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-03639

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 October 2011
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 7 November 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will provide support to people in Scotland who might be affected by the UK Government's proposed changes to Disability Living Allowance.

Within the current devolution settlement, welfare benefits are reserved. The Welfare Reform Bill currently being considered by the UK Parliament will impact on some of the most vulnerable individuals and families in society and on the local authority and third-sector organisations committed to supporting vulnerable people. The Scottish Government has called on the UK Government to pursue a welfare system that is properly financed, simple to understand, lifts people out of poverty and makes work pay.

Question reference: S4W-03657

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 October 2011
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 7 November 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive how many people in Scotland have lupus.

Question reference: S4W-03636

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 October 2011
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 4 November 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive what information it has on how many foster carers the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) has in Scotland and on BAAF's training budget for each year since 2007.

Question reference: S4W-03192

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 05 October 2011
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 26 October 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive how much each NHS board (a) spends on prescriptions and (b) was allocated for 2011-12 for the withdrawal of prescription fees.

The answer to part (a) for the year 2010-11 is set out in the following table:

NHS Board of Dispensing	Gross Ingredient Cost* (£ million)
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	76,235.353
NHS Borders	19,918.580
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	30,505.784
NHS Fife	76,426.447
NHS Forth Valley	64,693.299
NHS Grampian	90,831.854
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	242,760.083
NHS Highland	59,862.219
NHS Lanarkshire	116,706.817
NHS Lothian	133,859.760
NHS Orkney	3,429.881
NHS Shetland	3,689.272
NHS Tayside	78,459.333
NHS Western Isles	5,396.989
Total	1,002,775.671

Note: *Cost of drugs and appliances reimbursed before deduction of any dispenser discount.

Further information is published on the National Services Scotland Information Services Division website, at the following link:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Prescribing-and-Medicines/Publications/2011-06-28/2011-06-28-PrescribingCosts-Report.pdf.

The answer to part (b) is set out in the following table:

NHS Board	£ million
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	4.046
NHS Borders	1.327
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	1.799
NHS Fife	4.064
NHS Forth Valley	3.499
NHS Grampian	6.704
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	11.597
NHS Highland	3.832
NHS Lanarkshire	6.352
NHS Lothian	8.525
NHS Orkney	0.236
NHS Shetland	0.328
NHS Tayside	4.351
NHS Western Isles	0.341
Total	57.001

Question reference: S4W-03033

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 30 September 2011
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 26 October 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it is on target to provide treatment in child and adolescent mental health services from referral within 26 weeks by 2013 and, if so, what evidence it has to support this.

Each NHS board has been asked to produce a trajectory illustrating how it will make progress towards meeting the HEAT target by March 2013.

Progress against each of the HEAT targets is subject to monitoring and annual review. As signalled in the local delivery plan published in December 2010, we are considering whether to align the CAMHS target with the 18 week access to Psychological Therapies target based on progress so far.

NHS boards progress towards the target require improvement activity across a number of areas. This has involved work in training and workforce planning; increasing hospital bed numbers; reducing inappropriate hospital admissions; early intervention, and better planning and delivery of specialist care.

We have put in place a number of measures to monitor the performance of health boards against the target.

We are tracking the growth of the workforce in all parts of the country and have developed, with stakeholders, a performance measurement framework (CAMHS Balanced Scorecard) which will capture performance information in a number of areas including activity, patients waiting for treatment, referral numbers and workforce numbers.

We have developed the CAMHS workforce survey database (http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/CAMHS/) which provides the Scottish Government and NHS boards and other local services with current information on the size and composition of the CAMHS workforce to enable local and national workforce planning.

ISD (Information Services Division) are supporting NHS boards in collecting the required information to enable monitoring against the target and to support the continual improvement of data quality, both in terms of completeness and comparability. The data is being collected on a monthly basis using a live data base. The data collected will be published when it is off sufficient quality to ensure accuracy, reliability and comparability.

