must be resolved.

Openreach have assured us that testing, monitoring and equipment replacement will continue until the issue is fully resolved.

Question reference: S5O-02776

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S5O-02744

Asked by: Bruce Crawford, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 December 2018
Current Status: Answered by Derek Mackay on 9 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how a no deal Brexit could impact on the size of the Scottish Budget.

A no deal Brexit would be the most damaging outcome to Scotland, creating uncertainty for our people, our economy and the Scottish Budget which funds our vital public services.

The Scottish Government will continue to do its best to protect Scotland from the threats of a no deal Brexit, however we cannot mitigate all the impacts arising from the UK Government’s approach.

The Scottish Budget for 2019/20 has been prepared assuming that the UK will leave the EU with a deal. If this does not occur, I may need to present a revised Scottish Budget to the Scottish Parliament.

Year	Modern Apprenticeship Starts
2014-15	406
2015-16	411
2016-17	436
2017-18	410
2018-19 (up to and including Q2)	225