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-25559

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 30 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 18 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has asked Audit Scotland to correct exhibit 2 in its paper, Social Security Scotland annual audit report 2018/19, which states that the Scottish Child Payment will be delivered at the end of 2022.

Exhibit 2 correctly states that eligible families with children under 16 will receive their payments by the end of 2022, which reflects the timeline announced by the First Minister for the Scottish Government in its Programme for Government 2019-2020. The document referred to is not produced by Scottish Government or Social Security Scotland and any questions regarding its editing should be put to Audit Scotland.

Question reference: S5W-25516

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 7 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-25345 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 25 September 2019, what the mean (a) full-time equivalent and (b) day-rate salary is for contingent workers in each division of the Social Security Directorate.

Question reference: S5W-25494

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 7 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People's letter of 8 August 2019 to the Social Security Committee, which stated that "the Scottish Government worked directly with people in receipt of Universal Credit (UC) in Scotland as we developed the UC Scottish choices... they told us that it made most sense for people to be offered the choices after the first assessment period because only at that point did they know how much their UC award was going to be", whether it has published the findings of this work.

Question reference: S5O-03649

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 October 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 9 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how it supports the participation in cultural and tourism-related activities of disabled people and people with long-term health conditions.

Question reference: S5W-25396

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 2 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the paper that was considered by the Social Security Scotland Executive Advisory Body on 5 March 2019, which stated that the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) would update its "Best Start Grant forecasts for publication at the end of May 2019. If the new SFC forecasts differ from the updated [Scottish Government] forecasts, we will have to make a decision on which forecasts to use for the resource modelling”, and in light of the May 2019 forecasts subsequently differing from those of December 2018, which forecast model is now being used, and whether it has put in place a resource remodelling exercise.

The latest Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts for Best Start Grant were published in May 2019, increasing their 2019-20 forecasts from £12m to £21m.

The forecasts from the Scottish Fiscal Commission were then used by Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland in resource modelling for Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment. Following Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment being introduced, the Best Start Grant Early Years and School Payment were based on revised estimates.

Question reference: S5W-25491

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 30 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government on what date it supplied the social security uprating analytical report to the Scottish Commission on Social Security.

Question reference: S5W-25231

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 10 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 25 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government (a) how many and (b) what proportion of (i) its and (ii) the Social Security Directorate staff recorded (A) short- and (B) long-term absences in each (1) quarter and (2) year since 2016.

The following tables provides (a) how many and (b) what proportion of (i) its and (ii) the Social Security Directorate staff recorded (A) short- and (B) long-term absences in each (1) quarter and (2) year since 2016, broken down by the number of days lost (1) overall and (2) as a proportion of days worked by staff.

Data for the Directorate for Social Security begins at September 2016.

Table 1. Number of directly employed SG Core staff who had at least one period of short term sickness or long term sickness during a rolling year period ending in each quarter. Including the total number of scaled sick days and the percentage of working days lost

Year to quarter end	Short Term Sick				Long term sick				Total No. of Staff
Year to quarter end	No. of staff	% of staff	Total Scaled Sick Days	% working days lost	No. of staff	% of staff	Total Scaled Sick Days	% working days lost
Mar-19	4,039	55.8%	24556.8	1.8%	356	4.9%	21951.5	1.6%	7,243
Dec-18	3,958	56.4%	23699.8	1.8%	352	5.0%	22261.4	1.7%	7,014
Sep-18	3,902	58.0%	23117.9	1.8%	355	5.3%	22101.7	1.7%	6,722
Jun-18	3,878	58.8%	22428.5	1.7%	367	5.6%	22049.7	1.7%	6,596
Mar-18	3,828	59.8%	22016.7	1.7%	335	5.2%	20366.0	1.6%	6,396
Dec-17	3,712	59.5%	21351.7	1.7%	315	5.1%	19101.2	1.5%	6,234
Sep-17	3,615	59.0%	20430.1	1.7%	300	4.9%	19010.7	1.6%	6,127
Jun-17	3,611	60.3%	20690.1	1.7%	284	4.7%	17768.7	1.5%	5,991
Mar-17	3,576	60.4%	20517.0	1.7%	301	5.1%	18653.9	1.6%	5,919
Dec-16	3,548	60.5%	20213.7	1.7%	310	5.3%	18769.3	1.6%	5,861
Sep-16	3,473	59.5%	19373.0	1.6%	308	5.3%	18426.7	1.6%	5,841

