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-28465

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 April 2020
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 15 May 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what the process is for assigning a Ready Scotland volunteer to a specific volunteering role, and how many people have been assigned specific roles since signing up to the scheme, broken down by the number of people assigned to each type of work.

The Ready Scotland campaign offers individuals three separate ways to offer their services:-

1. To help the NHS, individuals are signposted towards the NHS Health & Social Care recruitment portal, for paid positions;

2. To help Public Services, individuals are directed towards the British Red Cross (BRC): Community Reserve Volunteer scheme;

3. To help Voluntary and Community organisations, individuals are directed towards the Volunteer Scotland (VS) recruitment website.

The ‘Scotland Cares’ Campaign is testament to the compassion and community spirit of the people of Scotland; there are now over 77,000 sign-ups, from all across the country, to support the NHS, other public services and local communities. Those sign-ups are in addition to the thousands of people who had already stepped forward, quickly and spontaneously, to help with the response to COVID 19, across the country, as soon as initial needs emerged and of course the many thousands already volunteering in their own communities.

Following ‘sign-up’ through the Ready Scotland website, the NHS recruitment campaign involves the relevant officials working with Health Boards and social care providers, to match applicants to placements. Offers of paid employment are being made across all Scottish Health and Social Care Partnerships with over 800 applicants available to be deployed and more than 3,700 NHS returners in the process of completing their pre-employment checks. Processing times for that will vary, depending on the necessary occupational health and employment checks people normally have to undergo. These are being streamlined as far as possible, but of course the safety of patients, clients, and of staff themselves, remains the highest priority.

The ‘Scotland Cares’ scheme connects British Red Cross and Volunteer Scotland schemes to local authority and third sector activity in communities, creating a pool of volunteers for local organisations to draw upon and deploy as required. As I have made clear through our communication with volunteers, many of the volunteers who have signed up will not be needed immediately and may be much more needed by organisations to support people and communities over the weeks and months to come. I have also expressed my gratitude to volunteers for their offers of help as we continue to counter the impacts of the pandemic.

The British Red Cross and Volunteer Scotland do not currently track individual volunteer journey times from sign up through to formal volunteering roles, within individual organisations, and to do so would be very resource intensive, therefore deployment timescales are not readily available. Feedback from Local Authorities, Resilience Partnerships, and Third Sector Interface leads, suggests that the volunteering needs of local organisations are being met.

BRC have though put in place new systems to capture the roles the Response Volunteers are being asked to do, and record how many are assisting, across the country. The system involves use of smartphone apps to alert and match volunteers to particular local needs, enabling the requisite number of sign ups, as well as signposting to further details of the task and the next steps to be taken. A new BRC dashboard developed to provide statistics and measure usage, has recorded that, since 13 April, 241 Community Reserve Volunteers have been deployed across the three (East, West and North) Resilience Partnership areas. The roles undertaken include: food-parcel distribution, shopping assistance, medicine delivery and making welfare calls.

Question reference: S5W-28463

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 April 2020
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 15 May 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many people are signed up to the Ready Scotland volunteer scheme, and how many are currently in a volunteering role.

As at the week ending Friday 01 May, there were 77,057 sign-ups to the Ready Scotland volunteer scheme, the breakdown is provided in the following table -

Date	NHS Health & Social Care	British Red Cross	Volunteer Scotland	Total
Fri 1-05-20	23,101	18,695	35,261	77,057

Following sign-up through the Ready Scotland website, the NHS Health and Social Care recruitment campaign involves both NHS Education for Scotland officials working with Health Boards, and the Scottish Social Services Council working with social care providers, to match applicants to placements. Offers of employment are being made across all Scottish Health and Social Care Partnerships with nearly 700 applicants ready to be deployed and more than 3,600 NHS returners in the process of completing their pre-employment checks. Please note that these are all paid positions.

The new British Red Cross deployment recording process has confirmed that, since 13 April, 112 Community Reserve Volunteers have been deployed across the East, West and North Resilience Partnership areas. Volunteer Scotland do not currently track individual volunteer journeys from sign up through to formal volunteering roles, so those figures are not readily available. It should be noted that thousands of individuals were already volunteering in their communities before the launch of the ‘Scotland Cares’ campaign.

The ‘Scotland Cares’ campaign connects British Red Cross and Volunteer Scotland schemes to local authority and third sector activity in communities, creating a pool of volunteers for local organisations to draw upon and deploy as required. Although many of the volunteers who have signed up will not be needed immediately, they may well be critical in efforts to support and rebuild communities over the weeks and months to come.

Question reference: S5W-28470

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 April 2020
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 11 May 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what financial support the Ready Scotland volunteer scheme has received.

Question reference: S5T-02130

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 04 May 2020
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 5 May 2020

To ask the Scottish Government when it will pass on £155 million in Barnett consequentials to councils.

Question reference: S5W-28461

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 April 2020
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 30 April 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will use the £30 million of Barnett consequentials announced on 8 April 2020 to provide additional funding to charities.

The Scottish Government announced its support for charities via the £50 million Community Wellbeing Fund and £20 million Third Sector Resilience Fund on 18 March, more than 3 weeks before the UK Government announcement. These Funds provide support for charities, third sector and social enterprises in excess of the consequentials resulting from the UK Government announcement. I urge the UK Government to continue to recognise the importance of the charitable sector during these difficult times.

Question reference: S5W-28462

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 April 2020
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 30 April 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how much of the £30 million of Barnett consequentials announced on 8 April 2020 will be put into reserves.

All COVID-19 related consequentials will be fully committed to funding the Scottish Government’s emergency response and therefore no amounts received will be placed in the Scotland Reserve. Scottish Ministers plan to publish a Budget Revision at the end of May for consideration by the Scottish Parliament before summer recess. The Budget Revision will detail all funding allocations made to date in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Question reference: S5W-28456

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 April 2020
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 30 April 2020

To ask the Scottish Government where the £30 million of Barnett consequentials announced on 8 April 2020 has been allocated, broken down by (a) amount and (b) what it is funding.

Question reference: S5W-28460

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 April 2020
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 30 April 2020

To ask the Scottish Government when the £30 million of Barnett consequentials announced on 8 April 2020 will be available to each department, fund, local authority or public service.

Question reference: S5W-28476

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 April 2020
Current Status: Answered by Ben Macpherson on 29 April 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what the current waiting period is between an application being made to the Council Tax Reduction Scheme and a claimant receiving confirmation of its success.

Question reference: S5W-28474

Asked by: Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 April 2020
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 29 April 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how much of the additional £45 million funding allocated to the Scottish Welfare Fund as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak was allocated to each local authority and when each received their allocation.