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: S2W-13711

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 24 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Allan Wilson on 7 February 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what the average length of time was to process applications made under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989 in each of the last three years and how many of these applications remain outstanding.

The information on consents received and determined in the past three years is set out in the following table.

Year	Applications Received	Applications Determined	Running Total of Outstanding Applications at Year End	Average Time to Determination (in months)
2002	3	Nil	4	n/a
2003	17	7	14	13
2004	23	6	31	17

Question reference: S2W-13053

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 December 2004
Current Status: Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 3 February 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what measures exist to assist first time buyers to access the property market in their local area and how much funding was allocated for this purpose in each of the last seven years.

The following are the main grants available to assist first time buyers to access the property market.

Housing Association Grant (HAG) – HAG is a flexible way of providing funding which enables housing associations to provide, with the minimum public subsidy necessary, housing for share ownership and social rent.

GRO Grants for Owner Occupation – The purpose of GRO Grants is to widen the choice of housing for people seeking to become home owners. The grants are targeted at areas of wholly public sector housing and also at pressurised housing markets, helping to facilitate the regeneration and sustainability of communities.

Rural Home Ownership Grants (RHOGs) – RHOGs are aimed to sustain rural communities by making it easier for local people on low or modest incomes to own their own home and meet their housing needs or aspirations within their own community.

Scottish Executive expenditure across the last seven years on these grants for owner occupation is shown in the table.

Year	Owner Occupation (£ Million)
1998-99	38.027
1999-2000	29.981
2000-01	22.967
2001-02	14.921
2002-03	13.434
2003-04	14.834
2004-05 estimated outturn	20.851

Question reference: S2W-13710

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 24 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Jim Wallace on 2 February 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will publish national strategic guidance on the location of wind farms and provide a summary of existing guidance on this matter.

National Planning Policy Guideline 6 – Renewable Energy Developments, was published in November 2000, and is available at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library3/planning/nppg/nppg6.pdf.

This guidance sets out important considerations to be taken into account before a proposal is considered acceptable, for example protecting the built and natural heritage and minimising negative impacts on local communities.

An Environmental Advisory Forum on Renewable Energy has been established to consider how best to deliver the Executive’s renewable energy targets in an environmentally acceptable way. The need for further strategic guidance will be one of the issues that the forum will consider.

Question reference: S2W-13726

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 24 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Jim Wallace on 2 February 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what level of funding was allocated to the (a) Clean-Up, (b) Powershift, (c) Autogas and (d) Autogas+ programme in each of the last three years; how many vehicles benefited from each programme in each year, giving the average cost per vehicle, and how many applications for funding under each such programme were unsuccessful.

The information requested is given in the following tables:

Clean Up Programme

	Funding (£)	Number of Vehicles	Cost Per Vehicle (£)	Rejected Applications
1 Apr 02 to 30 Apr 03	90,362	34	2,658	84
1 Apr 03 to 30 Apr 04	451,546	194	2,328	86
1 Apr 04 to 31 Dec 04	678,119	215	3,154	8

Powershift

	Funding (£)	Number of Vehicles	Cost Per Vehicle (£)	Rejected Applications
1 Apr 02 To 30 Apr 03	176,863	108	1,638	39
1 Apr 03 To 30 Apr 04	704,317	358	1,967	34
1 Apr 04 To 31 Dec 04	197,184	178	1,108	21

Autogas+

	Funding (£)	Number of Vehicles	Cost Per Vehicle (£)*	Rejected Applications
1 Apr 02 to 30 Apr 03	111,200	139	800	89
1 Apr 03 to 30 Apr 04	207,200	259	800	102
1 Apr 04 to 31 Dec 04	225,600	282	800	8

Notes:

*The Autogas+ programme provides a grant of £800 towards the conversion of petrol vehicles (cars and light vans) under six years to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).

Financial information is gathered by fiscal year rather than calendar year.

There is no Scottish Executive scheme called “Autogas”.

Question reference: S2W-13216

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 December 2004
Current Status: Answered by Andy Kerr on 31 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what the average waiting times are at each specialist obesity clinic.

The information requested is not available centrally. Information on NHS waiting times is collected centrally only for first out-patient appointment at consultant-led clinics, following referral by a general medical or dental practitioner, at specialty level only; and for in-patient and day case treatment.

One of the Executive’s key priorities is to improve Scotland’s health by promoting healthier lifestyles. There is a programme of action underway which will contribute to tackling obesity, including implementation of the Scottish Diet Action Plan and Physical Activity Strategy.

Question reference: S2W-13218

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 December 2004
Current Status: Answered by Andy Kerr on 31 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how many, and what percentage of,patients are required to wait for six months or longer at each specialist obesity clinic.

Question reference: S2W-13217

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 December 2004
Current Status: Answered by Andy Kerr on 31 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how many patients are waiting to be seen at each specialist obesity clinic.

