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-13611

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 18 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Euan Robson on 26 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive when it will reply to Alex Salmond MP"s letter of 18 November 2004 regarding the Protection of Children (Scotland) Act 2003.

Question reference: S2W-13354

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 11 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 25 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it intends to comment directly, or via the Department of Trade and Industry, on plans for the future management of the internet as set out in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Strategic Plan released on 16 November 2004.

Question reference: S2W-13377

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 25 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what contribution it has made either directly, via the Department of Trade and Industry consultation, UK Government Consultation on ICANN and the Management of the Internet Domain Name System, or otherwise, to the consultation on the future management of the internet, as subsequently published as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Strategic Plan released on 16 November 2004.

Question reference: S2W-13125

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 20 December 2004
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 25 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what the total travel costs were for (a) ministers, (b) special advisers and (c) officials in each of its departments in each year since 1999.

It is not possible to separate from the Scottish Executive’s accounting system the full cost of the ministers’ travel costs from that of staff in their private offices. However, the information available is set out in the table below. Travel costs include air, rail, hired cars, taxi, miscellaneous travel, subsistence and motor mileage and bus tickets. Restructuring of departments in the Scottish Executive over the period affects some of the year on year comparisons.

	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04
	£000	£000	£000	£000	£000
Ministers and Private Offices	302	316	290	274	281
Special Advisers	3	21	25	19	49
Corporate Services¹	1,230	1,014	896	1,037	895
Finance and Central Services	593	614	688	725	643
Education	184	238	271	372	418
Development	369	355	410	439	553
Enterprise and Lifelong Learning	376	354	338	313	516
Health	253	355	389	528	477
Justice	322	327	348	381	406
Environment and Rural Affairs	1,690	1,595	1,866	1,625	1,669
Total	5,322	5,189	5,521	5,713	5,907

Note: 1. Includes Office of the Permanent Secretary and Legal and Parliamentary Services.

Question reference: S2W-13434

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 24 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what policy development it is undertaking relevant to the housing of older people.

The Scottish Executive and Communities Scotland aims to deliver good quality, sustainable and affordable housing and housing support across various tenures to all client groups, including older people.

While there are various initiatives, grant-funded programmes and advice services in operation assisting older people in identifying and maintaining suitable housing we continue to develop new, and deliver current policies in order to meet our commitment to better housing for all including:

Supporting People Programme – provides revenue funding for housing support services which helps older people remain in their own home and communities longer;

Fuel poverty/central heating programme - provides central heating systems to householders over 60 in private rented or owner occupied accommodation where there is no central heating system or the system has irretrievably broken down, and to householders over 80 in this sector who have partial or inefficient systems;

improvement and repair grants/private sector housing grants - are available to help older people to carry out work on their homes, and

Care and Repair services – provides direct revenue funding to local care and repair projects, and capital funding (via local authority housing improvement and repair grants), to deliver a range of services to older people so they can improve and/or adapt their homes in order to remain there longer.

More generally, the Executive is involving stakeholders, including older people representative groups and bodies, in developing policies on a range of housing issues which are specifically relevant to older people. These include:

measures in the forthcoming legislation on private housing, for example to strengthen the rights of tenants and to enable financial assistance to be targeted to householders who need it most, and;

to improve assessment of the need for affordable housing.

In addition to delivering the above policies the Executive requires, local authorities to identify and meet the housing needs of older people within their local housing strategies. These strategies ensure that the housing needs of older people are effectively met at a local level.

Question reference: S2W-13077

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 December 2004
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 24 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how much each of its departments and agencies spent on IT consultants in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

The expenditure, by Department and Agency, on IT Consultancy activities over the last five years is as follows:

Department/Agency	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05 (to date)
Finance and Central Services	0	0	0	£9,000	£50,000
Health	0	0	0	£6,350	0
Justice	£100,400	£117,000	£155,000	£138,000	£63,300
Accountant in Bankruptcy	0	0	£21,000	0	£3,000
Communities Scotland	0	£42,000	£173,000	£118,000	£36,000
Registers of Scotland	£92,000	£12,000	£179,000	£66,000	£60,000
Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service	0	0	£50,000	£55,000	£11,000
Her Majesty’s Inspector of Education	0	0	£43,000	£20,000	£1,000
Historic Scotland	0	£15,000	£35,000	£31,000	£48,000
Crofters Commission	0	0	0	£19,000	£93,000
Marine Laboratory	0	£8,000	£1,000	0	£4,000
Deer Commission	0	0	0	0	£5,000
Scottish Agriculture Science	0	£7,700	0	0	0
Corporate Funding	£235,000	£187,000	£166,000	£321,000	£82,000

“IT Consultancy” is defined as IT services such as an IS Strategy Studyor Review; a Feasibility, Scoping or Business Analysis Study for a specific IT project; an IT Project Review; an IT Project audit or health check carried out by independent external resources.

Question reference: S2W-12885

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 07 December 2004
Current Status: Answered by Nicol Stephen on 21 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive what its position is on the UK Department for Transport"s stance on regional air services as contained in the UK response to the Eurocontrol consultation on Draft Single European Sky Implementing Rule on a Common Charging Scheme for Air Navigation Services.

The Scottish Executive is aware of the concerns of regional airlines and airports about the Single European Sky Regulations which require the development of a common charging scheme for the recovery of the costs of air navigation services provided to airlines and other airspace users. The Executive supports the UK Government’s continuing pressure on the Commission for a reasonable approach which does not place a disproportionate regulatory burden on domestic and short haul flights.

Question reference: S2W-12886

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 07 December 2004
Current Status: Answered by Nicol Stephen on 21 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will conduct a quantitative analysis regarding any potential adverse effects on communities served by smaller aircraft of any common charging scheme for air navigation services implemented under the Single European Sky.

Question reference: S2W-13246

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 07 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Peter Peacock on 21 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how many school students it expects there to be in 2014-15.

Question reference: S2W-13457

Asked by: Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 January 2005
Current Status: Answered by Peter Peacock on 21 January 2005

To ask the Scottish Executive how many children left school with no qualifications in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.