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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: S6W-09246

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 8 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure equitable access to liver cancer treatment that includes both curative and palliative care.

The Scottish HepatoPancreatoBiliary Network (SHPBN) is a key partner in improving cancer services and ensuring equitable access to treatment for liver cancer patients. Under the National Cancer Plan, the SHPBN has been awarded £653,000 over two financial years to redesign the pancreatic and liver cancer pathways. The key aims of this project are to shorten the time taken to stage and decide the best treatment for patients, streamline patient pathways and improve communication with patients, carers, primary care & health professionals.

Care for people towards the end of life has always been an important priority for the Scottish Government, and Scotland is already widely recognised for providing high-quality palliative and end of life care. There is always more we can do to improve our services and therefore we are committed to producing a new strategy for palliative and end of life care to achieve the very highest standards of care right up to the end of life, and ensure that everyone who needs it can access seamless, timely and high quality palliative care.

Question reference: S6W-09247

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 8 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of reports that the majority of primary liver cancer cases in Scotland involve hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and that such cases tripled among men between 1997 and 2017, what steps it is taking to ensure equitable treatment for HCC in (a) the Galloway and West Dumfries constituency and (b) other rural areas.

We agree that everyone should have fair and equitable access to high quality care. It remains an unwelcome reality that communities experience health, quality of life and even life expectancy differently across our society.

The Scottish Government is supporting rural, remote and island communities to address the unique health and social care challenges they face, ensuring that patients receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time. NHS Education for Scotland (NES) has been commissioned to write a business plan detailing how the Health Board will create and host the National Centre of excellence for rural and remote health and social care, which is due to be operational by spring 2023. The National Centre will coordinate, facilitate, fund and promote excellence under the following Four Pillars: ‘Recruitment and Retention’, ‘Ideal Practice and Evaluation’, ‘Training and Education’, and ‘Research and Innovation.’ This will ensure that the issues impacting remote and rural areas in Scotland are given the focused attention necessary to be addressed innovatively and effectively.

With regards to cancer services, our National Cancer Plan advocates a ‘Once for Scotland’ approach to cancer services and will help to ensure that access to care and treatment is equitable across Scotland. The Scottish HepatoPancreatoBiliary Network (SHPBN) is a key partner in improving cancer services to ensure equity of care for all patients living with liver cancer. Under the National Cancer Plan, the SHPBN has been awarded £653,000 over two financial years for the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and pancreatic cancer (PC) Patient Pathways Improvement Project to redesign the pancreatic and liver cancer pathways. The key aims of this project are to shorten the time taken to stage and decide the best treatment for patients, streamline patient pathways and improve communication with patients, carers, primary care & health professionals.

Question reference: S6W-09050

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 10 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 23 June 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what the timescale is for the full designation of a new national park, including the public consultation process.

Question reference: S6W-09049

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 10 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 23 June 2022

To ask the Scottish Government when a final decision will be taken regarding the location of a new national park.

The Scottish Government has recently closed an initial consultation to start a national discussion about our National Parks. We will be working with NatureScot over the summer to engage further with the general public and stakeholders to help develop the evaluation framework that will be needed to determine which area or areas should be designated as National Parks. We will soon share further information about the process and timescales which will be followed to progress one or more areas to statutory designation.

Question reference: S6W-09099

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 23 June 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what support it is providing for electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure in (a) the Galloway and West Dumfries constituency and (b) other rural areas.

Scotland has the most comprehensive public charging network in the UK outside of London, with close to 3,000 public charge points. The Scottish Government has invested over £50 million to develop the ChargePlace Scotland network, with over a third of charge points installed in rural areas. Dumfries and Galloway Council has received £1.65 million to develop public electric vehicle charging.

In January we launched our vision for the future of Scotland’s electric vehicle charging network, and announced a new fund to enable £60 million of public and private investment in this network. We have also provided £2 million to local authorities to develop their charging strategies and expansion plans, with Dumfries and Galloway Council receiving £60,000.

Question reference: S6W-09100

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 23 June 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many publicly available electric vehicle (EV) charging points have been created in the Galloway and West Dumfries constituency in the last year.

The Transport Scotland, Scottish Transport Statistics 2020 reported 66 publicly available electric vehicle charge points in the Dumfries & Galloway Boundary Area. This figure has increased in 2021 to 80 publicly available charge points in the Dumfries & Galloway Boundary Area. The 2022 statistics will be released in January 2023.

We don’t routinely collect or analyse data on a constituency area basis, and there may be additional commercially financed and operated charge points that aren’t routinely captured in the Scottish Transport Statistics.

Question reference: S6W-09045

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 10 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 22 June 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what the timescale is for implementation of the decarbonised railway line between Stranraer and Girvan; what work has been carried out on this, and what progress has been made.

Question reference: S6O-01282

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 June 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 23 June 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how it will address the reported shortage of nurses in rural areas.

Question reference: S6O-01222

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 08 June 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 15 June 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what support it is providing to unpaid carers who are experiencing poor mental health.

Question reference: S6W-08070

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 22 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 9 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what research it is carrying out on the potential impact of (a) increases in land prices on rural communities, in light of reports of people buying farmland to get closer to nature, increase tree planting and for renewable energy schemes, and (b) a concentration of land ownership on local communities.

The Scottish Government is currently funding two research projects into land values, landownership, and land use change, through the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Strategic Research Programme (SRP) 2022-27. One is at the James Hutton Institute on supporting community engagement in land use decision-making. The second at Scotland’s Rural College, is on impacts of land-based funding mechanisms on land values, and related outcomes for landownership diversification and land use change. These are multi-year projects which will provide a range of outputs over the coming years to inform Scottish Government policy and the wider public debate. Details of all of the projects commissioned through the SRP will be published on the Scottish Government website by the end of June 2022.

In April 2022 the Scottish Land Commission also published research on Scotland's Rural Land Market which is available on their website https://www.landcommission.gov.scot/ .