Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-00262

Asked by: Paul Sweeney, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 26 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 14 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government when the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care will meet with student paramedics from the Pay Student Paramedics campaign in order to discuss the implementation of the student paramedic bursary.

Question reference: S6W-00219

Asked by: Oliver Mundell, MSP for Dumfriesshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 25 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 14 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason NHS Dumfries and Galloway has no input or control over centrally-allocated COVID-19 appointments.

NHS Scotland Health Boards use the delivery model which is most suitable for their local circumstances, whilst maintaining a Covid-19 safe environment.

The NHS Dumfries and Galloway system schedules its own appointments using a booking algorithm, which works as follows:

•First checks for GP practices as a vaccination location;

•Then checks for nearest vaccination centre using estimated time to drive to location ( via google maps ) to find the closest centre, there is no upper limit for travel time;

•Repeats step 2 until it finds a vaccination centre with available appointments.

A person would potentially be asked to travel a large distance if there is no capacity at nearby centres. This is managed by NHS Dumfries and Galloway.

Scottish Government officials were instructed to contact NHS Dumfries and Galloway to ascertain if more local vaccination sites can be opened and if more are needed.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway responded that it is monitoring and addressing this. There is re-booking capacity to reduce the risk of appointing patients to venues that would require significant journey times. And NHS D&G continues to review uptake and "did not attend" rates across the region to determine if it is seeing any localities where there is a need to increase our provision to increase uptake rates.

Question reference: S6W-00247

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 25 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 14 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many people did not attend their vaccine appointment in the last 10 weeks, broken down by (a) local authority area and (b) age group.

Question reference: S6W-00218

Asked by: Oliver Mundell, MSP for Dumfriesshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 25 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 14 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason people in Dumfries and Galloway are being pre-booked by central teams for vaccination appointments that cannot be reached by public transport from their community, and which are an 80-mile round-trip from their homes.

NHS Scotland Health Boards use the delivery model which is most suitable for their local circumstances, whilst maintaining a Covid-19 safe environment.

The NHS Dumfries and Galloway system schedules its own appointments using a booking algorithm, which works as follows:

•First checks for GP practices as a vaccination location;

•Then checks for nearest vaccination centre using estimated time to drive to location ( via google maps ) to find the closest centre, there is no upper limit for travel time;

•Repeats step 2 until it finds a vaccination centre with available appointments.

A person would potentially be asked to travel a large distance if there is no capacity at nearby centres. This is managed by NHS Dumfries and Galloway.

Scottish Government officials were instructed to contact NHS Dumfries and Galloway to ascertain if more local vaccination sites can be opened and if more are needed.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway responded that it is monitoring and addressing this. There is re-booking capacity to reduce the risk of appointing patients to venues that would require significant journey times. And NHS D&G continues to review uptake and "did not attend" rates across the region to determine if it is seeing any localities where there is a need to increase our provision to increase uptake rates.

Question reference: S6W-00280

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 14 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what criteria needs to be met in order for all GP surgeries to allow routine face-to-face appointments between GPs and patients.

General practices are following Public Health Scotland’s advice to reserve face to face appointments in primary care settings for those consultations where the GP decides it is clinically necessary. This is not just to prevent the general transmission of the coronavirus but to protect general practices as medical spaces for patients who have a clinical reason for face to face attendance.

Public Health Scotland's advice is not tied to the levels Scottish local authorities are in. General practices will remain open regardless but will continue to manage face to face appointments consistent with this advice. At present all patients are still able to get an appointment by telephone or video call.

Question reference: S6W-00246

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 25 May 2021
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 14 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what is done with vaccine supplies that are unused due to non-attendance at appointments.

The current wastage of vaccines remains very low in Scotland, across Health Boards.

Health Boards currently over appoint to buffer any DNA’s (Did Not Attends) and they also administer opportunistic and drops-in vaccinations depending on their local circumstance – therefore this is not counted as wastage. Vaccine supply can also be carried forward to the next day, further reducing wastage.

As a precautionary approach for worst-case scenarios, a planning assumption of 5% vaccine wastage is used. Actual wastage is well below the 5% planning assumption.

Question reference: S6W-00627

Asked by: Neil Gray, MSP for Airdrie and Shotts, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 11 June 2021
Current Status: Initiated by the Scottish Government. Awaiting answer

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has made any progress on consulting retail employees and businesses regarding large retail stores trading on New Year’s Day.

Question reference: S6W-00432

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 June 2021
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 11 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether the SQA will charge local authorities a reduced amount for its services this session, given the reduction in the number of exam settings and marking services it has provided.

The budget agreed by Scottish Ministers for SQA for 2021-22 is based on the SQA levy to local authorities and entry fees charged separately remaining at the same level as has been the case since 2012-13.

These fees provide a contribution towards the cost of awarding, rather than covering the full cost for that individual local authority, school or college. The costs of awarding National Qualifications, even this year, are greater than the contribution made by local authorities in the form of a levy.

Question reference: S6W-00348

Asked by: Stuart McMillan, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 June 2021
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 11 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions it has had with (a) COSLA and (b) teaching unions regarding temporary teaching positions.

The recruitment and deployment of teachers in local authority schools are matters for individual local authorities.

Whilst local authorities are responsible for the recruitment and deployment of their staff, we are firmly of the view that we will need all possible teaching resources at our disposal to compensate for any loss of learning suffered since the start of the pandemic. It is for that reason that we have provided over £200 million of additional funding to support the recruitment of additional staff to aid education recovery.

In the first 100 days of this Parliamentary term, we will fund councils to increase teacher numbers by 1,000 and classroom assistants by 500. This as part of our commitment to support the recruitment of 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants over the parliamentary term.

We are working closely with COSLA regarding recruitment practices and the employment of teachers for next academic year, and Local Authorities are currently undertaking an assessment of staff requirements to support education recovery. This issue has also been discussed with the teaching unions at the Scottish Negotiation Committee for Teachers.

Question reference: S6W-00333

Asked by: Daniel Johnson, MSP for Edinburgh Southern, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 June 2021
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 11 June 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has regarding the amount of business debt that has been accumulated by SMEs because of the COVID-19 restrictions.

Scottish Government regularly monitors SME debt levels and meets monthly with Scottish Financial Enterprise and the main banks in Scotland to monitor trends in lending facilities and identify key emerging themes. In the event that these identify areas of concern, Scottish Government will work with UK government (Treasury, British Business Bank) as well as other SG policy areas and enterprise agencies to develop an appropriate response.

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