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: S5W-13731

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 09 January 2018
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 18 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to reduce the number of women who had to travel to England to obtain terminations of pregnancy, given that 180 women reportedly did so in 2016.

Question reference: S5W-13708

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 08 January 2018
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 16 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what work is being done to ensure that dog boarding establishment licenses are only given to premises suitable for these animals.

Local authorities are responsible, under The Animal Boarding Establishment Act 1963, for the granting of licences permitting the carrying out of the business of running an animal boarding establishment; and have powers to inspect premises that they have licensed.

That 1963 Act lists a number of statutory requirements that must be complied with for a licence to be granted. These include the need for accommodation to be safe and appropriate for the type and number of animals boarded. In addition, local authorities have discretion to withhold a licence on other grounds.

Question reference: S5W-13707

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 08 January 2018
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 16 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government whether it is considering updating legalisation, in light of the Animal Boarding Establishments Act 1963 and Civic Government Scotland Act 1982 not including explicit consideration of the suitability of properties for animal boarding.

The Programme for Government 2017-18 commits the Scottish Government to preparing legislation on a modern system of registration and licensing of animal sanctuaries and rehoming activities. The principles of that modern system will, in due course, be applied to the licensing of animal boarding establishments.

However, the Scottish Government considers that the Animal Boarding Establishments Act 1963 offers local authorities the discretion to consider factors other than animal welfare when considering applications for an animal boarding establishment licence.

Question reference: S5W-13732

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 09 January 2018
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 16 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to work with the English and Welsh governments to advise and advocate on the extension of the clinically safe, home use of abortion medication in their jurisdictions.

Question reference: S5O-01684

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 10 January 2018
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 17 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on gender-neutral school uniforms.

Question reference: S5W-13479

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 15 December 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 9 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made on the commitment in its published strategy, Beating Cancer: Ambition and Action, to increase NHS scope capacity by 2,000 scopes per annum on a sustainable basis.

Question reference: S5W-13310

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 11 December 2017
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 3 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of the (a) location of each permanent and (b) area covered by each mobile speed camera in the City of Edinburgh local authority area.

Question reference: S5W-13349

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 December 2017
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 3 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on non-UK EU nationals continuing to have the right to vote in (a) local authority and (b) Scottish parliamentary elections post-Brexit.

The Scottish Government has full responsibility for the franchise for both local government elections and also elections to the Scottish Parliament. In both elections, the franchise includes people resident in Scotland who are:

- British Citizens; or

- Qualifying Commonwealth Citizens; or

- Citizens of the European Union.

Therefore, at present, non-UK EU nationals have the right to vote in Scottish elections and the Scottish Government intends that this will continue to be the position in future.

On 19 December 2017, the Scottish Government launched a public consultation on Electoral Reform. The consultation includes discussion around a proposal to further extend the franchise in Scottish elections to include everyone legally resident in Scotland. The consultation will run for 12 weeks until 12 March 2018.

Question reference: S5W-13178

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 07 December 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 19 December 2017

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of recently-published ISD Scotland statistics, for what reason there has been a 9.5% fall in the number of dentists over the last year.

The Scottish Government is proud of its record on dental services. The number of high street dentists providing NHS dental services continues to increase year-on-year and there are now 3,004 high street dentists in Scotland, compared to 2,261 in 2007. That is an increase of 33 per cent under this Government and an increase of 1.1 per cent since 2016.

The 9.5% decrease referred to the dental workforce category known as Hospital and Community Health Services Dentistry, part of which includes hospital dentists. The decrease in NHS Education for Scotland hospital dentists was due to a local data cleansing exercise which removed medical grades recorded for these staff. ISD are working with NHS Education for Scotland to address the issues ensuring locally uploaded data is available in the national database.

Question reference: S5W-13143

Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 December 2017
Current Status: Answered by Maureen Watt on 13 December 2017

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answers to questions S5W-00357 and S5W-12640 by Maureen Watt on 1 June 2016 and 27 November 2017 respectively, in light of the information for Dudhope House being provided in the initial response, for what reason the minister advised in the latter that the information requested was not held centrally; whether it will confirm which mental health inpatient units it holds the information for, broken down by how many children and young people have been turned away from each in each of the last three years and for what reason, and how many were (i) admitted to alternative units, broken down by unit, (ii) treated on adult wards and (iii) not admitted at all.

The answer to PQ. S5W-00357 contained specific information about Dudhope House that was available to the Government at the time due to dialogue with NHS Tayside on a separate issue. ISD do not hold this information and did not contribute to the answer to this PQ.

The answer to PQ S5W-12640 was agreed with ISD, and reflected that this data is not held centrally.

In answer to the latter half of this PQ, this data is not held centrally.