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 150 questions Show Answers

Order by |

Question reference: S5O-00927

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 26 April 2017
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what percentage of school leavers in North Ayrshire in 2016 continued in education, went on to training or entered employment.

Question reference: S5W-08166

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 March 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 23 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how it is gaining the views of people with direct personal experience of the current social security system to help shape Scotland’s new system.

One of the key principles of Social Security in Scotland is that the processes, procedures and systems will be designed and built with and for the people of Scotland.

To do that, at least 2,000 people with direct personal experience of the current social security system are being invited to join ‘Experience Panels’. The Experience Panels will bring together groups of people who are willing to share their views of how the current system works, and how it could and should work.

We will collaborate over the next four years with these Experience Panels to design and build Scotland’s new Social Security system.

Registration is now live and people can do so:

Online at www.gov.scot/socialsecurity.

By post. A copy of the registration form can be downloaded from the website and sent back to Freepost SOCIAL SECURITY EXPERIENCE PANELS.

On the phone on Freephone 0800 029 4974.

As part of this recruitment, we have sent personal invitations to 18,000 people who have recent or current experience of the social security system. Each of them will have received information on the Experience Panels, a Scottish Government invitation to participate and a registration form.

Question reference: S5W-07918

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 March 2017
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 21 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that nutritious and healthy food and drink is being served in schools.

The Nutritional Requirements for Food and Drink in Schools (Scotland) Regulations 2008 set high nutritional standards that all food and drink provided in schools must meet. That includes lunches, tuck shops, breakfast clubs and vending machines. On 5 March 2017, the Scottish Government announced a review of these regulations to take into account changes in scientific and dietary advice and review whether school food provision can be further improved. The duties included in the regulations stem from the Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition (Scotland)) Act 2007. These are monitored by Education Scotland Health and Nutrition Inspectors who advise school catering teams on how they can improve what they offer in schools.

Question reference: S5W-07259

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 13 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has spent on mitigating the impact in Scotland of the UK Government’s welfare reforms.

The Scottish Government has invested considerable resource directly mitigating the impact of the UK Government’s welfare cuts. The following table sets out the amount invested to date in a range of different mitigation activities.

Welfare Reform Mitigation activity	Investment made March 2013 to March 2017 (£ million)
Scottish Welfare Fund	152.4
Discretionary Housing Payments	125
Council Tax Reduction Scheme	92
Welfare Advice Provision	20
Addressing Food Poverty	3
Other welfare mitigation projects	4
Total	396.4

In addition, the Scottish Government has made investment across a range of portfolios to tackle poverty and inequality. This includes increasing access to free childcare, the provision of free school meals and a range of community-led regeneration activity. Much of this will provide additional support people affected by welfare reform.

Question reference: S5O-00773

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 08 March 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government when it last met NHS Ayrshire and Arran and what issues were discussed.

Question reference: S5W-06515

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 2 February 2017

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the work of the Nuisance Calls Commission.

Question reference: S5O-00635

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 2 February 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to take forward the recommendations in the report, Joint Thematic Review of MAPPA in Scotland, which was published in November 2015.

The Scottish Government welcomes the Joint Thematic Review of MAPPA which noted the effective and critical contribution MAPPA makes to keeping people and communities safe.

We accepted the ten recommendations in the report and continue to work in partnership with the Responsible Authorities to facilitate their delivery.

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland and the Care Inspectorate are currently conducting a review of the progress made in delivering on the recommendations, the findings of which will be published as part of their annual reporting process.

Question reference: S5O-00653

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 01 February 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 8 February 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how many businesses will receive support from the expansion of the small business bonus scheme.

Question reference: S5W-06322

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 18 January 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 30 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to use new social security powers that have been devolved.

The Scottish Government has always been clear that we will use our new powers to build a fairer social security system, founded on the principles of dignity, fairness and respect. We have already set out some of the steps that we will take to achieve this. For example:-

We will introduce a new Best Start Grant which will extend support for qualifying families, from the £500 payable only for the first child under the existing UK Government Sure Start Maternity Grant to £1,100 for the first child and £800 for second and subsequent children over the term of the benefit;

We will effectively abolish the UKG’s punitive bedroom tax in Scotland as soon as we can;

We will extend Winter Fuel Payments to families with severely disabled children; and

We will use our limited powers over Universal Credit to offer Scottish claimants a choice over how often they receive their payments and if their rent is paid direct to their social landlord.

In terms of immediate next steps - in the coming weeks, we will publish the independent analysis report on our social security consultation and provide a Scottish Government response to the main findings.

We will launch our recruitment drive for the ‘Experience Panels’, to involve at least 2,000 people who have recent experience of receiving benefits in helping to design and test the new system to ensure it works for them.

And, we have published our consultation on the Universal Credit (Claims and Payments) (Scotland) Regulations, to seek people's views on how we might best use the important flexibilities available to us - on the frequency of payments and direct payments to landlords - to make sure that the delivery of Universal Credit in Scotland will be better suited to meet the needs of the people of Scotland.

In all of this work, our overriding priority is to ensure the safe and secure transfer of benefits to those who receive them and to ensure that no-one slips through the net or misses a payment.

This is something that many stakeholders have stressed to us - it is much more important to have a safe and secure transition over a periods of years, than to risk failure by adhering to arbitrary, politically driven timescales.

Question reference: S5O-00542

Asked by: Ruth Maguire, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 December 2016
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 12 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the implementation of its Equally Safe strategy.