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-27775

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 05 March 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 18 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether locums will be paid for sessions that they are unable to perform due to the closure of medical practices on the advice of public health officials because of suspected outbreaks of the coronavirus, COVID-19.

The Scottish Government has published guidance for NHS Boards and GP practices on contractual arrangements for responding to the impact of the coronavirus on primary care.

Health Boards are advised that they are best placed to direct locum GPs in their area where this is currently not the case and when the local situation has reached a key stage. This would then enable Boards to determine GP locum resources. For example, making effective use of such resources by directing locums to support Out Of Hours services and/or GP practices most under pressure.

Each Health Board is advised to have a mechanism in place for determining when responsibility for engaging locums needs to switch from individual providers to the Health Board.

Question reference: S5W-27733

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 04 March 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 16 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on how many Scottish Ambulance Service callouts were alcohol-related in each of the last four years.

The Scottish Ambulance Service do not record alcohol related incidents. The following table shows the number of callouts where the crew have noted that alcohol was a factor:

Calendar Year	Number of Incidents
2016	14,385
2017	15,420
2018	31,009
2019	28,451

The following caveats apply to the above table:

The software for recording clinical data changed around Oct 2017
The data prior to 2017 is based on crews recording that alcohol was a factor in the incident. Post Oct 2017 crews could record this, along with alcohol having been a factor, in cases such as overdose, convulsions and drowning.

Question reference: S5W-27772

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 05 March 2020
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 13 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-27462 by Michael Matheson on 26 February 2020, for what reason it considered that a similar system for the Forth Road Bridge would not be suitable or effective.

Question reference: S5O-04274

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 11 March 2020
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 18 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the justice secretary has had with ministerial colleagues regarding how many of the 800 additional mental health workers committed to in its Mental Health Strategy will be deployed within police and prison services in Edinburgh.

Question reference: S5W-27417

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 11 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-24311 by Clare Haughey on 30 July 2019, whether it will provide an update on how much of the £250 million allocated to mental health in the 2018-19 Programme for Government has been invested in community mental wellbeing services for five- to 24-year-olds.

The Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Programme Board is overseeing the delivery of new community mental health and wellbeing supports and services for children and young people aged from 5-24 and their families.

The Programme Board has developed and signed off a framework which sets out a clear broad approach to this support and is designed to assist local collaborative partnerships. This framework has been circulated to Community Planning Partnerships who are being asked to take a collaborative local approach.

A set of principles around delivery of this have been jointly agreed between Scottish Government and COSLA. We are working closely with a range of partners including local authorities, Community Planning Partnerships and Children’s Services Planning Partnerships on the implementation of supports and services as laid out in the framework.

An initial first tranche of funding of £2 million has been made available to support planning and development.

Further funding of up to £15 million will be provided in 2020-21 to enable the roll out of supports and services following the initial planning period.

Question reference: S5W-27555

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 9 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-27246 by Jeane Freeman on 11 February 2020, whether Dr Veronikis will be meeting mesh-injured people as part of his visit in the spring.

I can confirm that the Chief Medical Officer wrote again to Dr Veronikis last week, to re-iterate an invitation to visit Scotland in the spring. It is intended that this visit be observational in nature for reasons I outlined in Parliament on 27 February, i.e. so that Dr Veronikis can experience the environment in which he would be operating, including theatre list, pre- and post-operative processes, the use of multi-disciplinary teams, and consent processes. As such, Dr Veronikis will not be expected to formally consult with patients during this initial visit.

We await Dr Veronikis' response, and we remain hopeful that his commitments will still allow him to visit in the spring.

Question reference: S5W-27565

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 21 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 9 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason social care provision is reportedly only provided to people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) following a diagnosis of dementia, and what its position is on offering such provision to all people with MCI.

Local authorities have a duty under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 to carry out social care support assessments. Any person who feels their quality of life would benefit from social care support can request a social care support assessment. This includes any person with mild cognitive impairment or with dementia. This request can be made by the person themselves, members of their family, carers, friends or from their medical practitioners.

Question reference: S5W-27613

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 26 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 9 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the publication, NHS Scotland confidential alert line: annual information, how many of the public interest cases in the period (a) 1 August 2017 to 31 January 2018, (b) 1 February 2018 to 31 July 2018, (c) 1 August 2018 to 31 January 2019 and (d) 1 February 2019 to 31 October 2019 involved a whistleblowing concern.

The public interest cases contained in the published information within the report provided by the Whistleblowing Alert and Advice services for NHSScotland, reflect the exact number of whistleblowing cases raised with them. These are as follows:

- From 1 August 2017 to 31 January 2018- 22 cases

- From 1 February 2018 to 31 July 2018 -16 cases

- From 1 August 2018 to 31 January 2019 34 cases

- From 1 February 2019 to 31 October 2019 -26 cases

Question reference: S5W-27528

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 5 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what its justification is for legal certificate fees reportedly being higher in Scotland than they are in England.

Registration is devolved, and the setting of fees for registration matters – including charges for extracts from the Birth and Death Registers (birth certificates and death certificates) – is the responsibility of the Registrar General for Scotland subject to the approval of Scottish Ministers. Certificate fees are kept under regular review and set on a cost-recovery basis.

More widely, the UK Gender Recognition Panel charges £140 to applicants seeking a gender recognition certificate, including those resident in Scotland. Applicants can apply for help to pay these fees if they receive certain benefits or are on a low income.

Question reference: S5W-27302

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 05 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 4 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to (a) collect and (b) publish data regarding waiting times for access to eating disorder support.

The Scottish Government is working with Information Services Division (ISD) on a number of actions to improve the data that is collected regarding referrals to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and to adult services.

A new core dataset has been developed, which includes diagnosis, diagnosis date and the start date of treatment or intervention. ISD is now working with all Boards to put in place a robust collection mechanism that will provide this core dataset at an individual patient level. As this dataset will be able to be broken down by diagnosis, we would expect a significant improvement in the data that is available regarding eating disorders.