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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: S3W-11984

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 April 2008
Current Status: Answered by Alex Johnstone on 28 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body who authorised the changes to workplace lighting in the MSP block.

Question reference: S3W-11985

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 April 2008
Current Status: Answered by Alex Johnstone on 28 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what estimates have been made of energy usage in the Parliament on Wednesday and Thursday evenings compared with that on Monday and Tuesday evenings.

Question reference: S3W-11520

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 April 2008
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 16 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many interpreters for deaf and partially hearing people there were in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.

The Scottish Government does not hold centrally the information requested.

I am however able to provide information on the number of British Sign Language interpreters registered with the Scottish Association of Sign Language Interpreters (SASLI), by region, as at 31 December 2007

Area	Interpreters	Trainees
Aberdeen and Moray	Registered: 4	Trainee: 1
Tayside	Registered: 3
Fife	Registered: 3
Edinburgh	Registered: 9	Trainee: 2
Highland	Registered: 6
Glasgow	Registered: 18	Trainee: 6
Ayrshire	Registered: 5	Trainee: 1
Dumfries and Galloway	Registered: 1
Central Scotland	Registered: 4
Outwith Scotland	Registered: 2
Total	Registered: 55	Trainee: 10

Note: Registered Interpreters are interpreters who have been assessed and registered by the association as fit to practice in all domains.

Associate Interpreters are interpreters who have been granted membership of the association and are undertaking the post registration associates program leading to full registration.

Question reference: S3W-11521

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 April 2008
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 16 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many communications support posts for deaf and partially hearing people there were in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.

Question reference: S3W-11021

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 14 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 9 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many investigations into fraud were carried out by police forces in each year since 1999, broken down by constabulary.

The available information is given in the following table.

Number of Crimes of Fraud Recorded by the Police by Police Force Area, 1999-2000 to 2006-07

Police Force	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07
Central	632	694	871	1,152	1,235	781	1,077	633
Dumfries and Galloway	478	293	440	514	460	1,066	212	262
Fife	1,348	1,747	1,130	1,333	1,279	1,296	866	710
Grampian	3,840	3,260	2,936	1,922	1,349	1,630	1,120	727
Lothian and Borders	5,456	6,217	5,087	4,325	4,630	7,242	2,241	1,741
Northern	675	965	971	940	674	934	744	566
Strathclyde	6,983	6,227	5,370	4,844	4,711	4,200	3,873	3,781
Tayside	1,208	640	590	798	939	1,158	941	912
All Scotland	20,620	20,043	17,395	15,828	15,277	18,307	11,074	9,332

Question reference: S3W-11024

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 14 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 9 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many (a) complaints related to incidents of criminality were received by police forces from members of the public and (b) police investigations took place following complaints related to incidents of criminality in each year since 1999, broken down by constabulary.

Question reference: S3W-11023

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 14 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 9 April 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many complaints related to breaches under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 were received by police forces in each year since enactment, broken down by constabulary.

The information requested cannot be shown separately, but is contained in the figures shown below.

Number of Election Offences Recorded by Police Force Area, 2000-01 to 2006-07.

Police Force	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07
Central	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Dumfries and Galloway	0	0	0	1	0	0	0
Fife	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Grampian	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Lothian and Borders	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Northern	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Strathclyde	0	1	0	5	1	0	0
Tayside	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
All Scotland	0	1	0	6	1	0	0

Question reference: S3W-11022

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 14 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Elish Angiolini on 28 March 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many cases of fraud were referred to the Procurator Fiscal by police forces in each year since 1999, broken down by constabulary.

The numbers of charges of fraud reported to Procurators Fiscal by police forces in each financial year since 2002-03 are shown in the following table. A further 2,161 such charges were reported to Procurators Fiscal by Specialist Reporting Agencies.

Charges: Fraud etc

Police Force	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	Total
Central Scotland Police	931	866	981	909	633	4,320
Dumfries and Galloway Police	442	343	540	97	122	1,544
Fife Constabulary	802	901	819	702	571	3,795
Grampian Police	919	660	709	554	354	3,196
Lothian and Borders	2,800	2,010	3,069	2,096	1,300	11,275
Northern Constabulary	853	487	697	645	341	3,023
Strathclyde Police	3,546	3,319	2,733	2,573	2,040	14,211
Tayside Police	879	845	1,175	845	739	4,483
British Transport Police	176	215	51	49	23	514
Ministry of Defence Police	26	69	53	16	88	252
Total	11,374	9,715	10,827	8,486	6,211	46,613

Notes:

1. The information in the table has been extracted from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service's case management database. The database is a live, operational database used to manage the processing of reports submitted to procurators fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies. If a Procurator Fiscal amends a charge submitted by a reporting agency, the database will record details only of the amended charge.

2. The database is charge-based. The figures quoted therefore relate to the number of charges rather than the number of individuals charged or the number of incidents that gave rise to such charges.

3. The information in the table is restricted to charges involving fraud, attempted fraud, fraud (board and lodging), fraud (credit/debit card), fraud (electronic means), fraud (taxi fare/vehicle/vessel etc fare) and fraudulent schemes.

4. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service completed an upgrade of its electronic case management system in April 2002. Only case records created after that date contain complete data which is capable of electronic analysis.

5. The table reflects the position at 20 March 2008.

Question reference: S3W-09509

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 February 2008
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 28 March 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive what representations ministers will make to the relevant authorities to introduce the “sco” abbreviation as standard for official email addresses for all Scottish public bodies in place of “gov.uk” or “scottish.parliament.uk”.

Question reference: S3W-10645

Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 03 March 2008
Current Status: Answered by Alex Johnstone on 25 March 2008

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how many IT incidents have been recorded where parliamentary account users have been unable to log on remotely from home or constituency offices due to problems associated with lack of capacity on parliamentary servers.

IT incidents have been categorised since December 2005. The table below shows the number of IT incidents logged with the Helpdesk per month where the user has been unable to connect to the Parliament remotely due to capacity issues.

	2005	2006	2007	2008
January		8	3	7
February		17	5	35
March		29	20	102
April		1	0
May		0	0
June		48	1
July		2	0
August		10	1
September		2	0
October		6	7
November		1	4
December	4	0	6