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: S4W-21862

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 20 June 2014
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 15 July 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how many full-time equivalent civil servants were involved in the organisation and preparation of the Scotland’s Future public meetings, broken down by event.

Question reference: S4W-21866

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 20 June 2014
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 15 July 2014

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S4W-21284 by Nicola Sturgeon on 22 May 2014, what the total cost of the Scotland’s Future public meetings has been since 1 April 2014, also broken down by event.

Question reference: S4W-21867

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 20 June 2014
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 15 July 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how many civil servants attended each of the Scotland’s Future public meetings.

Question reference: S4W-21864

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 20 June 2014
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 15 July 2014

To ask the Scottish Government whether the government car service was used to transport ministers to Scotland’s Future public meetings.

Question reference: S4O-03393

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 18 June 2014
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 26 June 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what the reason is for the 13% increase in complaints about hospital and community health services and 36% increase in relation to family health services between 2011-12 and 2012-13.

Question reference: S4W-21618

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 05 June 2014
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 16 June 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what additional (a) funding and (b) bursary opportunities it will offer young carers who find it difficult to afford further education due to their caring responsibilities as highlighted by the Scottish Youth Parliament’s Care.Fair.Share campaign.

College students studying further education courses are being supported by record levels of student support, with investments of over £104 million this coming academic year. Young carers studying full-time further education courses at college can receive a Dependant’s Allowance of up to £53.03 per week if they have care, financial or legal responsibilities for an adult dependant. Each college also has a discretionary fund which is targeted to help students who have financial difficulties that might prevent them getting access to further education or from continuing their course.

Under the Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013, local authorities have discretion to support young carers, including with a direct payment.

I will be meeting with representatives of the Care.Fair.Share campaign on 25 June 2014 to discuss the work they are doing.

Question reference: S4W-21617

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 05 June 2014
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 16 June 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how it will address anomalies in the administration of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) identified by the Scottish Youth Parliament’s Care.Fair.Share Campaign that result in many young carers losing their EMA entitlement.

Following parliamentary question S4O-02985 answered on 6 March 2014, we have revised the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) guidance documents with a particular emphasis on the need for flexibility for vulnerable young people, including young carers. This guidance is for local authorities and colleges and provides the flexibility within the scheme to ensure that young people do not lose out through no fault of their own. Further to this the Cabinet Secretary for Youth, Training and Women’s Employment, Angela Constance MSP and I wrote to directors of education and college principals to ask them to provide the necessary flexibility to enable young carers to access the EMA.

All answers to oral parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website. The official report can be viewed at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28862.aspx?r=8993

Question reference: S4W-21619

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 05 June 2014
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 16 June 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to alleviate the cost of travel for young carers between school, work and home to fulfil their caring and education duties.

The Young Scot National Entitlement Card gives one third off adult single fares on almost all local and long-distance buses in Scotland to 16-18 year olds or to full time volunteers under the age of 26. In addition, the card gives one third off most rail fares and 50% off all weekly or monthly tickets. Eligible Scottish islanders are also entitled to two free return ferry journeys to the mainland a year. The scheme is kept under review, but there are no plans at this time for any changes.

Local authorities have discretionary powers to provide local concessionary travel schemes in their areas. The terms and conditions of each scheme are for individual authorities to decide taking local needs and circumstances into account. Most local authorities provide local travel concessions, but the modes of transport, which include ferries, rail and taxis, and concessions available, differ from area to area.

I will be meeting with representatives of the Care.Fair.Share Campaign on the 25June 2014 to discuss the work they are doing.

Question reference: S4W-21462

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 May 2014
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 12 June 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how many doctors left Scotland to work abroad in their Foundation Year (a) 1 and (b) 2 in each of the last five years.

The information is not available in the format requested.

Intake to foundation training is Scotland is 804 places, for years 1 and 2. No foundation trainee in Scotland can leave to do their foundation training abroad as Scotland has no arrangements to support Foundation Year (FY) training overseas.

Information from the UK Foundation Programme Office for FY1 trainees leaving to do their FY2 training overseas is :

Year	FY2 Training Done Overseas
2010	60
2011	57
2012	48
2013	23

NHS Education for Scotland data from their post-FY2 destination survey is only available for the last three years. This indicates:

Year	Left the UK	Left for England, Wales or N.Ireland
2011	67	134
2012	85	122
2013	47	106

Successful FY2 trainees leaving the UK will be a mixture of UK nationals going to the other countries to work for a year or so before returning, and overseas nationals e.g. from Singapore, Malaysia, returning home after completion of UK foundation training.

Question reference: S4W-21463

Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 May 2014
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 11 June 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how many emergency medicine posts are unfilled, broken down by grade.

Information on the number of unfilled emergency medicine posts by grade is not centrally available, although information on the number of vacancies for consultant emergency medicine posts is available. The following table shows current numbers of Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) vacancies in this staff group.

Number of vacancies	Mar-14
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	4.0
NHS Borders	1.0
NHS Fife	3.0
NHS Forth Valley	1.0
NHS Grampian	1.0
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	2.0
NHS Lanarkshire	4.0
Scotland total	16.0

Source: ISD Scotland

The number of consultants working in emergency medicine has increased by over 91.8 WTE, or 121.2%, from 75.8 WTE to 167.6 WTE, during the lifetime of this Government.

Further information relating to consultant vacancies may be found on the Information Services Division Scotland workforce statistics website at:

https://isdscotland.scot.nhs.uk/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2014-05-27/Consultant_Vacancies_M2014.xls

In relation to recruitment of doctors into emergency medicine training posts, this is co-ordinated on a UK-wide basis, with any unfilled training posts passed back to NHS boards to fill through local recruitment action. In addition to this local activity the Scottish Government is working closely with NHS Education for Scotland and NHS Scotland boards on a national and international recruitment exercise aimed at increasing the numbers of emergency medicine trainee doctors in Scotland from August 2014.