Questions and answers

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 ��˿�� 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: S6W-12496

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 5 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what part infusions and injections will have in future plans to treat chronic pain.

I understand how important infusions and injections are for those patients receiving them, and that work is needed to improve care for people with chronic pain and the sustainability of our pain management services.

It is our intention that people can access safe, effective, evidence-based care and support. Therefore, as set out in the which we published in July, we are taking action to develop a more consistent, nationally agreed approach to the provision of specialist medical interventions, such as infusions and injections.

This will take into account existing clinical evidence, the variation in approach between Health Boards and seek to reflect the views and needs of both the patient and clinical community.

Question reference: S6W-12486

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 5 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the debate on chronic pain services on 16 November 2022, during which several members expressed support for NHS specialist chronic pain services being provided as a priority for patients requiring treatment following a referral from a clinician, whether it will clarify whether (a) specialist chronic pain services will be protected and (b) it will analyse relevant staffing levels, in order to decrease waiting times for these services.

The was published in July 2022 and sets out the actions the Scottish Government are taking to improve care and services for people with chronic pain.

The Implementation Plan acknowledges the importance of specialist pain management services and includes a number of specific actions to improve access and quality of care provided by these services. This includes convening an expert working group to review pathways into specialist care and identify opportunities to share and promote best practice as well as piloting new digital pathways to improve how people access specialist services.

As part of this work it is expected that challenges around staffing of specialist services will also be explored. This activity will also be informed by a new national pain service managers network which will help to identify and prioritise key issues affecting the resilience and quality of specialist pain services, including workforce. In addition, the Scottish Government will publish, for the first time, projections of required workforce growth across health and social care as part of the National Workforce Strategy. Once generated these will be reviewed annually.

Question reference: S6W-12395

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 21 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 1 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-05564 by John Swinney on 10 January 2017, whether it will provide an update on how many school support staff each local authority has employed in each year since 2010, broken down by category of employment.

Data on school support staff are collected as part of the annual school staff census.

National Statistics on selected categories of school support staff (pupil support assistants, home-school link workers, behaviour support staff, educational psychologists, school nurses and library staff) can be found at:

Management information (which are not subject to the same quality assurance procedures by Scottish Government statisticians as Official Statistics) for all other support staff roles for which data is collected centrally can be found at:

Statistics for all categories of support staff prior to 2017 are available as part of the Teacher Census Supplementary Data:

The processing and quality assurance of the statistics on school support staff from 2017 onwards has been brought into line with procedures for National Statistics on pupils and teachers. This means that statistics from 2017 onwards are not directly comparable with the data on support staff from previous years.

Question reference: S6O-01652

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what steps are being taken to increase the allocation of police officers in Edinburgh.

Question reference: S6W-12193

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many new homes have been built in Scotland in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-12192

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on how many modular homes have been built in each local authority area in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-12196

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding has been recovered in total by each local authority for homelessness prevention from payments made through Integration Joint Boards.

The majority of homelessness funding provided to local authorities is provided via the block grant, Scottish Government has provided £11.2 billion to Local Authorities as part of the block grant in 2022-23. It is at each local authority’s discretion as to how they use this resource to prevent and respond to homelessness. Decisions as to whether the responsibility for homelessness services are delegated to the local authority or the integration joint boards are made locally.

In addition to the block grant are specific allocations of funding for the purpose of addressing homelessness. Information on these additional funding allocations provided to local authorities can be found in the responses to parliamentary questions S6W-10127 on 22 August 2022 and S6W-06821 on 10 March 2022. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Question reference: S6W-12231

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 18 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what percentage of non-electric heat in buildings is directly supplied by renewable sources.

In 2020, 6.4% of non-electrical heat demand was met by renewable technologies. This represents an increase of 4.5 percentage points (up from 1.9%) since 2010 and an increase of 0.2 percentage points from 2019.

The most recent statistics on renewable heat in Scotland are published in the 'Renewable Heat in Scotland – 2020 report’ ( ; produced for the Scottish Government by Energy Saving Trust).

As set out in the ‘Heat in Buildings Strategy: 2022 update’ ( , we will publish an update to our heat statistics in May 2023 as part of the Climate Change Plan monitoring report. This will not only align with our climate change reporting, but will also provide more time to gather and review the necessary statistics.

Question reference: S6W-12206

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of any unmet need during the development of its proposals for a National Care Service.

Following the high level assessment of unmet need raised in the Independent Review of Adult Social Care, the Scottish Government considered unmet need in its consultation for the National Care Service.

Unmet need in adult social care is continually monitored as Scottish Government analysts are considering options for increasing our understanding of the nature and level of unmet need in adult social care. We will continue to engage with external partners and those with lived experience of unmet need in social care services as we develop the National Care Service.

Question reference: S6W-12199

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what employability programmes have been developed to help former prisoners find employment.

We are delivering person-centred, tailored services to those further from the labour market through a combination of locally designed services (No One Left Behind) and our national employment service Fair Start Scotland. We provide support that is flexible, person-centred, and aligned with other key services including health, justice, housing and advice services. Support is tailored to the individual’s specific circumstances, people with convictions are eligible for support through both No One Left Behind and Fair Start Scotland.

We are currently working with the Scottish Prison Service, Disclosure Scotland and DWP to further enhance our employability offer for people with convictions and have undertaken specific work to help promote the service offer to individuals with convictions pre and post-liberation, ensuring support is available immediately on release.