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-33812

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 23 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many fridges it currently has to store COVID-19 vaccines; when the first order of these fridges was received, and whether it has ordered any more.

Question reference: S5W-33810

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 23 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government when the new National Vaccination Management Tool will be ready for use.

The Scottish Government has established a new National Vaccination Management Tool, which went live on 8 October. The digital tool will assist us in monitoring data on the vaccination programme in Scotland.

For Waves 2 and 3, we plan to establish Mass Vaccination Centres in key locations such as major cities and large towns with good communications networks. However, these will not open until we have delivery of sufficient quantities of the vaccine to support such large vaccination centres - this may not be until spring. We would like to reassure you, though, that Scottish NHS Boards already deliver nearly two million doses of vaccine routinely every year and we have a comprehensive delivery infrastructure in place. We hope to address your other queries on infrastructure in a forthcoming communication from the Scottish Government to MSPs.

Question reference: S5W-33809

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 23 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many doses each week it is planning to deliver in the initial weeks of the COVID-19 vaccination programme.

Question reference: S5W-33821

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 23 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will publish a national list of COVID-19 vaccination centres, and when each of these centres will be ready for use.

Question reference: S5W-33390

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 23 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) shore and (b) seagoing staff are currently employed by David MacBrayne Limited and its subsidiaries, and how many of these reside on the islands served by CalMac Ferries.

The number of staff employed by David MacBrayne Limited and its subsidiaries are as follows

	Total Headcount	Reside on the Islands #
David MacBrayne HR (UK) Ltd	29	1
CalMac Ferries Ltd	296 *	19 *
CalMac Ferries Ltd	247 **	191 **
CalMac Crewing (Guernsey)	1,063	321

# includes those that reside on the Kintyre peninsula

* Support Services job roles

** Port staff roles

The sea-going staff who crew CalMac Ferries Ltd vessels are employed through CalMac Crewing (Guernsey). All employees have been recruited on the basis of their skills and experience, not on their place of residence.

Question reference: S5W-33252

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 16 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 22 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to promote the measures put in place to make cancer services as free from COVID-19 as possible.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we have worked hard to ensure that Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) measures in hospitals and other care settings are robust. Health care workers in oncology and haemato-oncology wards and day patient areas including radiotherapy are also offered weekly testing

All testing policies are kept under active review, in line with expert advice and the changing prevalence and local epidemiology. As outlined in Scotland’s Testing Strategy, our approach to COVID-19 testing continues to be adaptive as we deal with the pandemic and the coming winter months and planning work on delivery to additional cohorts in line with clinical guidance is underway. In line with the clinical review of our testing strategy, and further scale-up of capacity, we announced the phased roll out of testing from the end of November 2020 to all patient-facing healthcare workers in hospitals, the Scottish Ambulance Service and the patient facing workforce deployed in the COVID-19 Community Assessment Centres and this is underway.

Testing is only one measure of protection against COVID-19, alongside a strong emphasis on robust infection prevention and control measures, including the use of PPE, the extended use of face masks, physical distancing and good hygiene.

Elective surgical patients are already tested prior to admission. Work is now under way to expand this to include all planned medical admissions and emergency admissions including maternity.

The planned medical admission testing will include patients who are undergoing an endoscopy procedure, and planned medical admission patients who remain in hospital for 5 days, will be retested.

Question reference: S5W-33276

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 16 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 16 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what forward planning it is undertaking for the possibility that COVID-19 vaccination is required annually.

We do not yet know whether the vaccines prevent transmission of the virus, nor how long the protection offered by the vaccines lasts and clinical studies on these matters are ongoing. This will inform the Scottish Government’s plans for COVID-19 vaccination following this first programme, along with details about the supply of approved vaccines, details of approved COVID-19 vaccines’ characteristics and clinical and scientific advice from advisory and regulatory bodies.

Question reference: S5W-33987

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 December 2020
Current Status: Answer expected on 7 January 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will publish the COVID-19 vaccination policy for (a) NHS and (b) social care staff in each NHS board area.

Question reference: S5W-33500

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 November 2020
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 10 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many PET scanners NHS Scotland has, broken down by NHS board area, and whether they are all fully operational.

Question reference: S5W-33460

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 23 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 10 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many unfilled vacancies there are for (a) psychiatrists, (b) psychologists, (c) primary mental health workers and (d) psychological therapists in NHS (i) Grampian, (ii) Highland, (iii) Orkney, (iv) Shetland and (v) Eileanan Siar.

a) Vacancy data is only available for consultant-grade psychiatrists. The number of consultant psychiatry vacancies (WTE) within the requested NHS Boards, at September 2020, is as follows

Board	WTE
Grampian	4.0
Highland	8.0
Orkney	0.0
Shetland	1.0
Eileanan Siar	0.0

b) The number of psychology vacancies (WTE) within the requested NHS Boards, at September 2020, is set out as follows:

Board	WTE
Grampian	5.0
Highland	0.0
Orkney	0.0
Shetland	0.0
Eileanan Siar	0.0

c) Data is not held on ‘primary mental health workers’ within NES NHSScotland Workforce or Psychology Services Workforce data publications.

d) The number of psychological therapy (WTE) vacancies within the requested NHS Boards, at September 2020, is set out as follows:

Board	WTE
Grampian	4.0
Highland	0.0
Orkney	0.0
Shetland	0.0
Eileanan Siar	0.0

NES publishes data on 'child and adolescent psychiatry', 'forensic psychiatry', ‘general psychiatry', 'psychiatry of learning disability' and 'old age psychiatry' specialties in its NHSScotland Workforce publication. Figures for ‘consultant-grade psychiatrists’ presented here as total of these specialties.

NES publishes data on ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapists’ and ‘Other Therapists’ in its Psychology Workforce publications. Figures for ‘psychological therapists’ presented here as total of these specialties.

Data sources:

NHS Education for Scotland Official Statistics release – NHSScotland Workforce Publication for Quarter ending 30 September 2020, published 1 Dec 2020: https://turasdata.nes.nhs.scot/workforce-official-statistics/nhsscotland-workforce/

NHS Education for Scotland Official Statistics release - Psychology Services Workforce in NHSScotland Publication for Quarter ending 30 September 2020, published 1 Dec 2020: https://turasdata.nes.nhs.scot/workforce-official-statistics/psychology/publications/01-december-2020/