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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-34281

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 June 2010
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 18 June 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive how many primary school children travelled to school by school bus in each local authority area in each of the last three years.

Question reference: S3W-34278

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 June 2010
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 18 June 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive what action it is taking to increase the number of schoolchildren who travel to school by school bus in order to reduce the number travelling by car.

Free school transport is already provided for school children living some distance from school. For those living nearer, the work of School Travel Co-ordinators is already significantly focused on this issue of reducing car journeys, but by increasing walking and cycling to school “ rather than by replacing car with bus “ on environmental, physical health, road safety and congestion grounds.

Question reference: S3W-34276

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 June 2010
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Stevenson on 18 June 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive what action it is taking to encourage primary school-age children to walk or cycle to school.

The Scottish Government is supporting a range of initiatives to encourage primary school children to walk and cycle to school. This includes support for local authorities to encourage active travel through the Cycling, Walking and Safer Streets grant of £9.09 million in each year of this spending review. Support is allocated to Sustrans to tackle the school run and to Cycling Scotland to promote the benefits of travelling actively to school.

The above investment includes the creation of new shared walking and cycling facilities, new secure cycle parking, various incentives to cycle or walk to school, including, for example, cycle training skill kits. Almost all schools now have 20 mph zones and around 80% are implementing or developing a travel plan. In all, over 2000 schools in Scotland will continue to benefit from the Scottish Government''s commitment to encouraging children to walk or cycle to school through partnership working with key stakeholders.

I also refer the member to the answer to question S3W-34279 on 18 June 2010. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

Question reference: S3W-34280

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 June 2010
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 18 June 2010

The information requested is not available. I am, however, able to provide information with regard to the total spend on school transport in each authority for financial years 2007-08 and 2008-09, the latest year for which we have information. The information is set out in the following table.

Local Authority	£000	£000
Local Authority	2007-08	2008-09
Aberdeen City	576	649
Aberdeenshire	4,261	4,834
Angus	1,084	1,229
Argyll and Bute	2,024	2,113
Clackmannanshire	52	44
Dumfries and Galloway	308	332
Dundee City	115	99
East Ayrshire	772	964
East Dunbartonshire	795	907
East Lothian	275	310
East Renfrewshire	926	603
Edinburgh, City of	829	526
Eilean Siar	965	997
Falkirk	528	522
Fife	2,079	2,226
Glasgow City	869	786
Highland	3,620	3,756
Inverclyde	288	252
Midlothian	312	346
Moray	1,328	1,391
North Ayrshire	1,321	1,208
North Lanarkshire	3,559	3,926
Orkney Islands	776	823
Perth and Kinross	1,604	1,599
Renfrewshire	1,044	1,155
Scottish Borders	1,509	1,716
Shetland Islands	469	505
South Ayrshire	1,314	1,175
South Lanarkshire	2,675	2,546
Stirling	443	448
West Dunbartonshire	301	367
West Lothian	592	710
Scotland Total	37,613	39,064

Question reference: S3W-34279

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 June 2010
Current Status: Answered by Stewart Stevenson on 18 June 2010

The following table sets out Scottish Government investment that includes support for encouraging primary school children to cycle and walk to school in financial years 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10:

Grant/Recipient	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10
Cycling, Walking and Safer Streets/ LAs	£9.09m	£9.09m	£9.09m
School Travel Coordinators/LAs	£1.05m	Incl	Incl
Tackling the School Run/Sustrans	£3.62m	£2.515m	£2.285m
Cycling Scotland	£0.90m	£1.40m	£0.90m
Smarter Choices, Smarter Places/LAs	-	£2.11m	£4.48m
Total	£14.66m	£15.115	£16.755

The Cycling, Walking and Safer Streets grant to local authorities can be used to extend and improve safe routes to schools. From 2008-09, the grant to local authorities for School Travel Coordinators was included in the block grant settlement for years 2008-11. Cycling Scotland grants include promotional campaigns to encourage more active travel to school and the Smarter Choices, Smarter Places programme funding includes measure to encourage all forms of active travel including to schools.