Question reference: S2W-13286

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 10 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 28 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it was consulted by the UK Department of Trade and Industry, or any other UK government department, on plans to disperse posts from London to elsewhere in the United Kingdom and, if so, whether it will give details.

The Scottish Executive has not been consulted directly by the UK Department of Trade and Industry, or any other UK Government Department, on plans to disperse civil service posts from London. However, I have been assured that the UK Government is keen to see a share of the posts relocated from London and SouthEast England coming to Scotland.

Specific decisions about the deployment of civil service staff in UK departments are an operational matter for the department concerned.

Scottish Development International (SDI) is in discussion with individual UK Government Departments, including the Department of Trade and industry, about specific projects as part of its role to attract high quality jobs and investment to Scotland. SDI keeps Scottish Executive ministers fully informed of developments.

Question reference: S2W-13897

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 January 2005
Current Status: Awaiting answer

To ask the Scottish Executive how many applications for rural home ownership grants have been made in each of the last seven years, showingyear-on-year percentage changes.

Question reference: S2W-13388

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Hugh Henry on 26 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-5284 by Hugh Henry on 14 January 2004, how many babies were born with a drug addiction in (a) 2002-03 and (b) 2003-04, broken down by NHS board area and expressed also per capita.

The available information on babies discharged from Neonatal Units with a diagnosis involving drug misuse is shown in Tables 1a and 1b . Data for 2003-04 is not yet available.

Table 1a All Births^1,2,3 and Neonatal Discharges⁴ Recording Drug Misuse^5,6; Numbers and Rates Per 1,000 Births

	All Births 2002-03^P	Neonatal Discharges Recording Drug Misuse 2002-03^P	Rate Per 1,000 Births Within NHS Board Area 2002-03^P
Argyll and Clyde	3,987	33	8.28
Ayrshire and Arran	3,453	21	6.08
Borders	971	**	**
Dumfries and Galloway	1,313	10	7.62
Fife	3,498	18	5.15
Forth Valley	2,832	15	5.30
Grampian	5,305	72	13.57
Greater Glasgow	9,194	26	2.83
Highland	1,962	6	3.06
Islands	628	-	-
Lanarkshire	5,945	27	4.54
Lothian	7,976	22	2.76
Tayside	3,730	19	5.09

^PProvisional.

Source: SMR02, SBR and SMR11.

Notes:

1. Excludes home births and births at non-NHS hospitals.

2. Includes all live births and stillbirths.

3. From 1998, where four or more babies are involved in a pregnancy, birth details are recorded for the first three babies. Prior to 1998, birth details were recorded only for the first two babies delivered.

4. A baby may be admitted to and discharged from neonatal care more than once. Figures relate to the total number of discharges, not to the number of individual babies.

5. Drug misuse is defined using the following International Classification of Disease (10th Revision) codes :

P04.4 - Fetus and newborn affected by maternal use of drugs of addiction

P96.1 - Neonatal withdrawal symptoms from maternal use of drugs of addiction

6. Care should be taken when interpreting these data as recording practice of drug misuse diagnosis may vary between hospitals. In addition, the Scottish Birth Record (which replaces SMR11) is currently being incrementally implemented throughout Scotland and therefore should be treated with caution. These reasonsmay explain some of the variation between NHS boards.

** - In order to maintain patient confidentiality, values of 1 and over and less than five have been suppressed.

Table 1b Neonatal Discharges¹ Recording Drug Misuse^2,3; Numbers and Rates Per 100,000 Population

	Mid Year Estimate of Population 2002	Neonatal Discharges Recording Drug Misuse 2002-03^P	Discharges Per 100,000 Population Within NHS Board Area 2002-03^P
Argyll and Clyde	418,750	33	78.81
Ayrshire and Arran	367,060	21	57.21
Borders	107,400	**	**
Dumfries and Galloway	147,310	10	67.88
Fife	350,620	18	51.34
Forth Valley	279,370	15	53.69
Grampian	523,290	72	137.59
Greater Glasgow	866,080	26	30.02
Highland	208,140	6	28.83
Islands	67,350	-	-
Lanarkshire	552,910	27	48.83
Lothian	779,100	22	28.24
Tayside	387,420	19	49.04

^PProvisional.

Source: SMR02, SMR11, SBR and GRO(S) mid year population estimates.

Notes:

1. A baby may be admitted to and discharged from neonatal care more than once. Figures relate to the total number of discharges, not to the number of individual babies.

2. Drug misuse is defined using the following Internatioanl Classification of Disease (10th Revision) codes :

P04.4 - Fetus and newborn affected by maternal use of drugs of addiction

P96.1 - Neonatal withdrawal symptoms from maternal use of drugs of addiction

3. Care should be taken when interpreting these data as recording practice of drug misuse diagnosis may vary between hospitals. In addition the Scottish Birth Record (which replaces SMR11) is currently being incrementaly implemented throughout Scotland and therefore should be treated with caution. These reasonsmay explain some of the variation between NHS boards.

** - In order to maintain patient confidentiality, values of one and over and less than five have been suppressed.