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: S4W-27775

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 28 September 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 1 October 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what (a) mandatory and (b) statutory requirements there are for GPs to undertake mental health training.

Question reference: S4O-04682

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 September 2015
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 October 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the UNISON Scotland survey claiming that staff morale at colleges "is at rock bottom with 79% of respondents saying staff felt negative or extremely negative".

Question reference: S4W-27444

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Current Status: Answered by Aileen McLeod on 30 September 2015

To ask the Scottish Government whether there is a national shortage of spawning salmon; whether this has resulted in a reduction in juvenile salmon in Scottish rivers, and whether it will publish the statistical evidence in this regard.

Question reference: S4W-27445

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Current Status: Answered by Aileen McLeod on 30 September 2015

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it considers that its proposed controls on salmon spawning could have a significant effect on numbers, given that it is understood that up to 90% of salmon in Scottish rivers escape to spawn elsewhere.

It is believed that most wild Scottish salmon return to spawn in the river where they were themselves spawned. Below a critical level of spawning adults, the production of smolts depends not on how many juveniles can be supported by the river habitat, but rather by the number of eggs deposited. In this circumstance, an increase in spawning fish by reducing numbers killed by a fishery can be expected to increase the number of smolts produced and increase population strength.

Question reference: S4W-27443

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Current Status: Answered by Aileen McLeod on 30 September 2015

To ask the Scottish Government for what conservation reasons it has introduced a system under which salmon can only be killed by anglers under licence.

The introduction of a kill licence was a key recommendation of the independent Wild Fisheries Review published in 2014. The review called for this issue to be given immediate consideration given the conservation status of wild salmon. The revised proposals recently published by Scottish ministers details a system which provides a mechanism to control fishing activity. The killing of salmon will be managed on an annual basis by categorising fishery districts and Special Areas of Conservation in relation to their conservation status.

Question reference: S4W-27442

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Current Status: Answered by Aileen McLeod on 30 September 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what legal or other advice it has received in the context of the habitats directive in relation to its management of Atlantic salmon and whether it will publish this.

Question reference: S4W-27523

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 September 2015
Current Status: Answered by Derek Mackay on 30 September 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it (a) has had and (b) plans to have with ScotRail regarding increasing capacity on the Borders rail link and what plans it has to work in conjunction with the operator to increase capacity.

Transport Scotland has had regular meetings with ScotRail since the construction of the Borders Railway began in 2013, through the delivery of the project and since services were reintroduced on Sunday 6 September 2015. ScotRail is well aware of the issues with busy services and has put plans in place to reduce pressures by adding extra carriages, in some cases doubling the number on some Borders services.

ScotRail will continue to closely monitor passenger numbers to ensure there is sufficient capacity on scheduled services.

Question reference: S4W-27599

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 22 September 2015
Current Status: Answered by Maureen Watt on 30 September 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what the timetable is for implementing the introduction of opt-out blood borne virus testing in prisons.

Question reference: S4W-27502

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 14 September 2015
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 28 September 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the number of people with allergic disorders, and how many of these are (a) severe or (b) life-threatening.

Question reference: S4W-27503

Asked by: Jim Hume, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 14 September 2015
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 28 September 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how many anaphylactic (a) shocks and (b) deaths have been recorded in each year since 2009-10.

Information on the total number of cases of anaphylactic shock is not available centrally. At this link http://www.scotpho.org.uk/health-wellbeing-and-disease/allergic-conditions/data/secondary-care-data there is a table which shows the number of hospital discharges following admission with a diagnosis of anaphylactic shock. These figures do not include cases which might have been treated in other settings such as accident and emergency departments or in primary care and which did not result in hospital admission.

The information requested on deaths is given in the following table. The National Records of Scotland (NRS) categorises the causes of each death registered in Scotland using the codes which are given in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision (ICD-10). A death may have a number of causes. Normally, deaths are counted on the basis of the underlying cause of death (that is the disease or injury which initiated the chain of morbid events leading directly to death, or the accident or act which produced the fatal injury). However, the implantable International Classification of Diseases rules do not allow anaphylactic shock (or various other consequences of certain other causes of death) to be counted as the underlying cause of death. Therefore, the table gives the numbers of deaths for which anaphylactic shock was recorded as being a contributory factor to the death.

Deaths for which anaphylactic shock was a contributory factor*, by year of registration:

2009 – 5

2010 – 6

2011 – 6

2012 – none

2013 – 4

2014 – 1

*Deaths for which the ICD-10 codes for the causes of the death included one or more of the following: T78.0, T78.2, T80.5 and T88.6.

As in other statistics published by NRS, deaths are counted on the basis of the calendar years in which they were registered, not on the basis of financial years.