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: S6W-12395

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 21 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 1 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-05564 by John Swinney on 10 January 2017, whether it will provide an update on how many school support staff each local authority has employed in each year since 2010, broken down by category of employment.

Data on school support staff are collected as part of the annual school staff census.

National Statistics on selected categories of school support staff (pupil support assistants, home-school link workers, behaviour support staff, educational psychologists, school nurses and library staff) can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-statistics/

Management information (which are not subject to the same quality assurance procedures by Scottish Government statisticians as Official Statistics) for all other support staff roles for which data is collected centrally can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-management-information/

Statistics for all categories of support staff prior to 2017 are available as part of the Teacher Census Supplementary Data: https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementary-statistics/

The processing and quality assurance of the statistics on school support staff from 2017 onwards has been brought into line with procedures for National Statistics on pupils and teachers. This means that statistics from 2017 onwards are not directly comparable with the data on support staff from previous years.

Question reference: S6O-01652

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what steps are being taken to increase the allocation of police officers in Edinburgh.

Question reference: S6W-12193

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many new homes have been built in Scotland in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-12196

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding has been recovered in total by each local authority for homelessness prevention from payments made through Integration Joint Boards.

The majority of homelessness funding provided to local authorities is provided via the block grant, Scottish Government has provided £11.2 billion to Local Authorities as part of the block grant in 2022-23. It is at each local authority’s discretion as to how they use this resource to prevent and respond to homelessness. Decisions as to whether the responsibility for homelessness services are delegated to the local authority or the integration joint boards are made locally.

In addition to the block grant are specific allocations of funding for the purpose of addressing homelessness. Information on these additional funding allocations provided to local authorities can be found in the responses to parliamentary questions S6W-10127 on 22 August 2022 and S6W-06821 on 10 March 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Question reference: S6W-12192

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on how many modular homes have been built in each local authority area in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-12200

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many Ukrainians living in Scotland under its Super Sponsor Scheme have been supported into employment.

As gathering and publishing employment data is the responsibility of HMRC, there is currently no data available to the Scottish Government on the number of Ukrainians living in Scotland under the Super Sponsor Scheme who have been supported into employment. HMRC publish counts of employments held by non-UK nationals in Scotland as part of their experimental statistics publication ‘payrolled employments in the UK by region, industry and nationality’. HMRC are planning to publish an update to these statistics in 2023.

The Scottish Government is taking action to ensure that displaced people seeking work in Scotland are provided with a full range of information, as early as possible, to help inform their employment decisions and settle well in Scotland. Scottish businesses are eager to employ Ukrainians who have arrived, recognising the skills they bring with them. We are working with councils, third and private sectors, Skills Development Scotland and the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure arrivals can seek out and secure employment, including through job fairs.

Question reference: S6W-12231

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 18 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what percentage of non-electric heat in buildings is directly supplied by renewable sources.

In 2020, 6.4% of non-electrical heat demand was met by renewable technologies. This represents an increase of 4.5 percentage points (up from 1.9%) since 2010 and an increase of 0.2 percentage points from 2019.

The most recent statistics on renewable heat in Scotland are published in the 'Renewable Heat in Scotland – 2020 report’ ( Renewable-heat-in-Scotland-2020-report-version-2 ; produced for the Scottish Government by Energy Saving Trust).

As set out in the ‘Heat in Buildings Strategy: 2022 update’ ( Heat in Buildings Strategy: 2022 update - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) , we will publish an update to our heat statistics in May 2023 as part of the Climate Change Plan monitoring report. This will not only align with our climate change reporting, but will also provide more time to gather and review the necessary statistics.

Question reference: S6W-12206

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of any unmet need during the development of its proposals for a National Care Service.

Following the high level assessment of unmet need raised in the Independent Review of Adult Social Care, the Scottish Government considered unmet need in its consultation for the National Care Service.

Unmet need in adult social care is continually monitored as Scottish Government analysts are considering options for increasing our understanding of the nature and level of unmet need in adult social care. We will continue to engage with external partners and those with lived experience of unmet need in social care services as we develop the National Care Service.

Question reference: S6W-12195

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to fund free tram travel for under-22s as part of the Young Persons’ (Under 22s) Free Bus Travel scheme.

Question reference: S6W-12197

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the current pension liability for the reported 75,000 local authority employees who would transfer to a National Care Service under its proposals.

The Bill does not propose that 75,000 local authority employees would transfer. As the policy memorandum to the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill makes clear the under the National Care Service, services will continue to be planned, designed and delivered locally because the care boards will plan and commission services for their local area. For social care services currently provided in-house by local authorities, that may continue under a commissioning arrangement with the care board, or the care board may take over direct delivery, with staff transferring to the care board. These will be decisions to be taken locally as the care boards are established. Once the structure and governance of care boards and their localities have been decided, decisions about the employment of staff will be made.

Thorough consideration will be given to all options regarding pensions and stakeholders will be consulted before any decisions are taken.