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-21247

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 7 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many recorded breaches of the Breastfeeding etc. (Scotland) Act 2005 there have been in each of the last five years.

Question reference: S5W-21245

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by James Wolffe QC on 4 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service facilitates the breastfeeding needs of mothers who are compellable witnesses.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) has a published commitment to all witnesses that prosecutors will try to agree a witness’ evidence with the defence or to resolve the case before it proceeds to trial. In situations where this is not possible COPFS has committed that prosecutors will call the witness to give evidence in court only if the evidence is needed for the case and cannot be agreed with the defence in advance. In situations where it is necessary for a witness to attend to give evidence prosecutors will try to take account of any concerns the witness may have about giving evidence.

Where advised of a witness’ caring responsibilities COPFS will endeavour to accommodate those responsibilities within the confines of the court programme and where possible will seek to minimise the amount of time any witness requires to be present within the court building prior to and following the giving of that witness’ evidence.

Question reference: S5W-21041

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 1 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to concerns that people in the NHS Lothian area have been advised by the NHS board that there is a minimum five-month wait to access urgent gastroenterology and endoscopy services.

The median waiting time for an urgent diagnostics appointment within NHS Lothian is 8 weeks. For an urgent gastroenterology appointment the median waiting time is 14 weeks. The Scottish Government recognises that too many patients are waiting too long for appointments and procedures which is unacceptable. That is why I launched the £850 million Waiting Times Improvement Plan in October 2018. NHS Lothian have been allocated £2.7 million of short term funding. Of this, an allocation of £390,000 is being utilised to support the reduction of waiting times within gastroenterology services.

To support improvements in Gastroenterology waiting times, NHS Lothian have put in place a number of actions including streamlining clinics to reduce variation in waiting times across Lothian, using the independent sector to provide additional outpatient capacity and a new locum has been appointment to support delivery of additional capacity.

The Endoscopy Action Plan as part of the overall Waiting Times Improvment Plan is supporting NHS Boards to reduce the number of patients waiting for such a diagnostic test. So far the number of patients waiting over six weeks for an Endoscopy has reduced by almost 9% between the end of July and October. Additional capacity has been scheduled throughout the period November 2018 to March 2019 to further improve this position. The Endoscopy Action Plan will be published during February.

Scottish Government officials last met with NHS Lothian on 4 December to discuss endoscopy services. Jacquie Campbell, Chief Officer for Acute Hospitals in NHS Lothian is currently writing a business plan for long and short term measures for improvement.

The Scottish Government continues to work with NHS Lothian to support the development and implementation of sustainable solutions to reduce their waiting times for all specialties.

Question reference: S5W-21216

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 1 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government when it last met NHS Lothian to discuss waiting times for urgent gastroenterology and endoscopy services, and what steps were taken as a consequence.

Question reference: S5W-21042

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 1 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the treatment time guarantee being broken, what recourse is available to people in the NHS Lothian area who have been advised by NHS Lothian that there is a minimum five-month wait to access urgent gastroenterology and endoscopy services.

Question reference: S5W-21246

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 1 February 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has provided to registered social landlords in each year since 2007 to carry out home adaptions for (a) older and (b) disabled people, also broken down by the number of homes that have received this support.

The Scottish Government provides an annual funding allocation to help Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) meet the needs of their tenants who require housing adaptations. Funding is not ring-fenced for specific client groups and no target number of adaptations is set for individual RSLs. Instead, each RSL, with the assistance of suitably qualified experts such as occupational therapists, will determine the relative priority of each individual application for an adaptation.

The following table sets out the total funding provided to RSLs in Scotland for adaptations from 2007-08 to 2017-18.

Year	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18
Spend (£m)	13.172	11.154	12.144	10.318	12.124	10.916	12.961	13.065	13.221	13.207	13.401

Monitoring of the RSL adaptations programme was introduced in 2012-13. Whilst it is not possible to provide details on the number of homes that have received adaptations supported by Scottish Government funding, the following table sets out the number of separate adaptations for each client group from 2012-13 to 2017-18 as reported by RSLs.

Client Group	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18
Disabled person	2359	2716	3099	3049	3575	3131
Older person	2980	2865	3027	2863	2920	2672
Not reported	200	221	94	120	46	222
Total number of adaptations	5539	5802	6220	6032	6541	6025

This information has previously been provided to SPICe though in more detail over a longer time period, as we committed to providing an annual update of information about Scottish Government-funded housing adaptations as part of our responses to PQs S4W-28622 on 9 December 2015 and S5W-01638 on 16 August 2016.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Question reference: S5W-21249

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 30 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether it would expect the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to provide breastfeeding facilities for women while waiting to give evidence in court proceedings.

Question reference: S5W-20606

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 December 2018
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 29 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with (a) retailers or their representatives and (b) autism or hearing impairment charities regarding the introduction of quiet hours in shops.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the lives of autistic people through the implementation of the Scottish Strategy for Autism.

Autistic people should be able to enjoy public places just like anyone else. Whilst the Scottish Government have not had discussions with retailers about the introduction of quiet hours in shops, we would encourage retailers to engage with autism charities to learn how to make their shops autism friendly.

However, we are working with autism charities at national and local level to support public awareness campaigns to improve the understanding of autism. We want to ensure that autistic people are met with recognition and an understanding of autism.

Question reference: S5W-20605

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 December 2018
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 23 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what action it plans to take to encourage more retailers to introduce "quiet hour" shopping facilities in order to support customers who find music and other shopping noise challenging.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the lives of autistic people through the implementation of the Scottish Strategy for Autism.

The Scottish Strategy for Autism: outcomes and priorities 2018-2021 was published in March 2018 and is available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-strategy-autism-outcomes-priorities-2018-2021 .

This outlines that we acknowledge the growing number of autism friendly places in Scotland including airports and shopping centres, and we encourage retailers and other organisations to consider making their facilities autism friendly and enabling.

Autistic people should be able to enjoy public places just like anyone else and the National Autistic Society offer Autism Friendly Awards for retailers and other organisations. Further information is available from the following link:

https://www.autism.org.uk/professionals/autism-friendly-award.aspx .

Question reference: S5W-21002

Asked by: Kezia Dugdale, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 January 2019
Current Status: Answered by Derek Mackay on 23 January 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has regarding how many in-scope businesses that it has (a) commissioned and (b) contracted are failing to comply with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.