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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-06296

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 February 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 28 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to increase access to psychological therapies and other mental health support for people with kidney disease.

Mental Health remains an absolute priority for the Scottish Government, and we are committed to ensuring that everyone who needs support can get access to services that are appropriate to their needs. Through this approach we recognise that long term conditions can impact a person's mental wellbeing. We encourage anyone struggling with their mental health and wellbeing to approach their clinical support team in the first instance, who can advise on appropriate support avenues. Information can also be found on the NHS Inform website.

The Scottish Government is currently developing a new site to support the mental wellbeing of the general public in Scotland. The website will offer tips and advice from mental health experts and related professionals and people with lived experience of mental health issues. The website will include a range of resources that are accessible to people disproportionately affected by mental health problems. The Scottish Government plan to launch these resources by Spring 2022.

Question reference: S6W-06293

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 February 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 28 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has commissioned work to establish the (a) set-up and (b) running costs of a National Care Service, and what (i) other assessment it has made of these costs and (ii) it estimates these costs will be.

The Scottish Government has committed to increasing public investment in social care by 25 per cent during the current parliamentary session. This is expected to equate to £840 million additional annual investment by the end of this parliament and will support plans for the delivery of commitments relating to social care, including the creation of a National Care Service.

These plans are currently being developed and will be considered by Ministers and by Parliament in due course, taking account responses to the National Care Service Consultation, input from stakeholders and the forthcoming Resource Spending Review to ensure that services are sustainable and best meet the needs of those who access care, and those who deliver care.

Question reference: S6W-06220

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 February 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 21 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how it will formulate plans to create new models of care for cardiac diagnosis and meet the recommended waiting times for echocardiography in the Heart Valve Voice report, State of the Nation.

Question reference: S6W-06215

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 February 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 21 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, in addition to the small academic study funded by the Chief Scientist Office, whether it will consider a wider operational pilot programme of targeted lung health checks.

The Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office is funding an on-going research project to examine how to best identify those at highest risk of lung cancer in the Scottish population. They are subsequently offered a medical check on their ‘lung health’, and screening using Computed Tomography (CT) if their risk of cancer is assessed as high. Results and learning from this work will be appropriately considered once available, and any decisions taken regarding wider rollout.

Any decision on whether or not to introduce a new national lung screening programme in Scotland is guided by the recommendations of the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent expert advisory group which advises all four nations of the United Kingdom on screening policy.In 2007, the UK NSC recommended against the introduction of a lung cancer screening programme; however, it is currently reviewing this and will take into account new evidence that has emerged since the previous recommendation.

We do not have a definite timescale for when the NSC will publish its findings, but we are expecting an update in the coming months. Following completion of this review, the UK NSC will make a new recommendation. If the recommendation is to introduce lung cancer screening then the Scottish Screening Committee, in consultation with medical experts in this field, will advise Scottish Ministers on the most appropriate course of action for Scotland.

Question reference: S6O-00779

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 February 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 24 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the reported comments of Glasgow City Council's new Executive Director of Education regarding reinstating the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy.

Question reference: S6W-06218

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 February 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 16 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will assess the feasibility of conducting stethoscope checks and placing echocardiograms in community care settings in order to improve the detection and diagnosis of heart valve disease.

Where it is clinically appropriate to do so, patients of all ages will be examined with a stethoscope to listen for breathing and heart sounds. They may also have ECG electrical recordings of their heart rate, blood tests and have access to other investigations such as echocardiograms, rhythm monitors and blood pressure recordings, should these be required.

The Heart Disease Action Plan (2021) outlines our commitment to exploring innovative models of care for the diagnosis of heart disease, including a focus on improving access to echocardiography in the most appropriate setting for local needs.

Question reference: S6W-06219

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 February 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 16 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how it will adopt the recommendations in the Heart Valve Voice report, State of the Nation, on reducing variation in heart valve disease treatment and waiting times for heart valve disease detection, diagnosis and treatment.

Key recommendations in the Heart Valve Voice report State of the Nation included:

1) collecting standardised data for HVD.

2) focus on HVD in campaigns to raise awareness of disease in women.

3) developing an optimal patient pathway for HVD.

4) improving access to echocardiography.

1) The Heart Disease Action Plan (2021) clearly sets out our priority for the effective use of high-quality, standardised data to support clinical decision-making, understand patient outcomes and enable better service-planning. In April 2021, we commissioned Public Health Scotland to develop the Scottish Cardiac Audit Programme. We have committed more than £1.5m over five years to support this transformative change in access to, and use of, data to drive improvement in cardiac services.

2) We have made clear commitments to tackling the inequalities faced by women with heart disease in our Women’s Health Plan, including the launch of an information campaign on women’s heart health. Future development of work in this area will be informed by the lived experience of women with heart disease.

3) Priority 2 within the Heart Disease Action Plan makes clear our commitment to developing nationally agreed pathways of care for all cardiac conditions. This work is underway.

4) We recognise the importance of improving access to echocardiography and are taking action to address this. Through the Heart Disease Action Plan funding call in 2021, we provided funding for a project exploring how to improve access to echocardiography.

Question reference: S6W-06217

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 February 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 16 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how it will support the wider roll-out of the Glasgow-based OPERA study on heart failure diagnosis across all NHS boards.

The Heart Disease Action Plan outlines our commitment to exploring innovative models of care for cardiac diagnosis. Through the Heart Disease Action Plan Funding call in 2021, we provided funding for a second NHS board to implement aspects of the OPERA study within its local service provision.

The learning from this will be fed into ongoing work by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery to better understand the opportunities for implementation of OPERA in other NHS Boards, through pathfinder work via the new Accelerated National Innovation Adoption pathway.

Question reference: S6O-00729

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 February 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 9 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will meet its chronic pain clinic waiting time target during the current reporting quarter, 1 January to 31 March.

Question reference: S6W-05777

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 January 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 28 January 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it is the case that the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) Yellow card system, including the Genpact UK artificial intelligence tool, is used to monitor and process COVID-19 vaccine adverse drug reactions occurring in Scotland and, if it is not the case, what monitoring system is in use.

The safety of all vaccines and medicines is monitored by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on a UK-wide basis. This includes reports from the Yellow Card Scheme which allows health professionals and patients across the UK to flag up suspected adverse reactions to any vaccine or medicine, as well as reports from worldwide use and on-going scientific evidence.

The MHRA has a range of resources and technology to support the safety monitoring of the COVID-19 vaccination programme. The use of artificial intelligence is one element of that and helps to reduce the amount of manual coding for each report to the Yellow Card Scheme on COVID-19 vaccines, thereby saving resource in processing cases and ensuring they are more rapidly available for scientific analysis. The tool is not used for assessment of data, but to help ensure that all information from reports is well structured to support analysis and is subject to robust quality assessment.

Concerns over the safety of vaccines are not taken lightly. Please be assured that the MHRA keep the safety of all vaccines under close and continual review, and would take appropriate regulatory action if new evidence emerged which called into question the safety of any vaccines currently in use in Scotland.