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.

Find out more about parliamentary questions

Filter your results Hide all filters

Displaying 2295 questions Show Answers

Order by |

Question reference: S5T-00274

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 19 December 2016
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 20 December 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how many women have had transvaginal mesh implants since it requested NHS boards to suspend their use in June 2014.

Question reference: S5W-05266

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 December 2016
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 19 December 2016

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of its role with the National Advisory and Advocacy Group for the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives, what discussions it has had with (a) the Health and Safety Executive and (b) other stakeholders regarding (i) the effectiveness of and (ii) improving the Primary Authority Scheme.

Question reference: S5W-05259

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 December 2016
Current Status: Answered by David Stewart on 16 December 2016

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body under what circumstances it employs staff on agency contracts rather than fixed-term or permanent contracts.

Permanent or fixed term contract opportunities with the SPCB are, with very limited exceptions, advertised through fair and open competition, either internally or externally. Subject to the SPCB’s normal approval process for filling vacancies, the majority of permanent vacancies are recruited to on a permanent basis as they arise. For temporary requirements the decision on how they are filled is made on a case by case basis depending on the following factors:

The predicted length of assignment, with longer term vacancies being more suited to a fixed term recruitment exercise

How urgently the vacancy needs to be filled, and whether there is time to carry out a fixed term recruitment exercise

The skills and experience required for the post, and whether the requirement would best met by engaging specialist agencies or through an SPCB recruitment exercise

The need to cover vacancies whilst permanent or fixed term recruitment exercises are undertaken

The need to increase capability quickly by bringing in experienced practitioners whilst our own staff are developed

A requirement to flex capacity in response to demand

Where there is a requirement specialist skills that cannot be accommodated in the SPCB’s pay and grading structure, for instance where the market value is higher

Whether the requirement is foreseen to be long term and predictable or more irregular

Whether the requirement can be met internally

Whether there are any organisational factors that need to be taken into account, for instance an office or service review that makes committing to an SPCB contract undesirable

From 2016 staff on the SPCB’s Apprenticeship Programme have filled temporary vacancies upon qualification, prior to them securing permanent employment with the SPCB, as an alternative to using agency staff. In addition as part of the SPCB’s temporary resourcing strategy, the organisation is reducing its use of agency workers through a variety of measures, including advertising fixed term appointments which would previously have been filled on an agency basis, the creation of an SPCB temporary resourcing pool of candidates who may be offered fixed term contracts, internal staff transfers and more use of interchange and secondments with other organisations.

Provision has also been made for investment in our in-house IT capacity, the cost of which will be partially offset by a reduction in the use of IT agency staff within projects. A number of these new posts have been filled on a permanent basis in the current financial year, with further posts proposed (subject to approval on the basis of a robust business case).

Question reference: S5W-05260

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 December 2016
Current Status: Answered by David Stewart on 16 December 2016

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how much it has paid to employment agencies to provide staff in each of the last five years.

	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17 projected outturn
Not-IT staff: charges excluding VAT	1,002,428	886,377	895,122	1,109,348	1,217,312	414,635
Non-IT staff: non-recoverable VAT	-	-	-	214,410	229,429	78,607
IT staff: charges excluding VAT	386,867	292,241	438,590	1,111,898	1,157,378	622,928
IT staff: non-recoverable VAT	-	-	-	222,380	231,476	124,586
Total charges excluding VAT	1,389,295	1,178,618	1,333,712	2,221,246	2,374,690	1,037,563
Total non-recoverable VAT	-	-	-	436,790	460,905	203,193
Total	1,389,295	1,178,618	1,333,712	2,658,036	2,835,595	1,240,756

Notes: Until 31 March 2014, VAT was recovered on agency invoices. From 1 April 2014 VAT has only been recovered on agency invoices by exception (charges for £37,299 in 2014-15, £70,167 in 2015-16 and £21,598 in 2016-17 were VAT recoverable). Projected outturn for 2016-17 is based on actual costs to end November and projected spend to year end.

