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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: S5W-21953

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 07 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 19 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to its response to the Freedom of Information request FOI/19/00340, regarding the provision of a breakdown of the time delay between the imposition and start of community payback order work placements for 2017-18, how many of the orders referred to in the response were delayed each month due to (a) the ongoing completion of community payback orders, (b) medical reasons and (c) other reasons.

The information is provided in the following table:

Time between imposition of order and start of work placement	Reason for work placement starting later than 7 working days after order imposed
	Person currently on order or supervision	Person ill(1)	Other reason(1)	Reason not provided	Total
Over 2 months to 3 months	72	5	170	18	265
Over 3 months to 4 months	45	5	93	6	149
Over 4 months to 5 months	45	3	78	7	133
Over 5 months to 6 months	32	1	65	5	103
Over 6 months to 7 months	17	0	25	3	45
Over 7 months to 8 months	8	1	33	2	44
Over 8 months to 9 months	10	1	34	2	47
Over 9 months to 10 months	7	0	13	1	21
Over 10 months to 11 months	7	0	4	1	12
Over 11 months to 12 months	3	1	3	0	7
Over 12 months	1	0	4	2	7
Total	247	17	522	47	833

(1) There may be instances where the delay results from medically related matters but where the reason is recorded under "other client based" reason (part of the "other reason" category) rather than the "person ill" category.

Question reference: S5W-21628

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 15 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government on what dates the Saltire Prize Committee has met since its establishment, and whether it will place a copy of the minutes of all of these meetings in SPICe.

The Saltire Prize Committee has met or held teleconference discussions with officials on the following dates:

03 October 2008
02 December 2008
22 & 23 April 2009
07 October 2010
22 March 2011
22 March 2012
18 March 2013
17 May 2013
18 March 2014
24 April 2015
08 May 2015
10 November 2016
27 January 2017
7 Februrary 2018

Committee meetings have not been routinely minuted. Meetings of the Saltire Prize Committee have been to inform ongoing policy development and will not be published in SPICe at this time.

Question reference: S5W-21949

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 14 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5T-01532 by Humza Yousaf on 5 March 2019 (Official Report, c. 3), what monitoring it carries out to assess the extent of sectarian and violent behaviour associated with football.

Question reference: S5W-21864

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 28 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Ash Denham on 14 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to the second supplementary to question S5T-01518 by Ash Denham on 26 February 2019 (Official Report, c. 8), whether the review will consider (a) the whole fatal accident inquiry process, including the protracted timescales, structural barriers and public confidence in it and (b) removing fatal accident inquiries from the remit of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

As previously stated, the commitment given was that the issue of legal aid for families involved in fatal accident inquiries will be considered as part of wider planned reforms to legal aid legislation arising from the Independent Review of Legal Aid. The Scottish Government intends to consult on these reforms prior to the summer recess.

A comprehensive independent review of the legislation on fatal accident inquiries was undertaken by Lord Cullen, the former Lord President, and reported in November 2009. The Inquiries into Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths etc. (Scotland) Act 2016 was passed unanimously by Parliament. The main provisions were implemented in June 2017, less than 2 years ago.

There is no proposal to remove fatal accident inquiries from the remit of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. The position of the Lord Advocate as head of the system of prosecution and investigation of deaths is enshrined in the Scotland Act 1998. All sudden, unexpected and suspicious deaths in Scotland are reported to the procurator fiscal, who carries out such investigation as the circumstances require, subject to the direction of the Lord Advocate. Some death investigations result in criminal proceedings. A small minority result in a fatal accident inquiry. In some cases, there may be both a criminal prosecution and a fatal accident inquiry. The investigation of all deaths by the procurator fiscal, within the system for which the Lord Advocate is responsible, avoids duplication and ensures that all aspects of each death can be considered.

In August 2016 the independent Inspector of Prosecutions published a thematic inspection of fatal accident inquiries. The Inspector has confirmed that she will undertake and publish during the first half of 2019 a follow-up on her review of fatal accident inquiries. It will be for the Lord Advocate to consider that report when it is published.

Question reference: S5W-21910

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 04 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 12 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what progress it is making in providing all primary school pupils with an opportunity to visit a farm to increase awareness about how food is produced; what resources it will allocate over each of the next three years to meet this objective, and what milestones have been set.

Question reference: S5W-21627

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 7 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government on what date funds from the Saltire Fund will be distributed.

The Saltire Tidal Energy Challenge Fund is open for applications until 06 December 2019 or until the fund is exhausted. A total of up to £10 million is available through the fund.

Individual applications are invited for funding of up to £5 million which must be match funded and successful projects must be deployed in Scottish Waters and funding drawn down no later than March 2020.

Further information on the fund is available at https://www.gov.scot/news/saltire-tidal-energy-challenge-fund/

Question reference: S5W-21625

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 7 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason the home page of the Saltire Prize website continues to state that “the competition guidelines are currently under review”.

Question reference: S5W-21626

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 7 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how much the Scottish Government has spent on the Saltire Prize in each year since it was launched, broken down by the costs for its (a) launch, (b) events, (c) administration, (d) rebranding, (e) rescoping, (f) staffing, (g) expenses and (h) other functions.

Whilst our aim is to provide the information requested whenever possible, unfortunately in this instance the Scottish Government does not have all of the information you have requested. This is because the Scottish Government Enterprise Accounting System (SEAS) only has details of payments from 2012/13 onwards.

I refer the member to the Freedom of Information request FoI/18/01056 from last year. This provides a breakdown of all payments from 12 April 2012 until 15 March 2018. https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-18-01056/

There have been no staff working exclusively on the Saltire Prize and Scottish Government resourcing of the prize has been done alongside our work across the marine energy sector.

Since the 15 March 2018 the Scottish Government have spent a further £56 on the Saltire prize in relation to the domain renewal for the Saltire Prize Website.

Question reference: S5T-01532

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 04 March 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 5 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what new measures it is considering to address sectarianism and violent behaviour associated with football.

Question reference: S5W-21705

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 18 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 4 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether (a) cholesterol and (b) prostate checks are publicly available, and what programmes are in place to encourage people to undertake these.

The Scottish Government, along with the rest of the UK is advised on all aspects of screening by the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) an independent expert advisory group. The UK NSC does not currently recommend screening for prostate or cholesterol as it has not been established from the evidence that the benefits of screening outweigh the harms.

Patients attending a GP or other relevant healthcare professional (e.g. community pharmacist) can be offered checks for cholesterol or prostate where it is clinically relevant to do so. This may be due to individual risk factors, or patient symptoms.