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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: S1W-08508

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 July 2000
Current Status: Answered by Tom McCabe on 30 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S1W-4815 by Mr Tom McCabe on 14 March 2000, on how many occasions since February 2000 it has asked back-bench MSPs to lodge parliamentary questions in order to enable it to make an announcement; whether it will provide a list of such questions, including the date on which they were lodged, and whether it is still the case that none of its officials have written authorisations to lodge parliamentary questions in the names of back-bench MSPs.

It has been possible to identify the following 68 written parliamentary questions lodged between 29 February and 10 July as being inspired by the Executive, using the same methodology as set out in my answer to question S1W-5379 on 23 March 2000.

4829, 4830, 4831, 5030, 5182, 5215, 5349, 5432, 5482, 5538, 5578, 5596, 5631, 5672, 5697, 5703, 5731, 5789, 5790, 5803, 5908, 5975, 5976, 6008, 6034, 6040, 6069, 6085, 6086, 6153, 6160, 6161, 6162, 6187, 6256, 6409, 6477, 6478, 6709, 6822, 6881, 6892, 6908, 7016, 7062, 7088, 7089, 7300, 7420, 7425, 7441, 7544, 7545, 7697, 7778, 7840, 7851, 7852, 7860, 7861, 7862, 7913, 7983, 8080, 8083, 8211, 8221 and 8248.

It remains the case that officials do not have authorisation to lodge questions on behalf of members.

Inspired PQs are an effective mechanism for bringing matters to the attention of the Parliament which are not so significant as to require a ministerial statement or debate. Without such a mechanism some of the wide range of activities of the Executive, which cannot all be the subject of parliamentary statements or debates, could not be notified to the Parliament as a whole.

The use of inspired parliamentary questions was considered by the Procedures Committee, at its meeting on 15 February, and was acknowledged by the committee as a useful method for bringing matters to the attention of the Parliament.

Question reference: S1W-08690

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2000
Current Status: Answered by Susan Deacon on 30 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive how many NHS Trusts received a formula capital allocation from it which was equal to or in excess of their annual capital depreciation in any of the last three financial years.

Question reference: S1W-07264

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 30 May 2000
Current Status: Answered by Jim Wallace on 25 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will detail for each of the last five years, broken down by (a) police force and (b) category of vehicle, the number of vehicles (i) owned and (ii) hired, giving the annual budget figures for vehicle purchase and maintenance.

Question reference: S1W-08707

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2000
Current Status: Answered by Jim Wallace on 25 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive whether has been an increase in rural crime and whether it will provide any relevant statistics for each of the last three years.

The recorded crime statistics collected centrally do not distinguish rural crime. The available information is given in the research reports listed below:

A Study of Crime in Rural Scotland

published by The Scottish Office Central Research Unit in 1997.

Crime and The Farming Community: The Scottish Farm Crime Survey 1998

published by the Scottish Office Central Research Unit in 1999.

New Ideas in Rural Development No. 8 Tackling Crime in Rural Scotland

published by The Scottish Office Central Research Unit in 1999.

The Recording of Wildlife Crime

published by The Scottish Office Central Research Unit in 1999

Copies of these are available in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib numbers 2320, 7117, 6612 and 7118 respectively).

Question reference: S1W-08819

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 21 July 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sarah Boyack on 25 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S1W-7989 by Sarah Boyack on 11 July 2000, whether it will provide the equivalent information covering each year since the current water authorities were set up.

The information on water authority chief executives' salary packages is given in the following tables: -

West of Scotland Water Authority
Chief Executive	Year	Salary	Bonus	Taxable benefit	Pension	Total
Ernie Chambers	1996-97	£82,000	£15,000		£4,000	£101,000
	1997-98	£84,000		£1,000	£5,000	£90,000
	1998-99	£87,000	£16,000	£1,000	£7,000	£111,000
	1999-2000	£90,000	£17,000	£1,000	£9,000	£117,000
Previous Post: Director of Water and Sewerage Services, Strathclyde Regional Council

East of Scotland Water Authority
Chief Executive	Year	Salary	Bonus	Taxable benefit	Pension	Total
Rod Rennet	1996-97	£82,400	£16,480	£7,812	£7,910	£114,602
	1997-98	£84,254	£15,070	£5,145	£8,341	£112,810
	1998-99	£86,779	£15,335	£5,146	£10,674	£117,934
	1999-2000	£93,974	£14,725	£2,642	£11,432	£122,773
Previous Post: Director of Water Services, Tayside Regional Council

North of Scotland Water Authority
Chief Executive	Year	Salary	Bonus	Taxable benefit	Pension	Total
Alastair Findlay	1996-97	£83,000	£16,000	£7,000	£8,000	£114,000
	1997-98	£84,000	£16,000	£7,000	£8,000	£115,000
	1998-99	£87,000	£15,000	£7,000	£9,000	£118,000
	1999-2000	£90,000	£9,000	£8,000	£10,000	£117,000
Previous Position: Fisheries Secretary, Scottish Office

Question reference: S1W-08688

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2000
Current Status: Answered by Susan Deacon on 21 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive how many claims there were against the NHS Trusts in each health board area in respect of (a) clinical mishaps or accidents, (b) non-clinical mishaps or accidents in each of the last five years and what the total cost of these types of claims in each health board area was in terms of (i) compensation paid out and (ii) investigating and defending claims.

