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: S5T-02480

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Monday, 02 November 2020
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how it will ensure that the latest guidance on face coverings in school will be implemented.

Question reference: S5W-31767

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 September 2020
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 25 September 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-31513 by John Swinney on 10 September 2020, how many of the school counsellors it committed to are in place; what local authorities have not yet provided access to school-based counselling across all schools, and how many counsellors there are overall.

This information is not available at this time.

Our priority is to support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing and the availability of counselling is one of the measures we and our local authority partners are putting in place. Providing access to a counselling services in every school will enable young people to access a service in a way that suits their circumstances and needs.

During the period of school closures our local authority partners made excellent progress towards our commitment of having access to counselling services in every school, with almost all authorities having counselling services in place. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an understandable impact on some authorities procurement exercises, however we expect this commitment to be met by the end of October 2020.

Question reference: S5W-31699

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 September 2020
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 17 September 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how much student hardship funding has been (a) allocated and (b) distributed to each institution, also broken down by how many students at each institution have (i) applied for and (ii) received support from this.

As part of the Student Support Action Plan, announced in April 2020 and in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, an additional £2.2m of HE Discretionary Funds were distributed to colleges and universities that month for immediate use. In June 2020, the first instalment of the 2020-21 HE Discretionary Funds (£11.4m) was brought forward from August to June for immediate use. The second instalment is due to be issued in February 2021.

Details of the allocations can be found at: https://www.saas.gov.uk/files/315/saas-discretionary-fund-allocations.pdf

The Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) have committed to monitoring spend of Discretionary Funds over the coming months and will ask institutions for a high-level update in October 2020.

Detailed spend analysis of Discretionary Funds by institutions is a requirement of the annual audited verification process with this analysis of the 2019-20 FY funds, encompassing the ring-fenced £2.2m available in October. The analysis of 2020-21 FY funds is expected in October 2021.

These funds will supplement any individual hardship funds that colleges and universities may have set up for their students.

In addition, Scottish Government has committed £5m of additional support to colleges and universities to support students who are struggling to afford to buy, maintain and connect the equipment they need to benefit from digital learning. Scottish Government have also recently announced phase 2 of Connecting Scotland - a £15m fund which will support 23,000 people to digitally connect. Phase 2 will prioritise disadvantaged families with children and young people leaving care.

Question reference: S5W-31665

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 September 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 15 September 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-03736 by Keith Brown on 31 October 2016, whether it will provide the information for 2019-20, also broken down by what information it has regarding which companies received funding; how much they received, and the purpose of their award.

Question reference: S5W-31768

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 September 2020
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 15 September 2020

To ask the Scottish Government when the teacher census supplementary data and support staff data for 2019 will be published.

Question reference: S5W-31513

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 September 2020
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 10 September 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it achieved its commitment in the 2019-20 Programme for Government to have 350 school counsellors in post by September 2020 and, if not, how many are currently in post.

Question reference: S5W-31396

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Monday, 24 August 2020
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 3 September 2020

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason interest continues to accrue on student loans when an individual is on maternity leave.

The accrual of interest on student loans is provided for in The Education (Student Loans) (Repayment) Regulations 2009, a UK Statutory Instrument that impacts on all UK borrowers.

There are currently no circumstances whereby interest would stop accruing (unless repaid in full, or written off). As a result, where a borrower is on maternity/paternity leave there is no provision in these UK Regulations to prevent or pause the accruing of interest in these circumstances.

However, the interest rate on student loans that impacts Scottish students is based on the lower of either the Bank of England base rate +1% or the Retail Price Index (RPI). The current interest rate for Scottish borrowers is 1.1%. This compares to other borrowers in the rest of the UK who are repaying on different plan types where the interest rate is 5.4%.

Question reference: S5W-31297

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 August 2020
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 28 August 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-28481 by John Swinney on 17 April 2020, whether it will provide an update on when the review into coordinated support plans for children with additional needs will begin.

We remain fully committed to working with partners to undertake a review of the use of co-ordinated support plans to ensure that children and young people with the most significant additional support needs are receiving the support that they need to reach their full learning potential.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges for our education system, and we recognise that as children and young people return to full time learning, it is critical that we do not make any additional demands on the system. Therefore, we will continue to keep the situation under close review and take forward this important work when it is appropriate to do so.

This work will be undertaken within the wider context of the independently chaired review of implementation of additional support for learning which will be used to inform the review of the use of Co-ordinated Support Plans. We anticipate that a response to this report will be published in the autumn.

Question reference: S5T-02332

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Monday, 24 August 2020
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 25 August 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the latest WHO guidance that young people over the age of 12 should wear a mask to help prevent transmission of COVID-19.

Question reference: S5W-30690

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Monday, 13 July 2020
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 5 August 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the findings of the National Records of Scotland that the Irish community has the highest COVID-19 fatality rate of any minority group in Scotland, and whether it plans further analysis to ascertain for what reasons this is the case.

We are deeply concerned by reports showing that people from some minority ethnic backgrounds have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

In order to improve our understanding of and respond to the risks and impacts, we have established an Expert Group Reference Group (ERG) on COVID-19 and Ethnicity, involving academic and experts, to consider the data and evidence and to challenge, inform and shape the Scottish Government’s future work. This will include how analytical partners across the Scottish Government, National Records of Scotland, Public Health Scotland and the NHS can improve and make the best use of data.

The recent report from National Records of Scotland on COVID-19 deaths by ethnicity, published on 8 July, starts to give us a better understanding. However, as highlighted in its methodology note , due to the degree of inconsistency in how individuals have reported, or have had reported on their behalf, their ethnicity, specifically between the “White Irish” and “White Scottish” categories over time and between datasets, it was not possible to carry out an analysis which would enable robust conclusions to be drawn on COVID-19 related mortality for the White Irish ethnic group.