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: S5O-01279

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 13 September 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 21 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it has given to implementing a European-style ticketing model for rail travel.

Question reference: S5O-01225

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 September 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what support it provides to companies selling products that improve energy efficiency and tackle climate change.

Question reference: S5F-01492

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 04 September 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 September 2017

To ask the First Minister what assurances the Scottish Government has received regarding the transfer of powers to Scotland following Brexit.

Question reference: S5O-01218

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what support it gives to local festivals.

Question reference: S5W-10039

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 28 June 2017
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 26 July 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has invested in dyslexia (a) awareness training, (b) training for student teachers and (c) education services in each of the last four years.

In each of the last four years (2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17), the Scottish Government has provided a grant of £100k to Dyslexia Scotland. This year
(2017-18) the Scottish Government has doubled that grant to £200k. This is provided to Dyslexia Scotland to:

Maintain and promote the Addressing Dyslexia Toolkit - the toolkit helps teachers, student teachers and all educational support staff meet the needs of pupils with dyslexia. This online national tool identifies best practice for all education staff in schools to support pupils with dyslexia, including identification. The toolkit can be found at http://addressingdyslexia.org/home. The Addressing Dyslexia Toolkit has been widely promoted and disseminated throughout Initial Teacher Education and professional learning.

Contribute to the delivery of recommendations from the Education Scotland 2014 review of dyslexia provision 'Making Sense: Education for Children and Young People with Dyslexia in Scotland' (http://addressingdyslexia.org/making-sense-dyslexia-review). Most recently there has been the launch of the Career Long Professional Learning for Dyslexia Route Map and professional online training. The 'Introduction to Dyslexia and Inclusive Practice (http://addressingdyslexia.org/free-online-learning-modules) is the first of three; free online modules developed in response to recommendations 1, 2 and 3 of the Education Scotland review.

Promote and support the rollout of the Dyslexia and Inclusive Practice Friendly Schools pilots

Provide high quality awareness training and support through Dyslexia Awareness events

Provide advice, support and information to parents, families, young people and adults.

In addition to the funding above, the Scottish Government and Education Scotland have jointly funded a two year (from October 2015 to October 2017) Dyslexia and Inclusive Practice Development Officer post within Education Scotland. This post has a specific role to support schools and local authorities to improve outcomes for children and young people with dyslexia in line with Education Scotland and Scottish Government approaches. This includes supporting schools to adopt improvement strategies to support children with additional support needs, including those with dyslexia.

Question reference: S5O-01139

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 June 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 21 June 2017

To ask the Scottish Government whether the health secretary has met the new chief executive of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and, if so, what was discussed.

Question reference: S5W-09473

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 30 May 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 14 June 2017

To ask the Scottish Government when it will announce the location of the Scottish social security agency.

Question reference: S5W-09474

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 30 May 2017
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 12 June 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what the economic impact has been of the coastal tourism sector in the last 12 months.

The Scottish Government Scottish Marine Recreation and Tourism Survey (SMRTS) from March 2016 estimated that marine recreation and tourism expenditure in Scotland was £3.7 billion per year.

The survey however was not restricted solely to coastal tourism and covers 23 different recreation and tourism activities undertaken at sea, around the Scottish coastline or on inland waterways. Further detail on each of the 23 activities surveyed may be found using the following URL: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/marine/seamanagement/national/RecandTourism

Question reference: S5W-09475

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 30 May 2017
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 12 June 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what support it offers to people in the Scottish diaspora who are keen to trace their family history.

Fiona Hyslop: The Scottish Government offers a resource for people wanting to carry out their Scottish family history research through the ScotlandsPeople website at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. The record collection available is comprehensive and offers access to the main genealogical records which are the births, deaths and marriage records (there are restrictions in place for records deemed to be modern day). The open census, wills, valuation rolls and a variety of other family history related records are also available to search for free and view on a pay-per-view basis.

The National Records of Scotland (NRS) launched an extensive upgrade to its ScotlandsPeople genealogy website during September 2016 with a fresh look and several new features that now allow their customers to more easily locate and view the digitised records. For the first time customers can search across the extensive collection of around 140 million indexes of the digitised record sets at no charge and there has been a 13% increase in the number of sessions since re-launch. A new digital service was also introduced as part of the ScotlandsPeople upgrade enabling customers to order official certificate copies of birth, death, marriage and census records on-line using ScotlandsPeople.

The free index search has been welcomed and usage of the website has increased by over a third. The emphasis for the new website was to make it intuitive so that people could carry out research themselves without the need for assistance. Although customers can contact us using our customer contact form and we do provide assistance. We also have a ScotlandsPeople Facebook and Twitter account to keep our customers around the world up to date with developments and help with searching.

In addition the ScotlandsPeople service is also made available on site in NRS and in Local Family History centres located throughout Scotland so visitors to Scotland can easily start or continue their family history journey when they visit. NRS works with VisitScotland to advertise these services and connect with the Scottish diaspora more generally.

For family history related records that have not yet been digitised and made available on ScotlandsPeople, there is also the option of carrying out research searching NRS archive catalogues and making enquiries by post, e-mail or telephone.

I hope that this gives you a better understanding of the service available worldwide.

Question reference: S5W-09472

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 30 May 2017
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 7 June 2017

To ask the Scottish Government whether housing can be sold without the seller providing adequate completion certificates for any works that were carried out.

Completion certificates may be issued under section 60 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2006, to confirm that work required under a work notice or a repairing standard enforcement order has been carried out.

Completion certificates must be submitted to the local authority under section 17 of the Building (Scotland) Act 2003 to confirm that work or a conversion for which a building warrant is required is complete.

In both cases, a completion certificate is not required before a house is sold, but any charge associated with a notice or order is registered in a land register and should be brought to light during conveyancing.