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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: S6W-07085

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 17 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to stimulate demand for competition between broadband and fibre infrastructure providers in local authority areas where there are only single operators.

Telecoms is entirely reserved to the United Kingdom Government, which means that the Scottish Government does not have the powers to intervene in commercial matters. Therefore, in the absence of further action by the UK Government, it is ultimately up to suppliers themselves to decide how and where they choose to stimulate demand for connections and/or services. However, we do work closely with communications providers and encourage new entrants into Scotland’s fibre infrastructure market – for example, by extending non-domestic rates relief to fifteen years for newly laid and lit fibre, ten years more than the UK Government currently offers.

Question reference: S6W-07084

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 17 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many vouchers have been received in each local authority area as part of the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme.

Figures for vouchers requested, vouchers issued and installations completed to date through the use of the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme are provided in the following table:

	INTERIM VOUCHER SCHEME			MAIN VOUCHER SCHEME
Local Authority	Vouchers Requested	Vouchers Issued	Installations Completed	Vouchers Requested	Vouchers Issued	Installations Completed
Aberdeen City			1		8	13
Aberdeenshire	3	41	75	12	175	271
Angus	4	1	8		103	39
Argyll & Bute		8	13		24	37
City of Edinburgh					14	12
Clackmannanshire	1	1	7		1	5
Dumfries & Galloway		7	110		28	23
Dundee City					17	1
East Ayrshire		1	16		6	7
East Dunbartonshire					2	1
East Lothian			3		15	7
East Renfrewshire	1		5		4	4
Falkirk		1	4	2	10	2
Fife		1	10	1	16	21
Glasgow City					9	9
Highland	1	7	45	1	161	196
Inverclyde			1			1
Midlothian			11		15	6
Moray	1	5	27	1	75	75
North Ayrshire			10		1	16
North Lanarkshire		1	7		18	11
Orkney Islands				5	60	9
Perth & Kinross	1	17	78	1	37	45
Renfrewshire			7		11	4
Scottish Borders	2	14	154		31	57
Shetland Islands
South Ayrshire			2		1	11
South Lanarkshire	1	3	39		6	21
Stirling		5	104	7	17	24
West Dunbartonshire			2
West Lothian			1			2
Western Isles
Blanks *
Total	15	113	740	30	865	930

Question reference: S6W-06966

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 17 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it is a signatory to an Openreach Fibre Community Partnership programme, in light of its announcement of 14 December 2020 regarding the contract with Openreach worth £384 million for the R100 North of Scotland Lot.

The Scottish Government is not a signatory to Openreach’s Fibre Community Partnership programme. The Fibre Community Partnership is a commercial offering, and has no direct link to the £384 million R100 North contract. As a registered supplier for the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme, Openreach could choose to use the programme to deliver a solution for a community through aggregation of vouchers. However, I understand that they have currently paused registrations for the programme as a result of high demand.

Question reference: S6W-07083

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 17 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme will be extended beyond the 31 March 2022 deadline.

Question reference: S6O-00912

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 March 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 24 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to help farmers make improvements to their farms.

Question reference: S6W-07082

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Angus Robertson on 16 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether people who moved from Scotland to other parts of the UK in the last year will be able to take part in Scotland’s Census 2022, which was delayed from March 2021 when the UK census took place.

As the censuses across the UK are taking place at different times, people moving from Scotland to other UK countries before March 2022 will not participate in Scotland’s Census 2022.

However, the primary objective for the census is not to collect a record of specific individuals, households, or addresses but to gather demographic information which government, councils, the NHS and a range of users in the public, private and third sectors need to inform future public services.

We continue to work closely with our colleagues in the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) to produce harmonised outputs to meet a range of user needs wherever possible.

Question reference: S6W-06762

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 16 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will introduce a voluntary additional COVID-19 booster programme to enable people to meet international travel requirements, where a destination country requires the last vaccine to have been administered within a certain number of days before travel.

Since its beginning, the aim of the Scottish Government’s COVID-19 Vaccination Programme has been to reduce the number of severe COVID-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths. From its outset it has been guided by the expert advice provided by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). We have no plans to provide booster vaccines beyond those which have already been announced. The provision of any further booster doses will therefore continue to be based on any future advice the JCVI should wish to provide.

We cannot provide advice on the rules for other countries. Before travelling you should check the up to date entry requirements for the destination country.

As ever, we encourage all those who are eligible to take up the existing offer of vaccination, if they have not yet done so.

Question reference: S6W-06764

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 16 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what proportion of metastatic breast cancer patients have received a holistic needs assessment, in each of the last five years.

Question reference: S6W-06765

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 16 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what proportion of metastatic breast cancer patients have had their care discussed by a multidisciplinary team, in each of the last five years.

Information on multidisciplinary team (MDT) discussion of patients whose first diagnosis of breast cancer was at a metastatic stage was collected until 2018 and has been archived since then because the 95% target was being consistently met across all Health Boards. Information on MDT discussion of patients whose existing breast cancer was not initially metastatic but has subsequently progressed to metastatic stage has never been available to Public Health Scotland. NHS boards may hold this data locally.

Question reference: S6W-06965

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it is reportedly investing £28.75 million of funding through the Scottish 4G Infill programme for up to 55 4G masts, in light of policy relating to telecommunications currently being reserved to the UK Government.

The Scottish 4G Infill Programme (S4GI) was established in 2017 to address clear market failure and mitigate the absence of any policy from the UK Government at the time to tackle rural notspots. When we established S4GI, the UK Government’s earlier Mobile Infrastructure Project (MIP) had failed to deliver meaningful outcomes for Scotland. Of 84 planned MIP sites in Scotland, only three were ultimately delivered. S4GI forms part of our wider 2016 Mobile Action Plan, which committed to exploring direct intervention in delivery of mobile coverage in areas of market failure.