Question reference: S3W-33968

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 16 June 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it is aware of any members of the British National Party who are currently employed as classroom teachers in Scottish schools.

Question reference: S3W-33967

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 16 June 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has the legal power to prohibit members of organisations such as the British National Party from holding public service posts including that of classroom teacher.

The General Teaching Council Scotland Code of Professionalism and Conduct states that teachers must not be prejudiced in their views about learners lifestyle, culture, disability, beliefs, colour, gender, language, sexuality or age. If a teacher breached the Code the Council could take action to remove them from the register.

A similar arrangement is in place for the police force where the Police (Scotland) Regulations 2004 require members of the police to at all times abstain from any activity which is likely to interfere with the impartial discharge of that member''s duties or which is likely to give rise to the impression amongst members of the public that it may so interfere, and in particular a member of a police force shall not take any active part in politics.

Of course this is a complex issue and any use of the Scottish Government''s powers in this area would require to take into account human rights standards, employment law and potentially also the boundary between reserved and devolved powers.

Question reference: S3W-33951

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 14 June 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive on what dates ministerial directions, as described under section 6.4 of the current Scottish Ministerial Code regarding a course of action that the Accountable Officer considers would breach the requirements of propriety or regularity, have been issued since 1999; which minister each direction was issued by, and what the subject was of each direction.

Since devolution there have been no occasions where Accountable Officers have sought an authority on the grounds of propriety or regularity. There have however, been five occasions where Accountable Officers have sought an authority on value for money grounds, two of which were on the same issue. The following table gives more detail:

Description	Background	Minister	Date
Campbeltown to Ballycastle Ferry Service	In the light of the financial and economic appraisals that were carried out officials had advised ministers that, with a high anticipated subsidy requirement and a low level of forecast employment creation, the project represented very poor value for money in terms of the probable costs and economic benefits.	Wendy Alexander	29-01-02
Lifeline Air Services Glasgow & Barra	Officials advised ministers that the savings from the withdrawal of air services out of Barra would have a positive NPV for the Sound of Barra vessel. An instruction was therefore sought to act on the ministers'' decision to continue the Glasgow - Barra air service.	Iain Gray	19-03-03
Relocation of Scottish Natural Heritage	SNH were subject to a relocation review in pursuance of the Executive''s relocation policy. Their main headquarters functions were housed in two buildings in Edinburgh. The option appraisal showed that a move to anywhere outside Edinburgh would be significantly more expensive than the status quo.	Ross Finnie	26-03-03
Campbeltown to Ballycastle Ferry Service	In light of the financial and economic appraisals that had been carried out officials had advised ministers that, with a high subsidy requirement and a low level of forecast employment creation, the project did not pass the value for money appraisals applied to such proposals. (The 2002 instruction did not cover this tendering exercise “ it was effectively spent at the conclusion of the previous tendering exercise.)	Nicol Stephen	30-03-05
HMP Bishopbriggs	The Accountable Officer was concerned that cancelling the competition for a PFI design, build and operate contract and beginning a new competition to design and build a prison for public sector operation would result in significant additional expenditure - because of the gap in cost efficiency between public and private operation - and import significant delay into the project - because the procurement process would effectively go back to start.	Kenny MacAskill	22-08-07

Internal convention is that Cabinet procedures for dealing with requests for written authority require any authorities from ministers to be assessed separately by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth and cleared by the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. In providing advice to ministers, special advisors are required to comply with the Code of Conduct for Special Advisors, which sets out their role and duties. A copy of the code is available in the Scottish Parliaments Information Centre (Bib. number 49592).

Question reference: S3W-33952

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 14 June 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will publish all ministerial directions, as described under section 6.4 of the Scottish Ministerial Code, that have been issued since 2007.

Question reference: S3W-33953

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 14 June 2010

To ask the Scottish Executive which ministerial directions issued since 2007, as described under section 6.4 of the Scottish Ministerial Code, have been formally discussed at (a) Cabinet, (b) between the issuing minister and other ministers and in which cases the issuing minister received advice on the direction from special advisors.