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-23289

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 20 May 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 29 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many young people were not in work, training or education in the 2018-19 financial year, broken down by age.

Question reference: S5W-22986

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 03 May 2019
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 16 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-19873 by Clare Haughey on 22 November 2018, whether it will provide a breakdown of how the £250 million investment in mental health has been spent, including how much has been allocated to preventative approaches and early intervention.

The Programme for Government 2018 committed to invest an additional £250 million to improve mental health over the next five years from April 2019.

It committed to a comprehensive package of measures to improve mental health services for children, young people and adults, and ensure that support for good mental health is embedded across our public services.

The Better Mental Health in Scotland Delivery Plan describes how we will implement these actions under key headings, with a key focus on preventative approaches and early intervention:

reforming children and young people’s mental health services;
improving specialist services for children and young people and adults;
taking a 21st century approach to adult mental health;
respecting, protecting and fulfilling rights; and
making suicide prevention everybody’s business.

Allocations for this and future years are under consideration.

Question reference: S5W-22984

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 03 May 2019
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 15 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of how the £5 million that it allocated to the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Task Force in June 2018 has been spent, including how much was allocated to specialist child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

In December 2018 the Minister for Mental Health, Clare Haughey, announced that £4 million of investment would be distributed through NHS Education for Scotland (NES), to recruit additional CAMHS staff across Scotland who would be instrumental in reducing pressure on the existing system.

The remainder of the funding, also be distributed through NES, will provide additional local training, coaching and supervision of existing CAHMS staff, and an amount of funding will also be made available to enhance the number of places available to study on the MSc in Applied Psychology for Children and Young People course.

Allocations to NES over the lifetime of the Taskforce

Funding has been allocated as detailed in the following table:

	2018-19*	2019-20	2020-21
CAMHS resource	£457,994	£3,980,179	£3,980,179
Training	£0	£333,388	£310,055
APCYP Trainees	£102,790	£668,673	£887,973
Total per Year	£560,784	£4,982,240	£5,178,207

Question reference: S5W-22712

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 17 April 2019
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 1 May 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many educational mental health staff there have been in each local authority in each of the last five academic years.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally.

We have made absolutely clear the commitment of this government to promoting children’s health and wellbeing.

This year’s Programme for Government includes a commitment to invest in school counselling services across in Scotland. This will create around 350 counsellors, ensuring that every secondary school has access to counselling services, whilst also improving the ability of local primary and special schools to access counselling.

Question reference: S5W-22389

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 24 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what analysis it has carried out on children who deferred entry to primary school in 2018-19.

No analysis has been carried out by Scottish Government on children who deferred entry to primary school in 2018-19. Information on the number of registrations for funded Early Learning and Childcare for children who have deferred entry to primary school has been provided in answer to question S5W-22387 on
‎ 23 April 2019.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Question reference: S5W-22387

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 24 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many children have deferred entry to primary school for 2019-20.

Scottish Government do not hold information on the total number of children who have deferred entry to primary school for 2019-20.

We do collect information on the number of registrations for funded Early Learning and Childcare for children who have deferred entry to primary school. In September 2018, there were 4,884 registrations in this category. These are children who will now start school in August 2019 (rather than in August 2018 had they not deferred). This figure does not include children who defer entry to primary school, but do not register for funded Early Learning and Childcare. Therefore the total number of children who deferred entry to primary school for 2019-20 will be higher than this figure.

Question reference: S5O-03133

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S5W-22388

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 17 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what percentage of children who started school in 2018-19 were (a) 4, (b) 5 and (c) another age.

The Scottish Government does not collection information on children starting school. However, information is collected annually on all children in publically funded schools in Scotland in the September pupil census. There may be a small number of children who started school at the beginning of the academic year in August but were no longer on the roll of any publically funded school in Scotland by the September census.

(a) The percentage of P1 pupils in September 2018 that were age 4 was 40.5%

(b) The percentage of P1 pupils in September 2018 that were age 5 was 59.3%

Question reference: S5W-22390

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 17 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how much it spends on (a) primary and (b) secondary education, also expressed as a percentage of GDP.

The Scottish Government funds primary and secondary education through the local government finance settlement. It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets on the basis of local needs and priorities.

Gross revenue expenditure by local authorities on education increased from £5.1 billion in 2016-17 to £5.2 billion in 2017-18, a real terms increase of 1.0 per cent. Expenditure on primary education was £2.1 billion and secondary education £2.0 billion in 2017-18. This data is collected from local authorities via the Local Financial Returns (LFR).

Nominal GDP for Scotland’s onshore economy was £155.8 billion in 2017. This figure is taken from GDP Quarterly National Accounts ( https://www2.gov.scot/Resource/0054/00546840.pdf )

Expenditure on primary education as a proportion of GDP in 2017 was 1.35%. Expenditure on secondary education as a proportion of GDP in 2017 was 1.28%

Question reference: S5W-22232

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 19 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 1 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-10219 by Shona Robison on 21 March 2018, how much funding has been allocated to support the work of the national co-ordinator for child bereavement services in (a) 2018-19 and (b) 2019-20.

Discussions regarding the appointment of a national co-ordinator are now nearing conclusion. No funding has been allocated towards this post so far, as the work associated with refining this post has not concluded.

The position will be advertised shortly and someone will be appointed in due course.

The report provided by Children in Scotland has been helpful in shaping our work to appoint a childhood bereavement coordinator.

As the childhood bereavement coordinator position will be advertised shortly, I have instructed my officials to make this report publically available to support the recruitment process and attract as many high calibre applicants as possible.