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-04840

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 18 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 30 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what action it will take to ensure that communities in Lochaber receive support from the Inverness City Region deal.

In March 2016 the Scottish Government signed a Heads of Terms Agreement with the UK Government and the Highland Council jointly committing £315 million over a period of up to ten years to support and grow the regional economy. The proposals in the Heads of Terms were identified and developed by regional partners who are confident that their proposals will have benefits across the Highland Region.

Question reference: S5W-04842

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 18 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 30 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has allocated to road repairs in (a) Argyll and Bute, (b) the Highlands and (c) the Western Isles in each year since 2007.

Question reference: S5W-04839

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 18 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the finding in the National Dental Inspection Programme Report 2016, that there is a significant difference in the levels of tooth decay between primary 1 children in the least and most deprived areas, and what action it is taking to address this.

Question reference: S5W-04657

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 14 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 25 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-02025 by Shona Robison on 15 September 2016, what financial provisions each NHS board has made to deal with any increase in demand on services that might result from patients being made aware of their rights regarding choice of treatment following the outcome of the case.

Informed consent is a matter for NHS Board clinicians and their patients. Any associated costs are contained in the overall NHS Healthcare budget.

As I outlined in my answer to question S5W-02025, I expect all NHS Boards and their clinicians to adhere to the long established guidance produced by the General Medical Council (GMC) and to have robust clinical governance arrangements in place to ensure that the principles and framework contained in the guidance are applied by all doctors when seeking informed consent to treatment from patients.

It is paramount that patients are given all of the information in terms of what the treatment involves, including the benefits and risks, whether there are reasonable alternative treatments and what will happen if treatment doesn't go ahead. Obtaining informed consent can only be achieved through partnership and joint decision making between clinicians and their patients.

Question reference: S5W-04731

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 25 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what proportion of the additional £500 million of spending on primary care services, committed to by 2020, will be invested in rural and remote general practice in NHS (a) Western Isles and (b) Highland.

Question reference: S5W-04658

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 14 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 23 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what analysis it has made of the impact of the care in the community strategy on people being treated for substance misuse.

“Care in the Community” is not the name of any explicit strategy of the Scottish Government and therefore no discrete analysis of it exists.

Health and Social Care Partnerships are an important locus of community based care. The Partnerships have been designed explicitly to deliver a shift in the balance of care towards localised and community focussed interventions, where appropriate. In relation to adult health and social care, drug and alcohol services fall within the Partnerships’ remit.

Delivering improved outcomes through enhanced integration of service delivery is monitored and assessed via the National Health and Wellbeing Outcomes. Additionally, each of the Partnerships will publish an Annual Performance Report for the year 2016-17, by the end of July 2017. Though the outcomes and associated national indicators do not explicitly cover substance misuse, Partnerships will report progress in this area via appropriate local measures.

More specifically, the Scottish Government has developed annual reporting arrangements for Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) to demonstrate their contribution to local outcomes. Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) exercise an accountability and oversight function of ADPs and use this information to inform local strategies.

Question reference: S5W-04602

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the review of the NHS resource allocation formula for general practice.

Tackling health inequalities is one of our primary care outcomes, as recently published in a joint memorandum with BMA [ http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/11/7258 ]. Adjusting the Scottish Allocation Formula (SAF), which weights general practice funding by various factors that affect workload, including deprivation, rurality and age, is one way that could help deliver that outcome. The formula has been reviewed, and we are currently considering the potential impact of implementing the review findings at individual GP practice level. We also need to look beyond the GP contract to other interventions and ways of supporting general practice in areas of high deprivation.

The Scottish Government and the BMA’s Scottish General Practitioners Committee agree, in principle, that we need better information and evidence to inform both accurate recompense of expenses and options for the long term overall development of GP pay in Scotland. To this end, we have agreed jointly to commission a review of general practice funding, pay and expenses to provide a proper, robust evidence base for improved decision making. This will take place in 2017, and inform options from 2018.

Question reference: S5W-04579

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport on 2 November 2016 (Official Report, c. 65) that "at least half of front-line NHS spending is being invested outwith acute hospitals", whether it will provide the front-line spending figures to which she was referring.

Question reference: S5F-00496

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 14 November 2016
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 17 November 2016

To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to ensure that people with diabetes receive regular monitoring of their condition.

Question reference: S5W-03869

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 October 2016
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 14 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how much has been spent by the New Medicines Fund in each year since 2013-14, broken down by medicine.

2006-07	£35,291,626
2007-08	£51,377,623
2008-09	£38,962,457
2009-10	£52,989,317
2010-11	£47,839,035
2011-12	£33,057,115
2012-13	£47,468,588
2013-14	£44,088,487
2014-15	£47,421,959
2015-16	£42,178,448
2016-17*	£14,202,768
total	£454,877,423