Until 1 April 2000 health boards and Trusts were responsible for arranging their own cover for non-clinical incidents. As a result there is no central system that records non-clinical claims. This information can however be obtained directly from health boards and Trusts.The following tables provide details by health board area of the number of cases settled, the compensation paid and the claimant's legal costs in each of the last five years.All clinical cases are handled and defended by the Central Legal Office (CLO). The cost of defending each health board area's cases is not collected but can be requested directly from CLO.

		1999-2000			1998-99
	No of claims	Compensation paid	Legal costs	No. of claims	Compensation paid	Legal costs
Argyll & Clyde	15	92,628	47,611	15	776,317	97,794
Ayrshire & Arran	6	277,345	5,721	6	191,630	8,328
Dumfries&Galloway	8	133,614	19,887	10	103,622	62,921
Fife	8	45,900	13,075	8	71,588	14,659
Forth Valley	6	27,865	5,964	10	27,300	18,716
Grampian	10	405,383	8,957	9	59,281	20,626
Greater Glasgow	45	498,733	166,494	50	327,700	206,466
Highland	8	269,745	25,198	6	55,500	9,541
Lanarkshire	8	99,698	20,610	13	84,300	32,178
Lothian	34	919,160	204,452	27	1,412,009	118,972
Tayside	16	251,000	29,165	12	147,782	53,081
Other Boards	5	184,164	8,644	4	50,600	4,502
Total	169	3,205,235	555,778	170	3,307,629	647,784

		1997-98			1996-97
	No. of Claims	Compensation paid	Legal costs	No. of Claims	Compensation paid	Legal costs
Argyll & Clyde	16	681,945	59,817	30	435,908	74,366
Ayrshire & Arran	9	25,000	105,642	16	306,200	20,126
Fife	12	106,313	53,083	15	82,293	20,087
Forth Valley	10	204,750	21,837	13	1,067,005	31,752
Grampian	15	67,400	39,560	10	277,462	22,316
Greater Glasgow	35	1,272,360	104,001	27	1,036,380	100,378
Highland	10	415,200	8,564	6	9,600	39,368
Lanarkshire	11	78,650	19,725	17	90,872	17,478
Lothian	26	337,109	137,802	37	383,975	174,651
Tayside	18	210,770	45,972	12	158,022	20,993
Other Boards	5	121,702	27,933	7	212,166	14,106
Total	167	3,521,199	623,936	190	4,059,883	535,621

		1995-96
	No. of claims	Compensation paid	Legal costs
Argyll & Clyde	16	227,562	53,211
Ayrshire & Arran	7	48,105	8,611
Dumfries&Galloway	9	73,606	19,421
Fife	8	66,766	15,019
Forth Valley	7	155,713	4,533
Grampian	11	55,244	17,749
Greater Glasgow	46	1,287,877	171,627
Highland	13	212,440	12,369
Lanarkshire	10	77,550	46,345
Lothian	30	1,244,027	174,000
Tayside	12	54,540	43,158
Other Boards	3	51,500	3,000
Total	172	3,554,930	569,043

To protect patient confidentiality the information has been aggregated for some health boards, which have only a small number of claims.

Question reference: S1W-08687

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2000
Current Status: Answered by Jack McConnell on 21 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive how much of the environment budget was not utilised in 1999-2000; how much of the end-year balance was originally allocated to water industry funding and how this end-year balance will be utilised in 2000-01.

A total of £4.685 million, excluding environment related expenditure by Local Authorities, was not utilised in 1999-2000. £4.4 million relates to the water industry funding and has been allocated in full to the water programme for the current year. Of the remaining £0.3 million, £0.2 million has been allocated to research and publicity and £0.1m to the reserve. The environment budget will, of course, be eligible to receive allocations from the reserve in the course of the year.

Question reference: S1W-08695

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sarah Boyack on 21 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive how many bridges will require replacement within the next (a) five, (b) 10 and (c) 15 years; which bridges these are, and whether it will consider making specific funding available to local authorities towards the cost of replacing these bridges.

Question reference: S1W-08692

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2000
Current Status: Answered by Susan Deacon on 21 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive how many adverse health care events occurred in the NHSiS in each of the last three years and what percentage of these events had as one of their underlying causes a shortcoming in the provision of modern equipment.

Question reference: S1W-08689

Asked by: Richard Lochhead, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 13 July 2000
Current Status: Answered by Susan Deacon on 21 August 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive what percentage of the clinical or non-clinical mishaps or accidents in respect of which claims were made against NHS Trusts in the last five years the NHS Management Executive considers to have been avoidable; what type of interventions would have prevented these incidents, and what plans are in place to implement any such preventative measures.