- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 22 February 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 3 March 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has any plans to encourage the development of family friendly licensed premises.
Answer
One of the aims of the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 is to encourage pubs to become more child and family friendly. The new act replaces the complicated system of children's certificates with mandatory conditions concerning premises' policies on access by children and a requirement for baby changing facilities in every on-sales premises allowing access to children under five. It will be a matter for operators to ensure that their premises are safe and suitable for those under 18 and this will be carefully assessed by their local licensing board in granting the licence on those terms.
- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 22 February 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 3 March 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive what discussions have taken place with Kilmarnock College in respect of its development plans.
Answer
None. Matters relating to capital investment are the responsibility of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC). I am aware that the SFC is currently in discussion with the college about its outline business case and that the matter is likely to be considered at the July 2008 meeting of the SFC's Capital Investment Committee.
- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 22 February 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 3 March 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive what MMR vaccines are approved for use by the NHS in Scotland; what changes there have been in approved vaccines since 2002, and what the reasons were for the withdrawal of any previously approved vaccines.
Answer
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has advised that there are two UK licensed MMR vaccines available for use in the routine childhood immunisation programme in NHSScotland: Priorix and MMRII.
The MHRA further advised that two other vaccines are licensed via the centralised licensing procedure administered by the European Medicines Agency. These are M-M-RVAXPRO and ProQuad. These vaccines are not used in the routine childhood immunisation programme in Scotland.
None of the above vaccines have been withdrawn since 2002.
- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 22 February 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 3 March 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive how many rented properties are operated by registered private landlords and, of these, how many meet the (a) Tolerable Standard and (b) Scottish Housing Quality Standard.
Answer
The latest figures for landlord registration show that the number of applications by landlords for registration is approximately 108,000, while the number of privately rented dwellings they operate is approximately 160,000. Landlords and agents are required to register in each authority where they own or manage property, so these figures include multiple registrations for some individuals or organisations.
The landlord registration system does not collect information on whether properties meet the Tolerable Standard or the Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SQHS). However, on the basis of the sampling carried out by the Scottish House Condition Survey we estimate that at least 96% of privately rented properties meet the Tolerable Standard and between 13% and 25% meet the SHQS. There is no legal requirement for privately rented houses to meet the SHQS. However, since September 2007 private landlords have been required to ensure that their properties meet the Repairing Standard. If a landlord fails to comply with a Repairing Standard enforcement order, the local authority must take this into account when determining whether the landlord is fit and proper to let property.
- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 22 February 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 29 February 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has any powers to direct procurators fiscal to provide victims of crime with a written explanation of their decisions in respect of cases referred to them.
Answer
No. Section 48(5) of the Scotland Act 1998 enshrines the independence of the prosecution system in Scotland by providing that any decision of the Lord Advocate in his or her capacity as head of the systems of criminal prosecution and investigation of deaths in Scotland shall continue to be taken by him or her independently of any other person.
However, in February 2005 the Lord Advocate announced that, wherever possible, victims and next of kin who request it will be provided with an explanation for any decision to mark a case no proceedings or, in cases in which proceedings have commenced, a decision to discontinue proceedings or to accept a plea to reduce a charge.
- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 22 February 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Adam Ingram on 29 February 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive what action has been taken to meet the support needs of children with autism spectrum disorder and their parents, including the provision of funding to other agencies to undertake such work, and by what means information on such services is made available to affected families.
Answer
The Scottish Government has taken a significant number of steps to meet the support the needs of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and their parents which includes:
Our new concordat with local government includes a commitment for local authorities to make progress towards delivering an extra 10,000 respite weeks per annum for carers'' support.
Funding, rising to £5 million per annum, has been allocated to support NHS boards in implementing their Carer Information Strategies. These strategies include a requirement for NHS staff to direct carers to appropriate local support services.
NHS Education were funded to develop an information booklet for parents of children diagnosed with an ASD which is available from NHS boards at diagnosis.