Table 2. Number of directly employed Directorate for Social Security staff who had at least one period of short term sickness or long term sickness during a rolling year period ending in each quarter. Including the total number of scaled sick days and the percentage of working days lost

Year to quarter end	Short Term Sick				Long term sick				Total No. of Staff
Year to quarter end	No. of staff	% of staff	Total Scaled Sick Days	% working days lost	No. of staff	% of staff	Total Scaled Sick Days	% working days lost
Mar-19	146	46.2%	885.9	1.6%	*	*	*	*	316
Dec-18	138	49.3%	790.7	1.5%	*	*	*	*	280
Sep-18	134	54.3%	723.4	1.6%	*	*	*	*	247
Jun-18	140	48.6%	756.8	1.4%	13	4.5%	776.6	1.5%	288
Mar-18	126	51.9%	616.9	1.4%	11	4.5%	535.3	1.2%	243
Dec-17	104	47.5%	512.9	1.3%	11	5.0%	570.7	1.5%	219
Sep-17	78	41.3%	399.4	1.2%	8	4.2%	494.5	1.5%	189
Jun-17	66	51.2%	319.3	1.3%	8	6.2%	427.6	1.7%	129
Mar-17	49	49.5%	247.4	1.3%	9	9.1%	438.7	2.4%	99
Dec-16	33	47.8%	208.1	1.5%	5	7.2%	230.0	1.7%	69
Sep-16	29	51.8%	179.3	1.6%	*	*	*	*	56

* Numbers of 1-4 are supressed for disclosure reasons.

Scaled sick days are the number of working days absence in the last 12 months, i.e. calculations exclude weekends and public and privilege holidays from the period of sickness. A weighting is also applied to spells over 125 working days to account for annual leave not taken and subtract this, pro rata, from the number of days off sick (assumes a working year of 225 days). Includes all lengths of absence.

Question reference: S5W-25380

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 17 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 25 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how much it spends on the young carer grant, from development and conception to delivery.

Young Carer Grant forms part of Wave One social security delivery. Information on the cost of delivering Social Security will be set out in the Programme Business Case, which will be published around the time of the Scottish Budget.

For anticipated benefit expenditure please also refer to Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts . For information on Scottish Government Spending plans refer to the Medium Term Financial Strategy and the Scottish Budget . Information on Social Security Scotland expenditure will be available in the annual report and accounts to be published in the Autumn.

Links

http://www.fiscalcommission.scot/publications/scotlands-economic-and-fiscal-forecasts/

https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-fiscal-outlook-scottish-governments-medium-term-financial-strategy-2019/

https://www.gov.scot/budget/ .

Question reference: S5W-25344

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 16 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 25 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what the (a) headcount and (b) full-time equivalent figure is for contingent workers in each division of the Social Security Directorate, also broken down by the number of quarters that they have been in post.

There are currently 172 contingent works across each division of the Social Security Directorate. Each contingent worker is appointed on a full-time basis so headcount is directly comparable to FTE. The following table breaks this down by Division and number of quarters.

Divisions	No of quarters in post
	Up to 1	Up to 2	Up to 3	Up to 4	Up to 5	Up to 6	Up to 7	Up to 8	Total no of people
Programme Management & Delivery	32	32	12	13	21	8	2	1	121
Chief Digital Officer	1	15	14	14	2	2	0	2	50
Policy	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
									172

Question reference: S5W-25345

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 16 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 25 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what the (a) mean, (b) median and (c) (i) lower and (ii) upper (A) full-time equivalent and (B) day-rate salary is for contingent workers in each division of the Social Security Directorate, also broken down by how many are paid a day-rate of (1) less than £250, (2) £250 to £499, (3) £500 to £749, (4) £750 to £999 and (5) £1,000 or more.