Chamber and committees

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: S3W-03567

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Adam Ingram on 12 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what capacity there is in the pre-school sector for pre-school places.

Overall capacity inthe pre-school sector is not monitored on a national basis. Uptake of pre-schooleducation places is reported annually through the Pre-school and Childcare Statistics.The current high-level of uptake suggests that there are no overall problems withcapacity in the sector. The lateststatistics are available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/09/13155926/0and in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 40411).

Planning of pre-schoolservices at a local level is a matter for local authorities, who have a duty toprovide every three and four-year-old with a pre-school education place. In orderto do this effectively they must plan the provision of pre-school education to ensurethat places are available in the areas where they are needed.

Question reference: S3W-03386

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 17 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 12 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive when the audiology waiting time figures for each NHS board will be published.

Question reference: S3W-03568

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Adam Ingram on 10 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive how many more pre-school places will be needed to meet its pledges on extended pre-school provision.

Question reference: S3W-03557

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 6 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive how it intends to respond to the recommendation in Community Care Providers Scotland’s report, Social Care and Support Services in the Voluntary Sector: Funding Survey 2007, that central government should review spending levels on social care and support in relation to (a) demand for services and (b) the effect of the introduction of a number of initiatives in recent years.

Question reference: S3W-03569

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Adam Ingram on 6 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive how much funding each local authority receives from it to provide pre-school services.

The Scottish governmentprovides local authorities with block grant for their core revenue servicesthrough the core local government finance settlement. A needs-based methodology(otherwise known as grant aided expenditure (GAE)) is used to determine the allocationof that block grant. As GAE is a component used in distributing the total blockgrant that the Scottish Government provides to local government, it is not abudget or a spending target. It is for each local authority to decide how bestto allocate the resulting overall block grant across all their services, basedon local needs and priorities.

The GAEallocations for each local authority for pre‑school services in 2007‑08is shown in the following table.

Local Authority Area	Nursery Teaching Staff (£ Million)	Pre-School Education (£ Million)
Aberdeen City	0.931	6.822
Aberdeenshire	1.281	9.959
Angus	0.563	3.775
Argyll and Bute	0.416	3.069
Clackmannanshire	0.256	1.634
Dumfries and Galloway	0.666	5.319
Dundee City	0.664	4.698
East Ayrshire	0.617	4.031
East Dunbartonshire	0.536	3.291
East Lothian	0.504	3.197
East Renfrewshire	0.506	3.175
Edinburgh, City of	2.045	13.686
Eilean Siar	0.121	1.051
Falkirk	0.788	4.980
Fife	1.897	11.896
Glasgow City	2.913	19.259
Highland	1.080	8.649
Inverclyde	0.402	2.773
Midlothian	0.457	3.016
Moray	0.441	3.249
North Ayrshire	0.727	4.556
North Lanarkshire	1.893	11.575
Orkney	0.087	0.764
Perth and Kinross	0.719	5.307
Renfrewshire	0.924	5.795
Scottish Borders	0.597	4.606
Shetland	0.119	1.157
South Ayrshire	0.521	3.271
South Lanarkshire	1.595	10.002
Stirling	0.461	3.326
West Dunbartonshire	0.472	3.018
West Lothian	1.015	6.303
Scotland	26.215	177.195

In addition thereare other relevant GAE allocations which go wider than pre-school services. Theseinclude Sure Start (£59.912 million), special education (£272.688 million) and childcarestrategy (£44.556 million).

Question reference: S3W-03387

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 17 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 6 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive whether audiology waiting times will be brought into line with those of other NHS consultant-led services and targeted to 18 weeks from GP referral to fitting of hearing aid.

Since audiology servicesare not consultant-led, or defined as a speciality, and are a sub-specialty ofear, nose and throat, they do not fall under the current 18 week target of the ScottishGovernment. However, the Scottish Government is committed to improving servicesfor the benefit of patients, ispleased that a number of NHSScotland boards have met, and in some cases exceeded,the 26 week target from referral to fitting set by the Audiology Modernisation ProjectBoard and will continue to measureboards’ progress towards modernisation of the service allowing us to identify regionalvariations in service delivery and standards.