Strathclyde University has been funded to develop the Scottish Autism Service Network (SASN), which is a hub that can direct people to suitable services and share information and good practice across Scotland.
SASN has been funded to assist in the development of a toolbox for education authorities and schools. It is expected that the framework for the toolbox will be published on 2 April 2008, which is World Autism Awareness Day and the final document will be published in summer 2008.
The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act aims to ensure that all children with additional support needs, including those with ASD, receive the support they require to help them achieve their full potential. Local authorities are under a duty to publish Information on their policies under this act.
- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 22 February 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Adam Ingram on 29 February 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive what action has been taken in response to the report of the Autism Spectrum Disorder and Education Working Group set up to take forward the recommendations in Education for Pupils with Autism Spectrum Disorders, published by HM Inspectorate of Education in October 2006.
Answer
While the Autism Spectrum Disorder Education Working Group (the Group) has not published a specific report, the agreed output from their considerations is the production of an autism toolbox for local authorities and schools. The Scottish Autism Service Network is assisting the Group with this task and the framework for this toolbox will be published on 2 April 2008, which is World Autism Day. It is expected that the final document will published in summer 2008.
- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 24 January 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Jim Mather on 8 February 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive what the proportion of households with access to broadband was in (a) Scotland and (b) the Kilmarnock and Loudoun parliamentary constituency in each of the last four years, broken down by (i) social class of household and (ii) level of deprivation of the area in which the household was located.
Answer
The data provided in this responseare taken from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) datasets for 2003-04 and 2005-06;data for individual years 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 would not be statistically representativeat a local authority level and have not been provided. However, while the 2003-04and 2005-06 data are also not representative for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, they arereasonably.
1. Two pieces of information may berelevant to the response on access to broadband: the first covers all householdsand the second covers all households with internet access.
2. The proportion of all householdswith access to broadband in 2005-06 compared to 2003-04:
| Scotland: | 2005-06: 34% |
| 2003-04: 11% |
| Kilmarnock and Loudoun | 2005-06: 29% |
| 2003-04: 8% |
3. The proportion of households whereadults use the internet with access to broadband in 2005-06 compared to 2003-04:
| Scotland: | 2005-06: 65% |
| 2003-04: 24% |
| Kilmarnock and Loudon: | 2005-06: 63% |
| 2003-04: 22% |
4. In terms of the break down, due tothe small sample size, it is not possible to provide statistically reliable resultsfor Kilmarnock and Loudoun broken down by socio-economic classification or ScottishIndex of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). However, the Scotland data can be broken down.These are presented in the tables in the background note.
5. Please note we no longer use the social class scale basedon occupation. This has been replaced by the National Statistics Socio-economicClassification (NS-SEC). Data are therefore provided below for socio-economic classificationinstead of social class. Level of deprivation are also provided.
- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 24 January 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Maureen Watt on 7 February 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive how many schools have their own websites in (a) Scotland and (b) the Kilmarnock and Loudoun parliamentary constituency, broken down into (i) primary and (ii) secondary schools and giving the number of websites being updated.
Answer
Information held centrally isnot accurate for the whole of Scotland. In the Kilmarnock and Loudoun parliamentary constituency we understandthat eight of the 34 primary schools and all seven secondary schools have websites.Information is not gathered on which websites are being updated.
- Asked by: Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 24 January 2008
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Current Status:
Answered by Maureen Watt on 7 February 2008
To ask the Scottish Executive how much it has spent on the establishment of websites by schools since 2002.
Answer
Setting up and operating schoolwebsites is a matter for local authorities and schools. From 2004 to 2006 Learningand Teaching Scotland ran the “Scottish Schools Get Online” project to support schoolsacross Scotland in developing high quality websites which offer appropriate informationfor parents and others. In future it is likely that some schools will take advantageof the facilities offered by Glow to maintain a public web presence.
