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-32710

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 22 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 6 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken to support rail manufacture at the Hunterston PARC site in North Ayrshire.

Scottish Enterprise is working closely with Peel Ports to promote Hunterston PARC to companies looking to base or expand rail manufacturing related activity in Scotland.

This promotion, in partnership with North Ayrshire Council and Peel Ports is part of a wider approach to developing the site as a place in the Green and Blue Economy sectors – such as offshore renewables, aquaculture, low carbon energy and circular economy manufacturing.

Question reference: S5W-32818

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 27 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 5 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many cases of suspected COVID-19 transmission have been linked to (a) (i) primary, (ii) secondary and (iii) all schools and (b) colleges, broken down by NHS board area.

These data are not currently available from Public Health Scotland (PHS).

A more detailed report of testing data from Term 1 of the 2020-21 academic year, including the distribution of cases by school type and area, will be published by PHS in late-November 2020.

Also, analysis of linkages between pupil cases and contacts in schools in Term 1 of the 2020-21 academic year is currently ongoing. Publication of findings relating to the primary school settings is planned for early December 2020.

Question reference: S5W-32931

Asked by: Ross Greer, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Friday, 30 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 3 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government when each of the provisions introduced by the Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2020 will come into force.

The Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill passed its final Stage in the Scottish Parliament on 23 June 2020. It received Royal Assent on 28 July 2020 and became an Act on that date.

Since the Bill passed its final Stage in Parliament, the Scottish Government has been progressing the work required to bring into force each of the provisions in the 2020 Act, as well as taking forward other tasks required to make mixed sex civil partnership available in Scotland, including:

Preparations for a package of secondary legislation in the Scottish Parliament
Development of an Order under section 104 of the Scotland Act 1998 to make provision for reserved and cross-border matters
Consideration of the IT changes needed to registration systems
Development of public-facing guidance on the Act
Consideration of guidance and training needs for local registrars

On the main provisions in the Act, which - in conjunction with secondary legislation - will create the scheme of mixed sex civil partnership in Scotland, the Scottish Government is mindful that there are couples who are waiting for mixed sex civil partnership to become available in Scotland. We are committed to achieving that as soon as we can.

However, there is an ongoing need to prioritise measures which will manage the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland. This means that we are not able to provide guarantees on when mixed sex civil partnership registration will become available in Scotland.

The Act contains provisions in section 3 which will enable mixed sex civil partnerships from elsewhere to be temporarily recognised in Scotland as marriages until mixed sex civil partnership is available. After that, these relationships will be recognised as civil partnerships. The Scottish Government is progressing work on secondary legislation which seeks to bring into force this temporary scheme of recognition in late 2020 or early 2021. However, this aim is subject to the requirement to prioritise measures relating to managing the ongoing pandemic.

Sections 15, 16 and 17 of the Act are already in force. Respectively, these provide the Scottish Ministers with the power to make ancillary provision, for commencement and for the short title of the Act.

We will publish information about the implementation of mixed sex civil partnership on the Scottish Government website as our work in this area develops.

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-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-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-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%.