- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 June 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by Stewart Stevenson on 18 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive what action it is taking to encourage primary school-age children to walk or cycle to school.
Answer
The Scottish Government is supporting a range of initiatives to encourage primary school children to walk and cycle to school. This includes support for local authorities to encourage active travel through the Cycling, Walking and Safer Streets grant of £9.09 million in each year of this spending review. Support is allocated to Sustrans to tackle the school run and to Cycling Scotland to promote the benefits of travelling actively to school.
The above investment includes the creation of new shared walking and cycling facilities, new secure cycle parking, various incentives to cycle or walk to school, including, for example, cycle training skill kits. Almost all schools now have 20 mph zones and around 80% are implementing or developing a travel plan. In all, over 2000 schools in Scotland will continue to benefit from the Scottish Government''s commitment to encouraging children to walk or cycle to school through partnership working with key stakeholders.
I also refer the member to the answer to question S3W-34279 on 18 June 2010. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.
- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 June 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by Keith Brown on 18 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive how many primary school children travelled to school by school bus in each local authority area in each of the last three years.
Answer
This information is not collected centrally. However, I understand that the Hands Up Survey, which can be found electronically on the organisation Sustrans web site at
www.sustrans.org.uk, may be able to provide some or all of the information requested.
- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 16 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it is aware of any members of the British National Party who are currently employed as classroom teachers in Scottish schools.
Answer
The Scottish Government is not aware of any members of the British National Party who are currently employed as classroom teachers in Scottish schools.
- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 16 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has the legal power to prohibit members of organisations such as the British National Party from holding public service posts including that of classroom teacher.
Answer
The General Teaching Council Scotland Code of Professionalism and Conduct states that teachers must not be prejudiced in their views about learners lifestyle, culture, disability, beliefs, colour, gender, language, sexuality or age. If a teacher breached the Code the Council could take action to remove them from the register.
A similar arrangement is in place for the police force where the Police (Scotland) Regulations 2004 require members of the police to at all times abstain from any activity which is likely to interfere with the impartial discharge of that member''s duties or which is likely to give rise to the impression amongst members of the public that it may so interfere, and in particular a member of a police force shall not take any active part in politics.
Of course this is a complex issue and any use of the Scottish Government''s powers in this area would require to take into account human rights standards, employment law and potentially also the boundary between reserved and devolved powers.
- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by John Swinney on 14 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will publish all ministerial directions, as described under section 6.4 of the Scottish Ministerial Code, that have been issued since 2007.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-33951 on 14 June 2010. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at
www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.
- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by John Swinney on 14 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive which ministerial directions issued since 2007, as described under section 6.4 of the Scottish Ministerial Code, have been formally discussed at (a) Cabinet, (b) between the issuing minister and other ministers and in which cases the issuing minister received advice on the direction from special advisors.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-33951 on 14 June 2010. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at
www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.
- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 27 May 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by John Swinney on 14 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive on what dates ministerial directions, as described under section 6.4 of the current Scottish Ministerial Code regarding a course of action that the Accountable Officer considers would breach the requirements of propriety or regularity, have been issued since 1999; which minister each direction was issued by, and what the subject was of each direction.
Answer
Since devolution there have been no occasions where Accountable Officers have sought an authority on the grounds of propriety or regularity. There have however, been five occasions where Accountable Officers have sought an authority on value for money grounds, two of which were on the same issue. The following table gives more detail:
| Description | Background | Minister | Date |
| Campbeltown to Ballycastle Ferry Service | In the light of the financial and economic appraisals that were carried out officials had advised ministers that, with a high anticipated subsidy requirement and a low level of forecast employment creation, the project represented very poor value for money in terms of the probable costs and economic benefits. | Wendy Alexander | 29-01-02 |
| Lifeline Air Services Glasgow & Barra | Officials advised ministers that the savings from the withdrawal of air services out of Barra would have a positive NPV for the Sound of Barra vessel. An instruction was therefore sought to act on the ministers'' decision to continue the Glasgow - Barra air service. | Iain Gray | 19-03-03 |
| Relocation of Scottish Natural Heritage | SNH were subject to a relocation review in pursuance of the Executive''s relocation policy. Their main headquarters functions were housed in two buildings in Edinburgh. The option appraisal showed that a move to anywhere outside Edinburgh would be significantly more expensive than the status quo. | Ross Finnie | 26-03-03 |
| Campbeltown to Ballycastle Ferry Service | In light of the financial and economic appraisals that had been carried out officials had advised ministers that, with a high subsidy requirement and a low level of forecast employment creation, the project did not pass the value for money appraisals applied to such proposals. (The 2002 instruction did not cover this tendering exercise “ it was effectively spent at the conclusion of the previous tendering exercise.) | Nicol Stephen | 30-03-05 |
| HMP Bishopbriggs | The Accountable Officer was concerned that cancelling the competition for a PFI design, build and operate contract and beginning a new competition to design and build a prison for public sector operation would result in significant additional expenditure - because of the gap in cost efficiency between public and private operation - and import significant delay into the project - because the procurement process would effectively go back to start. | Kenny MacAskill | 22-08-07 |
Internal convention is that Cabinet procedures for dealing with requests for written authority require any authorities from ministers to be assessed separately by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth and cleared by the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. In providing advice to ministers, special advisors are required to comply with the Code of Conduct for Special Advisors, which sets out their role and duties. A copy of the code is available in the Scottish Parliaments Information Centre (Bib. number 49592).
- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 June 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by Stewart Stevenson on 10 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive what estimate it has made of the likely reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as a result of the recession.
Answer
The emissions projections used by the Scottish Government and the Committee on Climate Change take account of the recession based on the 2009 growth forecasts. These show emissions falling by 0.4% between 2007 and 2008, by 1.2% between 2008 and 2009, and by 0.1% between 2009 and 2010. It is not possible to say how much of the decrease in greenhouse gas emissions projected for 2008 and 2009 is due to the recession and how much is due to UK and Scottish Government policies.
There is a significant degree of uncertainty when projecting emissions, and the Committee on Climate Change acknowledged this when giving advice to the Scottish Government.
- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 June 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by John Swinney on 8 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it considers that a lack of up-to-date statistics on the social enterprise sector, including number of organisations, employees and turnover, is a barrier to measuring how effective the Enterprising Third Sector Action Plan is in developing the sector.
Answer
As part of the national performance framework the Scottish Government annually publishes the indicator on social economy turnover, this includes the social enterprise sector.
This information is available on the Scotland Performs website:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/scotPerforms/indicators/socialEconomy.
We are currently working with third sector stakeholders, including social enterprise representatives on developing more detailed statistics for the sector. This will include data on social enterprise.
- Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 June 2010
-
Current Status:
Answered by John Swinney on 8 June 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive what it considers the major barriers are in mapping the social enterprise sector.
Answer
As there is no legal definition or regulation for social enterprise, there is no single source of data to support mapping of the sector. We fund the Scottish Social Enterprise Coalition as a strategic partner of Scottish Government to provide advice and information about the sector. The coalition are also part of the Third Sector Research Forum whose focus is to consider improvements to information gathering.
