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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-25878

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 31 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether disability assistance regulations will provide a right for an individual to request a review of their award, and, if so, whether (a) the outcome of that review will and (b) the decision whether or not to review an award will attract a right of appeal.

As indicated in the Disability Assistance in Scotland consultation, Disability Assistance regulations will include provision to review awards where individuals notify of a change of circumstances that may affect the level of assistance they receive.

Where the outcome of a review is a new entitlement decision, a client will have the right to request a redetermination of that decision and, where they are not satisfied with the redetermination, will be able to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal.

Question reference: S5W-26063

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S5W-25651

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 30 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many Fair Start Scotland participants there are in each local authority area, broken down by health condition.

Question reference: S5W-25646

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 30 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many Fair Start Scotland participants in each local authority area have achieved a (a) 13- and (b) 26-week job outcome, broken down by health condition.

Question reference: S5W-25649

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 30 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what stakeholder engagement it has carried out regarding its replacement of the DWP Specialised Employment Support schemes, and with which organisations.

In developing a replacement service for DWP’s Specialist Employability Support, we have engaged with a number of stakeholders in order to inform how the replacement service might better meet the needs of disabled people in Scotland.

This has included holding a number of stakeholder engagement events around Scotland, to ensure funding and support is best targeted at individuals most in need of assistance. Participants in these events included representatives from Local Authorities, the Third Sector and Disabled People’s Organisations, including, but not limited to: Glasgow Disability Alliance, Glasgow Centre for Inclusive Living, Inclusion Scotland, SUSE, Shirlie Project, Highland Council, Action on Hearing Loss, Prince’s Trust, Remploy, Cantley Bridge College, and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

In addition we are clear that, consistent with the principles of No One Left Behind , the new service must align to local strategic employability pipelines. We are therefore in dialogue with the Scottish and Local Government Alignment group to ensure appropriate integration.

Question reference: S5W-25652

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 04 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 30 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many Fair Start Scotland participants in each local authority area have reported deafness or partial hearing loss.

Question reference: S5W-25769

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 24 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many permanent staff in the social security programme have submitted overtime claims in (a) each month and (b) total since May 2018.

(a) each month

Table 1. Number of permanent staff who made an overtime claim for programme management and delivery division.

Month claim refers to	Number of staff who made an overtime claim
Month claim refers to	Monday to Saturday	Sunday	Public and Privilege
May-18	3	1	0
Jun-18	5	1	0
Jul-18	2	1	0
Aug-18	1	0	0
Sep-18	6	1	1
Oct-18	3	4	1
Nov-18	3	2	0
Dec-18	8	6	3
Jan-19	4	2	0
Feb-19	1	0	0
Mar-19	0	1	0
Apr-19	1	1	0
May-19	3	3	0
Jun-19	3	4	1
Jul-19	0	3	0
Aug-19	2	2	0
Sep-19	2	3	2

Notes:

Permanent includes permanent, fixed term appointment with fair and open competition.

An individual may have claimed one or more types of overtime in any given month.

Claims were attributed to each month based on the date the claims were processed (not the dates worked or the dates that claims were submitted on). Therefore the claims may relate to work undertaken in earlier periods, including before May 2019.

Each month shows the number of different individuals who had a claim in that month. Some of those individuals will have made claims in more than one month, so the columns should not be totalled.

(b) total since May 2018.

There were 28 unique individuals in the programme management and delivery division who made any kind of overtime claim during the period 1 May 2018 to 30 September 2019.

Question reference: S5W-25721

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 24 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how much its Social Security Directorate budgeted to spend on salaries for contingent workers in each quarter since 2016-17, and how this compared with actual spend.

The budgets for the Scottish Government, including Social Security Directorate, are set out in the Scottish Budget each year, and links are provided below to each year’s Budget. These include budget lines for Social Security, which include the cost for directly employed staff and contingent workers.

2016-17: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20170702005839/
http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/12/9056/0

2017-18:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-budget-draft-budget-2017-18/

2018-19:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-draft-budget-2018-19/

2019-20:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2019-20/

Regarding a comparison of actual spend to budget, we report this annually in the “final outturn report for the Scottish budget”, and links are provided below to each year’s report:

2016-17 (provisional):
https://www.gov.scot/news/provisional-budget-outturn/

2017-18:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/final-outturn-report-scottish-budget-year-
ended-31-march-2018/

2018-19:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/final-outturn-report-scottish-budget-year-
ended-31-march-2019/

2019-20: to be published

For further information on the specific costs for contingent workers, we publish information on our procurement awards here, including contingent workers:

https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/search_mainpage.aspx .

Question reference: S5W-25771

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 24 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-23228 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 28 May 2019, how much it has spent on overtime for permanent staff in the social security programme in each month since May 2018.

Table 1. Cost of overtime claims for permanent staff in programme management and delivery division.

Month claim refers to	Cost of overtime claims
Month claim refers to	Monday to Saturday	Sunday	Public and Privilege
May-18	£335	£210	£0
Jun-18	£852	£289	£0
Jul-18	£997	£157	£0
Aug-18	£486	£0	£0
Sep-18	£4,995	£1,591	£467
Oct-18	£2,249	£1,210	£470
Nov-18	£2,579	£720	£0
Dec-18	£8,337	£1,575	£328
Jan-19	£1,112	£415	£0
Feb-19	£45	£0	£0
Mar-19	£0	£221	£0
Apr-19	£979	£261	£0
May-19	£748	£1,636	£0
Jun-19	£265	£1,269	£339
Jul-19	£0	£701	£0
Aug-19	£1,005	£906	£0
Sep-19	£361	£2,608	£966

Notes.

Permanent includes permanent, fixed term appointment with fair and open competition

Costs relate to claims listed in the table in the answer to S5W-25769 on 24 October 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Question reference: S5W-25701

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 07 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 24 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-21923 by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 13 March 2019, at what stage discussions are with the DWP, and when these discussions (a) began and (b) are scheduled to conclude.