Where waiting timesremain unacceptably high, the Scottish Government continues to work directly withthe boards involved to help improve the situation as a matter of urgency.

Question reference: S3W-03571

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Adam Ingram on 6 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive what the cost per head of pre-school provision is in each local authority in respect of (a) education and (b) childcare services.

The information requestedis not held centrally. I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-3570 on6 September 2007 for information on local authority pre-primaryeducation expenditure. It is not possible to split these data between educationand child care services.All answers towritten parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website thesearch facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

Question reference: S3W-03570

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Adam Ingram on 6 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive how much each local authority spends per child on pre-school provision.

Statistics onlocal authority spend are not collected on a per child basis. The pre-primaryeducation expenditure figures for 2005-06 (the latest year for which figuresare available) are provided in the following table. Pre-primary educationexpenditure includes expenditure on nursery schools, other under 5s expenditurenot located in primary schools or special schools, childcare services andregistration services.

Pre-primary EducationExpenditure 2005-06 (£000)

Local Authority Area	Gross	Net
Scotland	284,484	267,174
Aberdeen City	8,689	8,608
Aberdeenshire	9,661	9,623
Angus	4,706	4,602
Argyll and Bute	5,252	4,854
Clackmannanshire	3,563	2,900
Dumfries and Galloway	7,592	7,389
Dundee City	8,077	7,384
East Ayrshire	8,824	7,905
East Dunbartonshire	4,776	4,251
East Lothian	5,053	4,472
East Renfrewshire	6,346	5,693
Edinburgh, City of	20,793	19,179
Eilean Siar	1,587	1,474
Falkirk	8,405	7,269
Fife	16,265	15,777
Glasgow City	45,061	43,826
Highland	11,478	9,766
Inverclyde	5,224	5,004
Midlothian	4,855	4,547
Moray	4,035	3,899
North Ayrshire	6,951	6,750
North Lanarkshire	18,916	18,023
Orkney Islands	801	801
Perth and Kinross	5,380	5,155
Renfrewshire	12,625	12,054
Scottish Borders	4,767	4,519
Shetland Islands	1,365	1,329
South Ayrshire	5,403	5,157
South Lanarkshire	13,391	12,191
Stirling	5,934	5,472
West Dunbartonshire	8,255	7,630
West Lothian	10,454	9,671

Source:LFR 1 (Education) returns.

Note:Gross expenditure is the total expenditure. Net expenditure is the grossexpenditure minus any income, for example from grants, fees or charges.

Question reference: S3W-03558

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 6 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive whether Lord Sutherland’s review of the policy of free personal and nursing care will consider the effect of the policy on other services delivered to older people in Scotland and, in particular, whether resources have been diverted from general services for older people to pay for free personal and nursing care services and what action will be taken to prevent any such diversion.

The Independent FundingReview of Free Personal and Nursing Care, chaired by Lord Sutherland, will investigatethe level and distribution of resources to local authorities in implementing thispolicy. Local authorities arerequired to meet their statutory responsibilities for the assessment and deliveryof services to older people in their area. It is for each individual local authorityto determine the most appropriate allocation of the total resources available toit to meet these and it’s other responsibilities.

Question reference: S3W-03566

Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Current Status: Answered by Adam Ingram on 6 September 2007

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will investigate the reasons for pre-school closures and make the findings available to the Parliament.

Theresponsibility for planning and delivering pre-school education lies with localauthorities. Authorities need to take population projections into account toensure that there is enough pre-school education provision available in theright areas. Over time this may involve opening new provision and closing othercentres in line with patterns of demand.

The Scottish governmenthas no plans to undertake an investigation into the reasons for the closure ofindividual pre-school education settings.