We have invested £6.5 million over a three year period to increase the number of psychologists working in specialist CAMHS with £1 million in 2009-10, £2 million in 2010-11 and £3.5 million in 2011-12. We have invested £2 million per year since 2009-10 and in tier 3 and tier 4 (Intensive) community CAMHS services. This is allowing NHS boards to develop the capacity of their intensive outreach services, thus reducing the length of time children and young people need to be in hospital. As a result of this investment, we have seen a growth of around a third in the specialist CAMHS workforce since 2008.

Question reference: S4O-00276

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 27 October 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will request that the Scottish Prison Service record all visits made by children to family members in prison and whether it considers that setting targets for such visits would help the rehabilitation of prisoners.

Question reference: S4W-03193

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 05 October 2011
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 13 October 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive whether random drug testing is carried out on people on methadone programmes.

Clinicians are advised to undertake random urine tests where appropriate by the Drugs Misuse and Dependence – UK guidelines on clinical management (more commonly known as the Orange Guidelines). The guidelines state that urine tests, while providing pharmacological and psychosocial interventions, should be used when assessing and responding to progress and failure to benefit. Information to patients by organisations such as Patient UK also mention that urine tests will be done from “time to time”.

Question reference: S4W-03031

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 30 September 2011
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 13 October 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive what changes there have been in the number of (a) young people and (b) adults smoking since the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005 was introduced.

(a) Young people

The Scottish Schools Attitudes Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey (SALSUS) is a biennial survey of 13 and 15 year olds which collects information on smoking behaviour. The 2010 SALSUS data will be published on 25 October 2011 so the most recently available data at the time of enquiry comes from the 2008 survey.

Regular smokers by year group and gender, 2002-08.

13 years (%)

15 years (%)

	Boys	Girls	Boys	Girls
2002	6	9	16	24
2004	5	7	14	24
2006	3	5	12	18
2008	3	4	14	16
Base
2002	5,948	6,146	5,145	5,074
2004	1,783	1,686	1,646	1,689
2006	5,797	5,774	5,599	5,410
2008	2,631	2,683	2,296	2,329

Source: SALSUS 2002-08.

Note: Regular smokers by year group and gender, 2002-08.

http://www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org/publications/abstracts/salsus_national.htm.

(a) Adults

The Scottish Household Survey publishes annual data on smoking rates among adults in Scotland. For this survey adults are defined as respondents aged 16 or over.

Whether respondent smokes, by year.

Data year

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Yes	30.7	29.3	28.8	28.4	28.1	26.9	26.7	25.4	25.7	25.2	24.3	24.2
No	69.3	70.7	71.2	71.6	71.9	73.1	73.3	74.6	74.3	74.8	75.7	75.8
All	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100
Base	13,776	14,553	14,635	14,032	13,958	14,771	14,053	14,179	10,412	9,505	12,509	12,418

Source: Scottish Household Survey 2010, http://scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/16002/Tables0910Health .

Question reference: S4W-02572

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 08 September 2011
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 21 September 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive how many places there are on (a) college and (b) university courses in sport for 2011-12.

Question reference: S4W-02573

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 08 September 2011
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 September 2011

To ask the Scottish Executive how many specialist sport facilities offer sports coaching to disabled people.

This Government in partnership with sportscotland and Scottish Disability Sport (SDS) positively support and encourage all sports facilities to be inclusive and promote participation in and coaching of disability sport as part of mainstream clubs and facilities.

Sportscotland and Scottish Disability Sport (SDS) do not collect or have data on the number of sports facilities that offer coaching to disabled people. However, sportscotland works in partnership with local authorities to provide Sports Coach UK workshops for coaching disability sports.

There were 11 “How to Coach Disabled People” workshops delivered in 2010-11, and in 2011-12. There have been eight delivered to date.

sportscotland plan to deliver a new workshop called “Inclusive Coaching: Disability” in October and January. SDS is also one of the sports on sportscotland’s Coaching Matters programme.

The sportscotland Institute of Sport currently supports 44 Scottish athletes all of whom are part of a GB Programme (who are all eligible to be selected for the Paralympic Games). Support is agreed in conjunction with the GB Programme and in consultation with SDS to ensure that the athlete receives what is most appropriate to them.