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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-10873

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 22 August 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 20 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how many experience panel meetings have been held, broken down by the number of attendees.

Scottish Government researchers are now working on the next stage of the Experience Panels process, the ‘About Your Benefits and You’ research. This will help us understand in a bit more detail what panel members think works well in the current system, and where there is room for improvement. This research involves a survey of panel members, as well as a series of focus groups around Scotland.

The survey element closed on 1 September 2017 and over 1,000 people have responded. The final respondent count will be made available in due course. Alongside this, in July and August, Scottish Government researchers held a total of 34 focus sessions across Scotland as part of this work, involving over 250 participants. A variety of morning, afternoon and evening sessions were held. The Table in the background notes provides a breakdown of the number of sessions held.

Question reference: S5W-10877

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 22 August 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 19 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how many staff from each of its other directorates have been (a) transferred and (b) seconded to its Social Security Directorate.

Question reference: S5W-10878

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 22 August 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 19 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how many staff in its Social Security directorate have been seconded from (a) the Department for Work and Pensions and (b) other UK Government departments.

Question reference: S5W-10879

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 22 August 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 19 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how many staff its Social Security directorate has employed each month.

Social Security Directorate was established in July 2016. The following table provides the relevant information from that period onwards. Full time equivalent staff in Social Security Directorate (directly employed - permanent & fixed term, modern apprentice & inward loan).

	FTE staffing
31 July 2016	51.8
31 August 2016	52.1
30 September 2016	54.1
31 October 2016	59.1
30 November 2016	65.1
31 December 2016	66.7
31 January 2017	77.8
28 February 2017	89.8
31 March 2017	96.1
30 April 2017	106.0
31 May 2017	114.8
30 June 2017	125.8
31 July 2017	153.3

Question reference: S5W-11109

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 September 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 19 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government whether is has commissioned the Department for Work and Pensions to produce a Scotland-only version of the Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year 2015/16 statistics.

The Scottish Government has not requested the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to produce a Scotland-only version of the take-up statistics.

DWP emphasise a number of data quality issues in the methodology note accompanying these statistics, including challenges around matching survey and administrative data. For this reason, DWP provide range as well as point estimates for take-up. These challenges would be greater if attempting to replicate this methodology with Scotland-only data.

The Scottish Government continues to make relevant data requests to DWP in relation to devolved benefits.

Question reference: S5F-01542

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 18 September 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 21 September 2017

To ask the First Minister what financial support the Scottish Government offers to parents of premature babies whose child is in hospital.

Question reference: S5W-11034

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 01 September 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 18 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on how many mixed aged couples who are entitled to pension credit do not claim it, and what the value of this unclaimed pension credit is (a) in total and (b) on average.

Question reference: S5W-11055

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 04 September 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 18 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government whether it is monitoring the ethnicity of individuals participating in its Social Security Experience Panels and, if so, whether this data will be published.

Scottish Government researchers are now analysing the ‘About Your Benefits and You’ research. This research includes a survey and a series of focus groups across Scotland. The About Your Benefits and You survey asked for some demographic information from panel members (including age, gender, disability and caring status). This will be added to information gathered as part of the ‘Have Your Say’ panel registration process which collected information on additional support needs. This will start to build a picture of who our panel members are.

We will ask the panel members their religion, ethnicity and LGBT status at a later stage in the panel research. This is because we designed and tested the survey with panel members, and they asked that we do not collect this information at this early stage.

Scottish Government researchers are committed to equality monitoring as part of the Experience Panels. However, it is vital that we build trust with panel members, collecting demographic information sensitively and ensuring that panel members are involved in how and when demographic data is collected.

Question reference: S5W-11056

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 04 September 2017
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 18 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government whether race equality has featured as a discussion in its Social Security Experience Panels and, if not, whether this topic will be addressed.

Scottish Government researchers have recently completed the ‘About Your Benefits and You’ research, the first piece of research carried out with panel members. This initial piece of research collected some demographic information from panel members, as well as helping us to understand in a bit more detail what panel members think works well in the current system, and where there is room for improvement.

This initial research did not specifically ask about race equality. However, the open nature of the survey questions and focus group discussions gave panel members the opportunity to discuss what is important to them. Scottish Government researchers are now analysing the results of the ‘About Your Benefits and You’ survey and focus group research.

The Experience Panels research project is longitudinal (follows panel members over a period of time) and equality monitoring will form an important part of this. The information collected from the About Your Benefits and You research will be used to develop a programme of work in collaboration with the Experience Panels that reflects what is important to our panel members.

Question reference: S5W-11052

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 04 September 2017
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 13 September 2017

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of its position as set out in Scotland's Equality Evidence Strategy 2017-2021, that “The Scottish Government cannot, and should not, take responsibility for attending to all evidence gaps”, what discussions it has had with relevant stakeholders to coordinate an approach to addressing these gaps.

The Equality Evidence Strategy is the start of a four year process aimed at strengthening the overall equality evidence base. It sets out the strategic approach to filling evidence gaps and outlines plans for future collaboration. How we do this will depend on the protected characteristic and the range of priorities and plans already in place. In most cases our intention is to hold workshops based on a protected characteristic to discuss priorities and a coordinated approach to filling the gaps. The first workshop will be to consider evidence gaps around gender and is scheduled for late October 2017.