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: S4O-02889

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 6 February 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with SSE regarding options for reinforcing the electricity grid in Orkney.

Question reference: S4W-19169

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 10 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 24 January 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) full-time and (b) part-time (i) disabled students and (ii) students with additional support needs have attended further education college courses in each of the last five years.

Data on the number of students who attended colleges in Scotland are produced by the Scottish Funding Council. The latest data are for academic year 2012-13.

Table 1 shows the number of students who attended college broken down by mode of study, recorded disability and those receiving additional support.

In recent years, we have asked colleges to concentrate on delivering courses that focus on employability. The shift from part-time to full-time students shown in Table 1 is the result of this re-focusing, and reflects a move away from funding very short programmes of study (under 10 hours), and leisure programmes. Table 1 also makes clear that full-time equivalents (FTEs), a better measure of the volume of learning, have remained largely unchanged over the period in question

Table 1-Students at Scottish colleges, 2006-07 to 2012-13

	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13
Full-time students	68,884	68,290	71,319	77,456	80,248	81,373	78,970
Part-time students	294,713	310,943	303,667	269,880	225,721	176,540	159,835
Full-Time Equivalent Students (FTEs)	129,378	131,423	133,374	134,918	134,547	133,199	131,421
Students with a Recorded Disability (FTEs)	17,132	18,118	19,194	19,512	20,058	20,920	21,477
Students receiving additional support (AS) /on programmes for those with AS needs (FTEs)	20,428	21,886	23,540	23,940	25,188	25,077	24,090

Source: Scottish Funding Council

Question reference: S4W-19068

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 03 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 16 January 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what recent guidance it has received from the European Commission on the impact of using the 5% uplift to basic payments for farmers in areas of natural constraint on less favoured area payments under Pillar 2.

In addition to the text of the CAP Regulations, Member States have received a draft guidance fiche for “Payments to areas facing natural or other specific constraints” under Regulation (EU) No 1305/2013 on support for rural development by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. This includes guidance regarding payments under Pillar 1 which confirms it should not be a duplication of the scheme in rural development, and that any payment received under Pillar 1 is taken into account when calculating the payment under Pillar 2.

Question reference: S4W-19067

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 03 January 2014
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 16 January 2014

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it considers that using the 5% uplift to basic payments for farmers whose holdings are wholly or partly in areas of natural constraint would impact on less favoured area payments under Pillar 2.

The recently published CAP Regulations state that any payments for Areas of Natural Constraints (ANC) made under Pillar 1 must be taken into account when calculating any ANC, payments to be made under Pillar 2 and make it clear there shall be no double funding of measures that can be financed through both pillars.

In addition, using the Pillar 1 ANC payment would require us to use the new ANC land eligibility designations immediately, which would result in disruption to the current less favoured areas (LFA) system.

However, if we do not use then Pillar 1 ANC payment, then the regulations give us until 2018 to change from the LFA to ANC land designations.

Question reference: S4W-19003

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 December 2013
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 16 January 2014

To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to change the repayment threshold for student loans during the current parliamentary session.

Question reference: S4W-18950

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 16 December 2013
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 13 January 2014

Information on the destinations of school leavers with additional support needs from the school years 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12 is already published. Information on the destinations of school leavers from the 2012-13 school year will be published in June 2014.

Information on secondary and special school leavers from publicly funded schools in Scotland by reason for support and initial destination category in 2011-12 is published in table L4.1 of the supplementary dataset to the Summary statistics for attainment, leaver destinations and healthy living, No. 3: 2013 Edition publication. This is available from the Scottish Government website using the following link:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/Datasets/attainmentandleavers

Information on secondary school leavers from publicly funded schools in Scotland by reason for support and initial destination category in 2010-11 is published in table 3.3 of the supplementary dataset on the Scottish Government website at the following link:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/schleavdest2011

Information on secondary school leavers from publicly funded schools in Scotland by reason for support and initial destination category in 2009-10 is published in table 3.5 of the supplementary dataset on the Scottish Government website at the following link:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/supdata2010

Question reference: S4W-18949

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 16 December 2013
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 13 January 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the figures published in the Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland, No 4: 2013 that suggest that the number of pupils with additional support needs is equivalent to 19% of the school population, and whether it considers that the decline in the number of teachers since 2010 leaves sufficient capacity for schools to deal with this.

The Scottish Government is clear that the statistics indicate that there continues to be improved recording of children and young people with additional support needs in Scotland. The statistics also indicate that the pupil teacher ratio in local authority schools remains at the 2011 level of 13.5. This is the second year this has been maintained.

The report to Parliament on the implementation of additional support for learning will be published in February 2014 and will provide information on how well children and young people’s learning needs are met.

Question reference: S4W-19001

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 18 December 2013
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 9 January 2014

To ask the Scottish Government how much the Air Discount Scheme has cost in each year since 2007-08.

Question reference: S4O-02778

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 08 January 2014
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 15 January 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it will take to assist the staff of Ortak Jewellery Ltd following the company's closure.

Question reference: S4O-02762

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 18 December 2013
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 8 January 2014

To ask the Scottish Government what evidence it has that team teaching brings the same benefits to children as smaller class sizes.

2007-08	£5.622 million
2008-09	£6.054 million
2009-10	£6.251 million
2010-11	£6.018 million
2011-12	£4.905 million
2012-13	£5.073 million