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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-33591

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 30 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 7 January 2021

To ask the Scottish Government, aside from statistical modelling in relation to COVID-19, what checks have been carried out to ensure that cross-contamination of a negative patient sample by the positive control synthetic sequence would not be mistaken for a positive whole genome sequence result, and how many control negative patient samples that have been spiked with the positive control synthetic sequence prior to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process have had whole genome sequencing.

NHS Scotland Laboratories are UKAS accredited and thus have quality procedures in place to minimise and guard against cross contamination of samples, and protocols in place to communicate and organise retesting if found to have occurred. Public Health Scotland have provided guidance which can be found here: -

https://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/web-resources-container/covid-19-guidance
-for-sampling-and-laboratory-investigations

It is not normal practice to spike patient samples with positive control synthetic sequence and then subject them to sequencing. The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of samples where this procedure has been carried out.

Question reference: S5W-33592

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 30 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 7 January 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether positive COVID-19 tests for NHS staff that result in them having to self-isolate have confirmatory retests performed.

Question reference: S5W-33597

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 30 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 7 January 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what measures are being taken to validate positive polymerase chain reaction COVID-19 tests with an initial value greater than 25, such as a retest after 48 hours and assuming a false positive if the cycle threshold is greater than the index sample.

NHS Scotland Laboratories have a protocol in place to carry out confirmation testing (or repeat testing) in certain circumstances to confirm whether low positive test results should be reported as positive or negative. NHS Scotland Labs have instigated a method for ensuring veracity of low positive results and can be found at the following link: -

https://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/web-resources-container/covid-19-guidance-for-sampling-and-laboratory-investigations

UK Government Laboratories (Lighthouse) also have similar quality procedure systems in place to minimise false positives but are unable to repeat test low positive results.

Question reference: S5W-33843

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 5 January 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether its current epidemiological models attempt to capture numerically the impact of lockdown restrictions on increased mortality in the (a) short and (b) long term in order to draw comparisons with the number of lives that are considered to have been saved by the restrictions.

The aim of the Strategic Framework restrictions are to suppress the growth in total infections and deaths. Predicting the exact effects of the restrictions on deaths is difficult, though Scottish Government is closely monitoring changes in the epidemic on an ongoing basis. Data on infections are published on the Scottish Government website each week.

The Scottish Government is monitoring evidence on the different harms and is using this information to inform decisions about COVID-19. We are presenting this information in the Covid-19 in Scotland dashboard: https://data.gov.scot/coronavirus-covid-19/index.html .

One way we can assess the impact of the restrictions is the excess deaths, which is included in the dashboard. The information, covering the pandemic, is published by National Records of Scotland (NRS) in their weekly 'Deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) in Scotland' reports. The report published on 2 December: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/covid19/covid-deaths-report-week-48.pdf showed that from week 12 to week 48 (mid-March to the end of November) there were 2,319 excess deaths in care homes (26% above average), 4,475 excess deaths at home or in non-institutional settings (42% above average) and after an early peak, hospital deaths are now 636 (3%) below average levels for the period covering weeks 12-48.

Question reference: S5W-34049

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 14 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 22 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what the total client contribution requested by Warmworks has been since the start of the scheme until 31 March 2020, and how these contributions are treated for accounting purposes.

The total amount of customer contributions paid since Warmer Homes Scotland commenced in September 2015 to 31 March 2020 is £925k. Where customer contributions are required these are treated as revenue in Warmworks’ accounts. The net value of the customer contribution is booked to income and the Scottish Government is charged the cost per job after deduction of the amount received from the customer.

Question reference: S5W-34051

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 14 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 22 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many contractors are used by Warmworks; what the cost is of each contract for services, and in which country each contractor is registered.

Warmworks has sub-contractor framework agreements in place with 22 installers and 3 support suppliers. Warmworks follows OJEU best practice in tendering its supply chain opportunities and is a registered vendor on Public Contracts Scotland. It does not procure its supply chain of sub-contractors in a way that allows the cost of each contract to be individually calculated. All Warmworks contractors are registered in the UK.

Question reference: S5W-34050

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 14 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 22 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many homes have been assisted by Warmworks to date, broken down by the regions these homes were in.

Question reference: S5W-34124

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 22 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what financial support is available for the space sector, and what plans it has for future support for Scottish space programmes.

The space sector is a key priority for the Scottish Government and its enterprise agencies. As highlighted through the Inward Investment Plan, the global space market is estimated to be worth £400bn by 2030. The Scottish Government’s ambition is for Scotland to become the first country in Europe to provide an end-to-end solution for small satellite manufacture, launch and innovation in satellite data analysis. Scotland is already ‘punching above its weight’ with 133 companies operating in the space sector in Scotland employing 8,000 people (19% of the UK total).

Our Enterprise Agencies are the primary sources for providing financial support to the space sector, demonstrated in particular through the Highland and Island Enterprise development of Space Hub Sutherland, which has become the first spaceport in the UK to achieve planning consent, and through Scottish Enterprise support for companies such as Spire Global.

In addition, the Scottish Government in partnership with UK Government and South Ayrshire Council are investing £80m through the Ayrshire Growth Deal to position Ayrshire as one of the UK’s leading centres of Aerospace and Space activity through an ambitious and transformational Aerospace and Space Programme.

The Scottish Government will continue to support the development of the space sector through collaboration with the Scottish Space Leadership Council.

Question reference: S5W-33585

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 30 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 21 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government when it will introduce measures to exclude false positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) COVID-19 tests of hospital patients through the use of confirmatory testing with lateral flow kits.

Question reference: S5W-33883

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 December 2020
Current Status: Answered by Ash Denham on 18 December 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether the cost of applying to the Court of Session is prohibitive for most families dealing with executors considered problematic.

It is important to remember that where executors are appointed in a will they are chosen by the deceased to carry out their last wishes and the terms of the will. Removal of executors under statute can, in certain circumstances, be done by application to the Sheriff Court, failing which the Court of Session. In considering any proposals for reform the Scottish Government recognises the importance of balancing the ability of beneficiaries to remove a problematic executor and the right of a deceased person to have the individual they choose administer their will.