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: S6O-02211

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 May 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 10 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure the long-term sustainability of general practice.

Question reference: S6W-17284

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what its assessment is of how many social care staff are required to meet demand.

There are more than 1,200 social care providers across Scotland, with local authorities responsible for providing or commissioning services. Local authorities and Health and Social Care Partnerships will wish to ensure that, in providing a range of services, their workforce planning arrangements take full account of the need to have safe and sustainable numbers of staff.

The latest figures published by Public Health Scotland show that, on 17 April, the total number of hours of social care support yet to be provided was 38,324.

Question reference: S6W-17288

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what data is available to help potential users of social care services to understand waiting times for service provision.

Information on Social Care Eligibility and Waiting times is collected and published by the Scottish Government. This is publicly available via the following link:

Many Local Authorities have reported difficulty in providing the information asked for in this data collection, which has had a significant impact on the robustness of the information available for analysis. We have been working with Public Health Scotland (PHS) to consider the future of this data and are developing plans to capture waiting times data within existing Social Care collections returned to PHS, aiming to make it more straightforward for partnerships to provide data, and in turn resulting in more complete and consistent data in the future.

Question reference: S6W-17297

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 April 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what the level of any unmet need for social care is in each local authority area across Scotland.

Information published by Public Health Scotland ( provides the number of people waiting for a social care assessment, as well as the number of people who have been assessed and are waiting for a package of care. These figures, however, represent only a subset of unmet need.

Scottish Government analysts are considering options for increasing our understanding of the nature and level of unmet need in adult social care, and will continue to engage with external partners to develop appropriate approaches and deliver new insights over the coming months.

Question reference: S6W-17290

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 April 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many people in Scotland were waiting to be assessed for social care on 1 January 2023.

On 2 January 2023, the number of people waiting for social care support assessment was 7,143. The latest data published by Public Health Scotland (PHS) shows that there were 6,706 waiting for a social care support assessment on 17 April 2023.

Please note:

The demand for a package of care is unknown in advance of the assessment taking place, and some of the people being assessed will not need a package of care.
Scotland estimates are derived by summing the number of people waiting from the partnerships. This excludes 3 Health and Social Care Partnerships who were unable to supply data.
Figures are collected each Monday.

Source: Public Health Scotland, , published 25 April 2023.

Question reference: S6W-17287

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what the average pay is for care assistants employed in the (a) private, (b) public and (c) third sector.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the average pay rates for care assistants across the private, public and third sector.

From April 2023, adult social care workers delivering direct care in commissioned services will see their pay increase to a minimum of £10.90 per hour; in line with the Real Living Wage rate for the 2023-24 Financial Year.

These are the minimum rates of pay for these workers and many providers choose to pay more than these minimums.

Question reference: S6W-17280

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many people living in Scotland were receiving social care services in each year since 2007, also broken down by age.

Information on the number of people receiving social care support has been collected by Public Health Scotland (PHS) and published as part of their Insights In Social Care publication since 2018. Prior to this, data was collected by Scottish Government through the Social Care Survey from 2013 – 2017.

Therefore, the change between 2016/17 and 2017/18 should be interpreted with caution due to the differences between data sources. However, PHS do produce an adjusted figure based on the same definitions used in the Social Care Survey that allows a longer term trend to be produced which has been used in the table below.

Data is available from 2014 onwards, as the same age breakdown is not available for 2013. Prior to 2013, there were separate surveys for Home Care and Direct Payments but no collection covering all social care services. Figures may not sum to all ages exactly due to rounding.

Table 1: The estimated number of people in Scotland receiving social care support by age, 2013-14 – 2021-22

Year	Age 0-17 years	Age 18-64 years	Age 65+ years	All Ages
2013/14	2,740	27,690	117,910	148,340
2014/15	3,450	47,660	154,310	205,430
2015/16	3,420	47,630	156,870	207,950
2016/17	3,660	48,540	160,020	212,220
2017/18	2,700	40,420	145,915	189,025
2018/19	3,070	47,865	169,800	220,730
2019/20	2,470	44,845	158,365	205,680
2020/21	2,755	43,425	152,660	198,930
2021/22	3,615	49,105	151,980	205,490

Question reference: S6W-17286

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what the average pay is for social care staff employed in the (a) private, (b) public and (c) third sector.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the average pay rates for social care staff across the private, public and third sector.

These are the minimum rates of pay for these workers and many providers choose to pay more than these minimums.

Question reference: S6W-17283

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many social care staff are currently employed in Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-17285

Asked by: Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what the social care staff vacancy rate is across Scotland.