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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: S4W-17888

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 18 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 6 November 2013

To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it gave to providing alternative routes prior to commencing work on the electrification affecting the Winchburgh tunnel.

Question reference: S4W-17673

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 1 November 2013

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of Microsoft's ending of security patching of the XP operating system, what audit it has undertaken of (a) its directorates, (b) NHS boards, (c) special NHS boards and (d) agencies to determine how many computers use XP; what transitional arrangements it has put in place, and whether it has considered introducing an open source system to replace XP.

The Scottish Government has completed an audit of all its directorates and those Agencies and Non Ministerial Departments which share its network. Of the 11,678 computers on the network 9,901 have already been upgraded to Windows 7 and 155 upgraded to Windows 8. The projects to migrate the remaining 1,622 by end March 2014 are well underway.

The Scottish Government investigated a number of options prior to planning for the migration from XP and open source was considered at that time. In 2012 NHSScotland completed a commission to explore the future options for PC software and the potential for open source was part a key of this study.

No central record is maintained of the numbers of computers and their operating systems operated by the agencies themselves.

NHS boards are managing transitional arrangements locally, and ensuring that there are security and monitoring arrangements in place. There is a National Infrastructure Group whose membership is drawn from all NHS boards which works collaboratively to discuss such issues and share practices across the NHSS.

Question reference: S4W-17677

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 29 October 2013

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of Information Services Division Scotland's (ISD) report on long-acting reversible methods of contraception, published in September 2013, which showed that the presence of a local enhanced primary care contract was associated with greater uptake, whether it will consider making the provision of long-acting reversible contraception a national enhanced service rather than a local one.

Question reference: S4W-17676

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 29 October 2013

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the prescribing of long-acting reversible contraception, what steps Health Improvement Scotland will take to support those NHS boards where there is (a) significant deprivation, (b) a high rate of unplanned teenage pregnancies and (c) below average prescribing, in order to improve performance, and which boards will receive support.

In 2008, NHS Quality Improvement Scotland published standards for Sexual Health Services, which included a standard that all individuals should have access to intrauterine and implantable methods of contraception. Subsequently, practice in NHSScotland was assessed against these standards and an overview report was published. Since the publication of this report, NHS QIS (now Healthcare Improvement Scotland) has undertaken no further work in this area and currently has no plans to do so.

Scottish Government is working with a number of stakeholders in order to consider how best to increase the uptake of effective contraception. As set out in the Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Framework, multi-agency partners should ensure that vulnerable women who are most at risk of unintended pregnancy receive support, advice and, where appropriate, provision of LARC. Provision of LARC will also be considered within the new Teenage Pregnancy and Young Parent strategy, currently in development.

Question reference: S4W-17683

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 29 October 2013

To ask the Scottish Government whether the ban on health workers who are HIV positive but have negligible plasma viral load carrying out clinical work will be lifted and, if so, when and under what conditions.

The Scottish Government announced in August 2013 that it would be adopting the recommendation that HIV positive health care workers should be permitted to undertake certain, previously restricted, clinical procedures. This policy change will come into effect in 2014.

HIV positive health care workers will be able to undertake previously restricted procedures only if they are on treatment, if their HIV viral load is at a very low or undetectable level, and if they are subject to regular monitoring of their treatment by clinicians.

Question reference: S4W-17682

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 29 October 2013

To ask the Scottish Government, following the abolition of NHS Connecting for Health, how it ensures that Caldicott Guardians are (a) coordinated, (b) supported, (c) provided with training and (d) afforded the opportunity of collective representation to the Scottish Government and special NHS boards.

NHSScotland has always had separate arrangements in place for the support of Caldicott Guardians. These arrangements include a National Caldicott Forum, which meets regularly, a Caldicott scrutiny panel that deals with requests to use patient data for a range of purposes and Information Governance and security fora. Each of these has representation from territorial and special boards and are coordinated by Scottish Government officials. Training materials are created or sponsored by Scottish Government, in partnership with boards. In the light of the Caldicott2 Review, and the possibility of the expansion of this community, The Scottish Government is considering how the coordination and training of Caldicotts is best managed across health, local government and elsewhere.

Question reference: S4W-17678

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 29 October 2013

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will invite Information Services Division Scotland (ISD) to include under-15s in future statistics that it publishes on long-acting reversible contraception.

The ISD publication on Long Acting Reversible Methods of Contraception includes data on the number of contraceptives dispensed in primary care and the number distributed from central pharmacies.

The ages of a high proportion of women using these contraceptives are unknown as data relating to contraceptives supplied via central pharmacies are not collated at an individual level.

It is expected that the majority are in the age group 15-49, although some women outside this age range may be included. The denominator used in the calculation of rates in the publication comprises females in Scotland aged 15-49 years. This is a standard age range used for studies on contraception.

Question reference: S4W-17674

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 29 October 2013

To ask the Scottish Government how many follow-up inspection reports since 2011 by (a) Healthcare Improvement Scotland and (b) the Healthcare Environment Inspectorate on the care of older people have led to a referral to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing because the recommendations in the original report were not carried out, and what action was taken, broken down by (i) NHS board and (ii) hospital.

Question reference: S4W-17681

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Alex Neil on 29 October 2013

To ask the Scottish Government what consultation it had with the Department of Health prior to the abolition of NHS Connecting for Health.

The Scottish Government was not formally consulted in regard to the creation of the Health and Social Care Information Centre (which replaces many of the functions of Connecting for Health). The Scottish Government does however have regular and routine discussions with HSCIC and the Department for Health (England) about a wide range of eHealth policy and Information Governance issues that are of common concern to all parts of the UK.

Question reference: S4W-17675

Asked by: Dr Richard Simpson, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2013
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 29 October 2013

To ask the Scottish Government when it expects NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to be in a position to supply data comparable to other NHS boards in respect of long-acting reversible contraception.

Data for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde for 2012-13, as published in ISD’s report “Long Acting Reversible Methods of Contraception (LARC)”, are considered to be complete and accurate, so are therefore comparable to other NHS boards. Data for all NHS boards are checked and signed off by the NHS Board Sexual Health Lead.

However, the data for some methods of long-acting reversible contraception from central pharmacies in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde were incomplete for 2011-12 and are therefore not directly comparable to 2012-13.