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: S6W-23165

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 07 December 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 21 December 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what its assessment is of (a) any financial impact of NHS Scotland’s individual NHS boards referring patients to NHS England for magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) treatment, (b) whether individual NHS England trusts have the adequate resources to allow proper access by patients from Scotland to MRgFUS treatment in light of this cross-border referral system and (c) how much NHS Scotland has spent on referring patients from Scotland for MRgFUS treatment in England in each year since 2019.

A small service offering MRgFUS for benign Essential Tremor is available in NHS Tayside, to which people who live within the catchment area of other Scottish health boards can be referred for assessment and potential treatment. While the service in Dundee remains small, we understand it has capacity to increase the number of accepted patients if necessary.

For this reason the Scottish Government has not undertaken any assessment of any potential financial impact of referring patients to NHS England for MRgFUS, or of NHS England resources regarding MRgFUS.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on whether NHS Scotland Health Boards have spent any money referring patients to England for MRgFUS treatment since 2019. Specialist treatment provided outwith NHS Scotland is managed by the National Services Division (NSD) as part of NHS National Services Scotland (NSS). We can confirm that NSD Scotland has not incurred any costs associated with MRgFUS referrals since 2019.

Question reference: S6W-21859

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 8 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the comments by the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice, during the stage 1 debate on the Culpable Homicide (Scotland) Bill on 21 January 2021, that the Scottish Government wants to work with bereaved families to produce a bill that could help to address the issues raised, but in a way that is within the Parliament’s devolved competence, and in light of Health and Safety Executive statistics on work-related fatal injuries in Great Britain in 2023, what its position is on whether the higher fatality rate in Scotland can be attributed to a greater proportion of people working in higher risk jobs; which employment areas it considers to be higher risk, and what sector-specific action it can take to address any increased risk.

The Health and Safety Executive (the HSE) operates across the UK including in Scotland under governance from the Department of Work and Pensions within the UK Government. The HSE is responsible for helping people be safer at work.

As part of their responsibilities for workplace safety, the HSE publishes workplace safety statistics for Scotland. In November 2022, they published the latest statistics:

Workplace health and safety statistics for Scotland, 2022 (hse.gov.uk)

In presenting these statistics, the HSE indicated that '... this report represents a profile of workplace health and safety in Scotland and its primary purpose is to provide Scotland specific equivalents of the statistics for Great Britain published across HSE’s Health and Safety Statistics pages. The figures also enable comparisons between Scotland and Great Britain to be made. However, any such comparative analysis should be interpreted with caution since any differences in health and safety outcomes are likely to be at least in part driven by differences in the industry sectors and occupations people work in.'

More specifically, the HSE has carried out a statistical analysis of fatalities in the workplace across the nations of the UK. On page 15 of their November 2022 report, they indicated the following:

'Over recent years, the fatal injury rate in Scotland has been consistently higher than that of Great Britain, but there is no difference in the rate of non-fatal injuries. One explanation is that in Scotland, a greater proportion of workers are employed in higher risk industry sectors or higher risk occupations, compared with Great Britain as a whole. It is possible to standardise fatal injury rates by adjusting them to account for differences in industry composition between countries and regions and a recent research report shows the effect this has on the relative rates of the countries and regions of Great Britain.

The following table shows estimates of the unstandardised and standardised country-specific fatal injury rates for the period 2015/16-2019/20 (the full report can be found at www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/adhoc analysis/updated-standardised-fatals.pdf) .

Number, un-standardised rate and standardised rate of fatal injuries per 100,000 workers (2015-16 – 2019-20)

Country	Number of Fatalities	Un-standardised rate of fatal injuries per 100,000 workers	Standardised rate of fatal injuries per 100,000 workers
Scotland	88	0.65	0.57
England	529	0.38	0.39
Wales	58	0.81	0.65
Great Britain	675	0.42	NA

The standardised rate for Scotland is lower than the un-standardised rate, demonstrating that its different industry composition does have an effect on the comparison between Scotland and Great Britain. However, even after standardisation the rate is still significantly higher in Scotland. It is likely that other factors, such as a different occupational distribution and other factors not related to employment, are also affecting the comparison. However, at present there is insufficient data available to enable the quantification of these effects.'

The Scottish Government will work with the HSE in any aspects where devolved issues arise to help the HSE deliver their reserved statutory responsibilities in the area of workplace safety.

Question reference: S6W-21860

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 7 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government when it anticipates it will receive the Scottish Law Commission’s findings and recommendations from its review of homicide law, which is due to report in 2023.

Question reference: S6W-21861

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 7 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, as part of its regular discussions with the Scottish Law Commission on its work programme, whether it can confirm if the commission is looking specifically at work-related involuntary act culpable homicide as part of its review of homicide law.

Paragraph 1.27 of the Scottish Law Commission's Homicide Project Discussion paper indicates corporate homicide is one of a number of topics that the Commission will not be considering as part of their project. As paragraph 1.27 and associated footnotes indicates, a Bill was presented to the Scottish Parliament in 2020 in this area of law and the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament made a statement that the Bill was not within the legislative competence of the Parliament. The Commission's Homicide project relates to matters which would be within the competence of the Scottish Parliament.

Question reference: S6O-02708

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 01 November 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 9 November 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how it supports small businesses in the Mid Scotland and Fife region.

Question reference: S6W-21891

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 29 September 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 27 October 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to support Heart Research UK in its aim to prevent, treat and cure heart disease cases in Scotland.

We are grateful to Heart Research UK for their continued work to prevent, treat and cure heart disease in Scotland.

We recognise the scale and impact of heart disease in Scotland and have set out our strategic direction to address this in our Heart Disease Action Plan (2021).

The plan outlines a collaborative approach and acknowledges the important role of the third sector in minimising preventable heart disease and ensuring that everyone with suspected heart disease has timely and equitable access to diagnosis treatment and care.

Question reference: S6W-21895

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 29 September 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 27 October 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to encourage more young people to receive heart screenings and to make this service more widely available.

Question reference: S6W-21896

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 29 September 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 27 October 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to educate people about the different heart disease symptoms that are suffered by men and women.

Our Women’s Health Plan includes a commitment to improve information and public awareness of heart disease symptoms and risks for women.

Throughout February 2023 we delivered an awareness campaign related to this action. Outreach posters were placed in 1,000 pharmacies and 1,600 organisations (such as GPs and community centres).

Posters included a link to the NHS Inform Women’s Heart Health page . The page notes that the symptoms of a heart attack can vary person to person, though both women and men may experience some common symptoms.

Question reference: S6W-21892

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 29 September 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 27 October 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of how much funding it has provided to the NHS for tackling heart disease in each of the last five financial years.

Diagnosis, treatment and care for people with heart disease is being provided across a range of services delivered by our NHS, supported by record funding of more than £19 billion for the health portfolio.

While the Scottish Government provides core funding and is responsible for setting the strategic policy for the NHS in Scotland, responsibility for service delivery rests locally with Health Boards who configure services taking into account local circumstances and the reasonable needs of their patient populations.

Question reference: S6W-21893

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 29 September 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 27 October 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how much the NHS has spent on tackling heart disease in each of the last five financial years, also broken down by NHS board.