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: S5W-34711

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 January 2021
Current Status: Answered by James Wolffe QC on 10 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government on what date the Lord Advocate will update the Parliament in relation to the malicious prosecutions of individuals involved in the administration of Rangers FC.

Question reference: S5W-34710

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 January 2021
Current Status: Answered by James Wolffe QC on 10 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government from which of its budget lines any sums were paid to individuals involved in the administration and liquidation of Rangers FC, following the admission that they were victims of malicious prosecution.

Question reference: S5W-34712

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 January 2021
Current Status: Answered by James Wolffe QC on 10 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will establish an independent inquiry into the actions of Police Scotland and the Crown Office in connection with the malicious prosecutions of individuals involved in the administration of Rangers FC.

Question reference: S5W-34706

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 January 2021
Current Status: Answered by James Wolffe QC on 10 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what settlement payments have been paid in relation to (a) Police Scotland and (b) the Crown Office subsequent to the admission that certain individuals involved in the administration and liquidation of Rangers FC have been the victims of malicious prosecution.

Question reference: S5W-34713

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 January 2021
Current Status: Answered by James Wolffe QC on 10 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether any individuals have resigned or been removed from their positions following the admission that certain individuals were victims of malicious prosecution in relation to the administration and liquidation of Rangers FC.

Question reference: S5T-02638

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 01 February 2021
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 2 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what impact there will be on the Crown Office budget as a result of any payments of compensation to individuals involved in the administration and liquidation of Rangers FC, following the admission that they were victims of malicious prosecution.

Question reference: S5W-34506

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 26 January 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to start trials of the drug, Ivermectin, in light of its reported effectiveness at all stages of COVID-19 and research on the drug being supported by the World Health Organization through its Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.

Potential new therapeutic approaches to COVID-19 are tested through the UK-wide platform trials, including RECOVERY, PRINCIPLE and REMAP-CAP. These trials are active in Scotland. An independent COVID-19 Therapeutics Advisory Panel (UK-CTAP) advises on what treatments should be proposed for testing through the platform trials. An open nominations portal for UK-CTAP is managed by UK Research and Innovation.

Guidance: making a proposal for COVID-19 therapeutics clinical trials - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Question reference: S5W-34446

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 11 January 2021
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 25 January 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what representations it has received regarding continuing business rates relief for the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors in full or in part in 2021-22.

The Scottish Government has been in regular contact with individual business as well as business representatives, including from the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors. It is clear from this, and extensive correspondence, that certainty over the future of COVID-19 non-domestic rates relief next fiscal year has been a key priority for the business community.

Unfortunately, the lack of clarity from the UK Government at successive fiscal events, starting with the cancellation of the Autumn Budget, has undermined our desire to provide the certainty sought. We have been consistently clear that our ability to continue offering full relief next year is contingent on the UK Budget extending the equivalent policy in England and subsequently generating Barnett consequential funding.

In the forthcoming budget, we will nevertheless use the limited resources available within the existing devolution settlement in an innovative, targeted way to help these businesses as far as possible. If the UK Government subsequently announces enhanced rates relief in its own budget which results in increased funding, we will take further action to support business in Scotland .

Question reference: S5W-34505

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 22 January 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether NHS Scotland uses cycles higher than 35 for PCR (polymerase chain reaction) COVID-19 tests and, if so, how often this is done as a percentage of all tests.

Each manufacturer of the RT-PCR test will recommend a differing maximum amplification cycle number to determine presence of SARS CoV-2 when interpreting results, but a maximum of around 40 amplification cycles is normally used.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the individual threshold used for every RT-PCR test in use, as the validation and interpretation of the test results are carried out by the individual laboratory performing the test.

NHS Scotland Laboratories have a protocol in place to carry out confirmation testing (or repeat testing) in certain circumstances to confirm whether low positive test results should be reported as positive or negative. Public Health Scotland have produced guidance for sampling and laboratory investigations to minimise reporting of false positives occurring: HPS Website - COVID-19 - guidance for sampling and laboratory investigations (scot.nhs.uk)

Question reference: S5W-34221

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 22 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 20 January 2021

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it has changed the reporting of COVID-19 cases in local authority areas so that they are reportedly no longer available for the general public to view and, if it was concerned that the previous approach risked breaching patient confidentiality, whether it will publish the evidence that informed this.

Reporting of COVID-19 cases by local authority is published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) on the COVID-19 Daily Cases Dashboard . The dashboard is updated daily and includes data for neighbourhoods (intermediate zones) where there are 3 or more confirmed positive cases of COVID-19.

From 14 December 2020, PHS made changes to how they publish small area COVID figures, with the changes applied to the historic trend data going back to March 2020.The changes balance the need to release as much information as possible whilst minimising the risks that individuals may be identified and also trying to ensure that the information is presented in a clear and meaningful way. This means data is now suppressed when a local neighbourhood has fewer than 3 positive cases, with the area labelled as having “0-2” confirmed cases and no population rate being applied. This is to help protect patient confidentiality and reduce situations where very small numbers of cases in an area with a small population show a disproportionately high rate. The new approach means that users can no longer separate out local neighbourhood areas with zero confirmed cases, but it is important to note that zero confirmed cases does not mean that there is no infection present in an area; the maps can only ever be an indicator of infection levels because they only show confirmed positive cases. The new approach also introduces a wider scale of rate categories used to colour the maps, which makes it easier for users in areas with high rates of confirmed positive cases to see variation between neighbourhoods and changes over time. In the interests of transparency, users can also now download the data underlying the neighbourhood level maps from the open data platform https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset/covid-19-in-scotland .

Further information on the changes and why these were made are set out on the PHS website .