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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-18352

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 20 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government how many of the 800 additional mental health workers that it committed to recruiting in its mental health strategy have been appointed.

Question reference: S5W-18618

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 September 2018
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 20 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government to what extent it will direct local authorities regarding the mental health first aid training for teachers that was announced in its Programme for Government.

Question reference: S5O-02389

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 September 2018
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 26 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken since the publication of the Scottish Information Commissioner’s Intervention Report, which found that it was operating a "two-tier" system for managing FoI requests that discriminated against journalists, MSPs and researchers.

Question reference: S5W-18619

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 September 2018
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 18 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to figures from RCN Scotland suggesting that more than one-in-20 NHS nursing and midwifery posts are vacant, which is reportedly the highest ever level of vacancies, and, in light of this, how it will it ensure that it will be successful in meetings the pledge in its Programme for Government to recruit 250 additional school nurses.

While some vacancies are inevitable in an organisation as big as NHSScotland, we recognise that in some specialities there are difficulties in recruitment. This is a problem experienced by many health systems across the world. We are clear that NHS Board workforce planning needs to be improved, and the National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan strengthens and harmonises NHSScotland workforce planning practice nationally, regionally and locally.

The introduction of the Health and Care (Staffing)(Scotland) Bill, will place the use of the existing innovative workload tools on a statutory footing enabling the right level of staffing for the workload associated with patient need. This will ensure that the right number of staff are in the right place, at the right time to provide person-centred and effective care.

In January, the Scottish Government announced a recommended 10.8% increase in student nursing and midwifery intakes for 2018-19. This is the sixth successive increase, with an additional 364 places equating to 3,700 entry places, and will support the Scottish Government's commitment to create an estimated 2,600 new training places over the course of this Parliament.

We are also extending the successful Return to Practice Programme that brings former nurses back into practice.

The Scottish Government will deliver key recommendations from the Chief Nursing Officer's Review into Widening Participation into Nursing and Midwifery Education and Careers. This will include taking further proactive measures to promote nursing and midwifery as attractive careers and improve access to education and careers in the professions. Plans include a national recruitment campaign to attract individuals into nursing and midwifery careers.

The campaign, which is due to begin later this year, will be designed around the needs of different audiences including young people, mature students, men, people from disadvantaged communities, people with disabilities and people from ethnic minority communities.

Question reference: S5W-18356

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 13 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether the Police Scotland online hate crime reporting form should contain an option to allow "online" to be recorded as a location for incidents.

Police Scotland is currently looking to streamline and improve the online reporting form which may, in future, consider ‘online’ as an option for recording the location for incidents. We will continue to work closely with Police Scotland as we work to tackle hate crime and prejudice which includes developing our approach to gathering evidence around hate crime.

We will publish a new report later this year which will include information on hate related incidents with a race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity element.

Question reference: S5W-18381

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 August 2018
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 12 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-16551 by Jamie Hepburn on 17 May 2018, whether it has undertaken an analysis of application and appointment rates according to ethnicity for positions within the Scottish Government.

Currently, analysis is carried out for specific recruitment campaigns rather than for recruitment to all positions in the Scottish Government. For example, an analysis of ethnicity was completed for the recent external B Band recruitment campaign which attracted 4444 applications. This analysis indicates that ethnic minority applicants had a 3.1% chance of being offered a place and white candidates had a 3.7% chance. The Scottish Government is committed to improving the diversity of the Scottish Government workforce as part of the Public Sector Equality Duty regulations. Our current systems only provide a snapshot of the recruitment process and not a picture of the full hiring process. Further improvements to the reporting and analysis of recruitment information into the Scottish Government will be made as part of the Equality Outcome and Mainstreaming Report, which will be published in April 2019.

Question reference: S5W-18380

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 August 2018
Current Status: Answered by Aileen Campbell on 11 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has for upcoming hate crime campaigns, and whether it will set out what focus these will have outwith raising awareness.

Within our Tackling Prejudice and Building Connected Communities Action Plan we committed to develop a public awareness campaign and in October 2017 we ran our ‘Hate Has No Home in Scotland’ campaign. The campaign aimed to raise awareness of what hate crime is and encourage both victims and witnesses to report it.

Building on the success of this campaign we will launch a further campaign later this year which will aim to encourage witnesses of hate crime to report, and provide reassurance that the police will take action.

Question reference: S5W-18344

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 5 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government how much (a) direct and (b) indirect funding it has provided in each year since 2016 to each suicide prevention programme listed on page 8 of its suicide prevention action plan, Every Life Matters.

The following table provides the information requested, with narrative included where appropriate:

Programme	2016-17 (£)	2017-18 (£)
Distress Brief Interventions Programme	165,280	585,626
NHS Health Scotland's National Suicide Prevention Programme forms part of the wider NHS Health Scotland Public Mental Health Improvement Programme. Suicide Prevention Programme funding is not separately identifiable and the total allocation for the Improvement Programme is shown here.	200,000	200,000
NHS 24 Breathing Space Telephone and Web Advice Service	825,000	825,000
The Scottish Suicide Information Database (ScotSID) forms part of the wider funding provided to ISD Scotland for the Mental Health Programme. Funding is not separately identifiable for the Database and the total allocation for the ISD Programme is shown here.	374,048	378,000
NHS HIS Scottish Patient Safety Programme for Mental Health funding was baselined at a level of £238,000 and included within the core allocation provided to NHS HIS from 2016-17	238,000	238,000
Samaritans Free Telephone Service	0	12,000
UK National Confidential Inquiry in Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness	64,003	64,003
Total	1,866,331	2,302,629

Question reference: S5W-18348

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 5 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government to what extent the National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group will direct the spending of its £1 million annual investment in suicide prevention set out in its suicide prevention action plan, Every Life Matters.

Question reference: S5W-18351

Asked by: Annie Wells, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 5 September 2018

To ask the Scottish Government whether the £1 million annual investment in suicide prevention set out in its suicide prevention action plan, Every Life Matters will part or wholly fund its commitment to create and implement refreshed mental health and suicide prevention training for NHS staff and, if so, how much will be allocated to this.