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-00078

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 18 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 1 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many bicycles it has estimated will be needed each year in order to fulfil its policy to provide a bicycle for children who cannot afford one.

Question reference: S6W-00079

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 18 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 1 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what age groups of children will be covered by its policy to provide a bicycle to children who cannot afford one.

Question reference: S6F-00012

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 24 May 2021
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 27 May 2021

To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government plans to take to support teachers with the challenges they face, in light of the reported concerns from teaching unions that there is a culture of "fear and anxiety" across Scottish education.

Question reference: S5W-35178

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 11 February 2021
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 19 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many long-term unemployed young people have accessed the Fair Start Scotland service.

Information on access to Fair Start Scotland (FSS) service by age is published quarterly in Scotland’s Devolved Employment Services: A Statistical Summary .

Between April 2018 (when FSS was launched) and September 2020 (the latest period for which data is available), 5,386 young people (16-24 years) accessed Fair Start Scotland services. Of these:

1,898 were reported by the service providers as long term unemployed (they had not been working for 12 months or more);
233 were reported as never worked but the length of their unemployment is unknown, and the length of unemployment was not reported for a further 1,256 people.

Question reference: S5W-35177

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 11 February 2021
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 19 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many people have participated in the Kickstart Scheme in Scotland.

Question reference: S5W-35176

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 11 February 2021
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 19 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many people it estimates will be in youth employment programmes by (a) April, (b) summer and (c) the end of 2021.

Through our additional investment of £60 million in 2020-21 we have provided funding for new opportunities, and have also enhanced existing opportunities, to support young people in Scotland as part of the Young Person’s Guarantee. These opportunities will include up to:

11,000 employability opportunities through local authorities;
5,000 places in college;
1,400 new apprentice pathways

Further funding of £70 million has been confirmed for 2021-2022 for the Young Person’s Guarantee. We will shortly set out further details on how this investment will be used to provide additional new opportunities for young people. This is part of £125 million funding to support young people, those made redundant, and people who have been unemployed for a long time.

These new additional opportunities will complement our existing provision through schools, universities and colleges, our person-centred employability services Fair Start Scotland, No One Left Behind and the Employability Fund and third sector support such as Discovering Your Potential, Our Future Now and Community Jobs Scotland.

The Scottish Government will also continue to ensure that apprenticeship opportunities are open to all by investing through Skills Development Scotland (SDS) and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) to maximise apprenticeship starts, including additional investment of £21 million to deliver Foundation and Graduate Apprenticeships in colleges and universities.

Given the uncertainty facing the labour market we are looking to use our investment to give local partnerships flexibility to meet local needs and provide coherence with DWP programmes. We are working with partners to develop a rigorous measurement and evaluation framework to show how the Guarantee is delivering this range of different opportunities to support young people.

As part of this process, we published the young person’s labour market dashboard on 28 January: https://www.gov.scot/publications/young-persons-local-authority-labour-market-dashboard/ . This new, interactive tool has been developed to provide a summary of labour market measures for those aged 16 to 24 by local authority area. This dashboard, along with the annual Participation Measure produced by Skills Development Scotland, will help us to measure uptake and target opportunities and support.

Question reference: S5O-05061

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 17 February 2021
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 25 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to address the reported increased demand for mental health services.

Question reference: S5W-34974

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 February 2021
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 16 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to concerns that guidance it has issued to local authorities regarding theatres’ eligibility for the grant support for businesses that are in receipt of the Strategic Business Framework Fund support under the Level 4 restrictions is not consistent with the information published on its website.

The Strategic Framework Business Fund offers grants of up to £3,000 for businesses required to close, including theatres. Theatres meeting the criteria for these grants were also eligible for an additional one-off grant of up to £9,000 for‎ non-essential retail and leisure businesses.

The guidance for the hospitality, non-essential retail and leisure top up fund did not specify the types of businesses eligible for the retail and leisure top up, and we subsequently updated the Scottish Government webpage and contacted local authorities to clarify the position on businesses eligible for this additional grant payment.

Question reference: S5O-05010

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 February 2021
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 11 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what action it will take to increase employment opportunities within the rural economy.

Question reference: S5W-34614

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 18 January 2021
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 1 February 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many jobs have been created by the Young Person's Guarantee.

As detailed in the Scottish Government’s response to question‎ S5W-34612 on 1 February 2021 we have provided funding to create around 18,000 opportunities for young people in 2020-21. S5W-34612 also provides details of additional funding for the Guarantee, Employability and Skills next financial year.

In 2020-21 the Scottish Government provided £30m to local partnerships, via local authorities, for the Guarantee in addition to the funding already provided to them for all age employability services. Based on the individual needs of young people and the local labour market, local partnerships can decide to use this funding to provide employer recruitment incentives, which includes wages incentives, to support young people into work. The duration and level of support required by the young person to access and sustain their employment will depend on their needs.

We have also developed an approach to employer engagement, built around 5 asks which encompasses the breadth of activity around youth employment and skills. On launch we announced headline early adopters, including SSE, CapGemini, NHS Lothian and the Scottish Government.

We are developing a measurement and evaluation framework with partners to help measure the impact of the Guarantee. This will include information relating to job opportunities created directly from delivery partners, but also, broader evidence regarding the labour market and the Participation Measure published by Skills Development Scotland.

Scottish Government already publishes a quarterly national Statistics publication which measures labour market outcomes for young people. We have also published the young person’s labour market dashboard on 28 January. Young person’s local authority labour market dashboard This new, interactive tool has been developed to provide a summary of labour market measures for those aged 16 to 24 by local authority.

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