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-00459

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 06 June 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 16 June 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how many notifications it has received in the last year of GP practices being closed to new patients, broken down by NHS board.

NHS boards do not formally notify the Scottish Government when they agree with an independently contracted practice that it can temporarily close its patient list. We expect health boards to work with practices as constructively and as flexibly as is appropriate on these occasions to help manage the situation and ensure that all patients have access to GP services.

The following table shows the number of practices which were temporarily closed to new patients last year (2015 calendar year) by NHS board.

NHS Board	Closed to new patient registrations
Ayrshire and Arran	0
Borders	0
Dumfries and Galloway	0
Fife	0
Forth Valley	0
Grampian	0
Greater Glasgow and Clyde	4
Highland	0
Lanarkshire	3
Lothian	0
Orkney	0
Shetland	0
Tayside	4
Western Isles	0
Total	11

Question reference: S5W-00461

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 06 June 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 16 June 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has regarding what drugs have been approved for use by the Scottish Medicines Consortium but not by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, also broken down by their intended use.

Question reference: S5W-00460

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 06 June 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 16 June 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how many notifications it has received in the last year of there being insufficient GP cover to meet demand, broken down by NHS board.

Question reference: S5O-00046

Asked by: Anas Sarwar, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 08 June 2016
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 15 June 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to encourage more young women to take up STEM subjects.

As the First Minister said last week, encouraging girls, and indeed, all young people to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects is vital for their future and vital for the future of the country. The numbers of entries by girls to the main science higher qualifications, including computing, are up by 10% since 2007. There are very encouraging signs of greater participation by women in STEM subjects at college and university.

We are supporting projects to tackle gender stereotyping in STEM education at school and supporting equality projects across Scottish colleges and universities. The new chief scientific adviser, Professor Sheila Rowan will work to inspire more young people, including young women and girls, to study STEM and progress to a STEM career.

There are many examples of excellent STEM opportunities being offered by Scotland’s colleges. This includes the City of Glasgow College’s Women into Engineering course which offers single-sex classes in the first year of the course and which is seeing encouraging early signs of success.