Question reference: S5W-05257

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 December 2016
Current Status: Answered by David Stewart on 16 December 2016

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how many staff it has employed on agency contracts in each of the last five years.

The SPCB does not contract directly with agency workers, but goes through employment agencies, who then place workers on assignment with the SPCB. IT and non-IT agency staffing arrangements are managed separately, and the information is therefore split in to the two categories below.

Non-IT Agency Workers

Information about non-IT agency assignments is only held for current and previous calendar years, and therefore no detailed data on agency staffing prior to 2015 is available. The average number of non-IT agency workers on assignment has, however, been published in the SPCB annual accounts since 2013-14:

FY 2013-14	FY 2014-15	FY 2015-16	FY 2016-17 (to end November)
31	35	33	14

(Average of full time equivalent agency staff on assignment at the end of each month in the reporting period.)

IT Agency Staff

The information we hold on IT agency staff is based on the number of assignments worked, rather than the number of workers. Information on the number of assignments worked between 2011 and 2016 is shown below. This includes assignments which began before 2011 but continued into, or ended in, later years; assignments that started and ended during years (reflecting the higher turnover of agency staff); assignments by workers who had more than one assignment in a year or over the period; and part time assignments.

Year	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016 (to date)
Number of assignments undertaken during year	5	8	18	25	28	28

Question reference: S5W-05258

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 December 2016
Current Status: Answered by David Stewart on 16 December 2016

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how many contracts for agency staff that it employed in the last five years were for (a) less than one month, (b) one to six months, (c) between six months and two years and (d) over two years.

Non-IT Agency Staff

Information about non-IT agency assignments is only held for current and previous calendar years, and therefore no detailed data on agency staffing prior to 2015 is available. Since the beginning of 2015, the lengths of assignment undertaken were:

	2015 – 2016 (to date)	As at 7 December 2016
(a) less than one month	4	-
(b) one to six months	27	6
(c) between six months and two years	45	11
(d) over two years	11	-
Total	87	17

IT Agency Staff

Since the beginning of 2011, the lengths of assignment undertaken were:

	2011 – 2016 (to date)	As at 7 December 2016
(a) less than one month	4	-
(b) one to six months	8	2
(c) between six months and two years	32	6
(d) over two years	5	1
Total	49	9

Question reference: S5O-00502

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 December 2016
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 21 December 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether Scotland has good bus services.

Question reference: S5W-04825

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 18 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 29 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it has made or is giving to allowing schools to opt-out of local authority control.

Question reference: S5W-04638

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 23 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will publish the details of any discussions that it has had with the Qatari Government.

Question reference: S5W-04632

Asked by: Neil Findlay, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 23 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how much financial support it provides to (a) food banks and (b) the Trussell Trust.

The Scottish Government’s £1 million per annum Fair Food Fund supports community based responses that help to reduce reliance on emergency food provision and a move to sustainable, dignified solutions to food poverty that give people opportunities to access fresh and healthy food, share a meal in a community setting, or develop new skills. On 5 September we announced that 21 projects, seven of which are foodbanks, will benefit from over £900,000 of Scottish Government funding through the Fair Food Transformation Fund across 2016-17 and 2017-18.

Financial support is not currently provided directly to the Trussell Trust but to Trussell Trust foodbanks which have received funding through the Emergency Food Fund over 2014-16. Through this Fund, the Scottish Government invested over £500,000 to support 26 emergency food aid projects in 17 local authority areas, including 11 Trussell Trust foodbanks, to respond to immediate demands and help address the underlying causes of food poverty.

In addition, we are working in partnership with Nourish and the Poverty Truth Commission to provide support to the unsuccessful foodbank applications from the Fair Food Transformation Fund, 14 of which are Trussell Trust foodbanks, to assist them in making another application to the Fund with a focus on activity that transitions away from charitable models of emergency food provision to more dignified and sustainable models as advised by the Independent Short-Life Working Group on Food Poverty (http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0050/00502395.pdf).