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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.

Find out more about parliamentary questions

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Question reference: S4O-05234

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 January 2016
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 January 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what progress it has made in encouraging young people to try golf.

Question reference: S4O-05221

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 6 January 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what progress it is making in processing applications for rural payments, and how many payments have yet to be made.

Question reference: S4W-28944

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 December 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 5 January 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how many cleaners have been employed by each NHS board in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S4W-28941

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 December 2015
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 5 January 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how many attacks there have been on (a) ambulance, (b) fire and rescue and (c) accident and emergency personnel in each year since 1999, and how many led to a (i) prosecution and (ii) conviction.

Data on attacks against ambulance, fire and rescue and accident and emergency personnel is not held in the format requested. Since 2009-10, and following the introduction of the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005, all of Scotland’s legacy police forces (now Police Scotland) have used a separate code for recording common assault in cases where the victim was an emergency worker. The number of cases for this code are shown in the following table.

It should be noted that the table will not include police recorded attacks on emergency workers which did not result in a common assault (for example a serious assault) as a recorded crime code will be used which doesn’t identify the occupation of the victim.

Common assault of an emergency worker, Scotland, 2005-06 to 2014-15

2009-10

2010-11

2011-12

2012-13

2013-14

2014-15

Common assault of an emergency worker

5,320

6,456

7,107

6,514

6,813

6,480

In terms of prosecutions and convictions, the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 has provisions for a person who assaults, resists, obstructs, molests or hinders emergency workers when they are responding to emergency circumstances.

Assaults that happen outside of emergency circumstances, as specified in the Act, will not result in prosecutions under the Act, and these and those assaults on emergency workers which may result in other charges, such as serious assault or attempted murder, cannot be identified separately in the available statistics and so are not included. These numbers also relate only to those attacks which proceeded to court.

It is not possible to provide the detail requested regarding the breakdown of the type of emergency workers involved (under Section 1(3) of the Act), as this information is not held by the Scottish Government.

The question specifically relates to sections 1(1), 2(1), and 5(1) of the Act:

Section 1(1): Assaulting or impeding certain providers of emergency services.

Section 2(1): Assaulting or impeding certain emergency workers responding to emergency circumstances.

Section 5(1): Assaulting or impeding health workers in hospital premises.

The number of people prosecuted and convicted¹ in Scottish Courts for offences under the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 Sections 1(1), 2(1) and 5(1) is given in the table below.

Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 1(1), 2(1), 5(1)

2005-06

2006-07

2007-08

2008-09

2009-10

2010-11

2011-12

2012-13

2013-14

Total	Prosecuted	57	209	285	305	288	331	371	352	306
Total	Convicted	54	197	273	297	279	319	355	332	288

1. Where main charge.

Source: Scottish Government Criminal Proceedings Database.

Prior to the 2005 Act, offences against emergency workers, apart from the police, were not recorded separately, and so we are only able to provide data going back to 2005-06.

Question reference: S4W-28800

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 December 2015
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 17 December 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what grants it has provided to Linlithgow’s Party at the Palace event and its organisers.

Question reference: S4W-28799

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 December 2015
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 17 December 2015

To ask the Scottish Government which ministers have met representatives of Linlithgow’s Party at the Palace and on what dates.

Question reference: S4W-28680

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 November 2015
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 10 December 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how much (a) it has and (b) each of its agencies have spent on commissioning (i) opinion polls and (ii) research by focus groups in each year since 1999.

Opinion polls:

(a) (i) The Scottish Government has not commissioned opinion polls during this period and therefore does not hold the cost information requested.

(b) (i) We are unable to provide information on opinion polls commissioned by Scottish Government agencies. This information is not held centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

Focus groups:

(a)(b) (ii) It is not possible to provide cost information on the use of focus groups for either the Scottish Government or its agencies. Where focus groups are used in research they normally form one element of a programme of work and costs are not separately available.

Question reference: S4W-28622

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 20 November 2015
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 9 December 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how many children have been home schooled in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S4W-28681

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 November 2015
Current Status: Answered by Frank Mulholland QC on 7 December 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how many people have been (a) reported to the procurator fiscal and (b) fined by their local authority for illegal dumping in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.

Illegal dumping or fly-tipping is covered by section 33(1)(a) and (6) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 which makes it an offence to deposit “controlled waste” unless the deposit is authorised by a waste management licence. The following table contains information requested in relation charges reported to the procurator fiscal for that offence for years 2013-14 and 2014-15. Information has previously been published for years 2002 to 2012 in answer to question S4W-19583 on 4 March 2014 and can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx?SearchType=Simple&Keyword=flytipping&ExactPhrase=True&DateChoice=4&MSPId=4014&SortBy=DateSubmitted&ResultsPerPage=10.

Information is not held centrally on the number of people fined by their local authority, however Zero Waste Scotland has published some information on local authority fly-tipping fixed penalties in 2010-11 in its report Environmental Protection Act 1990, Part II and Part IV – Local Authority Monitoring Survey 2010/2011, available at:

http://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/content/environmental-protection-act-1990-part-ii-and-iv-local-authority-monitoring-survey-201011

Year

Charges reported

to procurator fiscal

2013-14

370

2014-15

367

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/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

Notes:

1. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) does not hold complete statistical data prior to the year 2002-03 and therefore cannot provide data for the years 1999-00 and 2000-01. COPFS records the number of individual charges reported to it, not the numbers of people containing a particular type of crime. A reported case can contain multiple charges of the same type against one or more offenders.

2. Instances of fly-tipping can also be prosecuted under sections 33(1)(b) and 87 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. However, other types of criminal act are also prosecuted under these sections. Accordingly, statistics in relation to these offences do not exclusively relate to fly-tipping and cannot be provided as part of this written answer.

Question reference: S4W-28621

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 20 November 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 7 December 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how many cleaning staff have been employed in NHS Scotland in each year since 1999, broken down by NHS board.

While information on how many cleaning staff have been directly employed in each NHS board in each year since 1999 is not centrally held, information on the pre- Agenda for Change ancillary staff group from 30 September 1999 to 30 September 2006 is published by Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland and can be found in the following link:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Historic-Data/WFG01_HB_REG.xls

Information on the number of whole time equivalent staff working in hotel services from 30 September 2007 to 30 September 2015 is published by ISD Scotland and can be found in the following link:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2015-12-01/Non-Medical_Trend_S2015.xls.