Seòmar agus comataidhean

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.

Find out more about parliamentary questions

Criathragan Hide all filters

Displaying 499 questions Show Answers

Order by |

Question reference: S5W-27273

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 3 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has sought updated legal advice since September 2014 on the position of an independent Scotland in relation to (a) membership or accession to the EU, (b) currency, (c) involvement in the Schengen Agreement, (d) border controls or cross-border trade and (e) involvement in international defence co-operation.

Question reference: S5W-27268

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 3 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what support for travel costs is available to apprentices, and how much it has spent on this in each year since 2007-08.

Travel support is based on an individual’s circumstances. This support includes rural delivery models’ eligibility for a rural uplift, and assistance with travel and/or overnight accommodation.

Skills Development Scotland have advised that their annual spend on travel and subsistence for Modern Apprentices in both of the last two full financial years is as follows:

2017-18: £1,091,538

2018-19: £1,055,840

Expenditure for the current year will be reported in due course.

Skills Development Scotland are able to provide the precise figures for travel and subsistence spend in 2017-18 and 2018-19 as the introduction of the Funding Information and Processing System in 2017-18 has given the functionality to extract this cost in isolation.

Due to a system change Skills Development Scotland are unable to provide the annual spend on travel and subsistence for Modern Apprentices in the years preceding 2017-18.

Details of what was budgeted for in the years preceding 2017/18 are available, but this does not reflect expenditure so cannot be directly compared to years after. The contract value for travel and subsistence for years 2009/10 (the first year that SDS put into place contracts for the delivery of Modern Apprenticeships) to 2016/17 is laid out below:

2009-10: £1.1m

2010-11: £940k

2011-12: £940k

2012-13: £960k

2013-14: £940k

2014-15: £950k

2015-16: £1.3m

2016-17: £1.3m

Throughout the Foundation Apprenticeship programme support has been available to fund participant travel. For the 2016-18, 2017-19 and 2019-21 cohorts, travel costs were included within the total funding awards. It is therefore not possible to provide travel costs for these cohorts. Travel costs are separate for the 2018-20 cohort. As delivery of this cohort is still ongoing and the total amount of expenditure is not yet available.

Question reference: S5W-27270

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 3 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many university applicants domiciled in Scotland did not receive an offer from any institution in Scotland but were accepted by an institution in the rest of the UK in the last year.

Question reference: S5W-27271

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 3 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many European nationals domiciled outside of the UK received funded places at a university in Scotland in the last year.

Question reference: S5W-27278

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 2 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what income Transport Scotland has derived from the installation of brown tourist information signs in each year since 2007-08, also broken down by local authority area.

Under the Transport Scotland “Trunk Road and Motorway Tourist Signing Guidance (2016)”, applicants are expected to meet the costs associated with the provision (design and installation) and replacement of tourist signs. General maintenance of erected signs is managed by Transport Scotland at no cost to the applicant. As such, there is no income derived by Transport Scotland or its maintenance agents from the installation of brown tourist signs.

Question reference: S5W-27277

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 28 February 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many additional miles of the (a) A9 and (b) A96 road have been dualled in each year since 2007.

On the A9 between Perth and Inverness, a 3.2 km (2 miles) extension to the dual carriageway at Crubenmore opened to traffic in September 2011. In September 2017, the 7.5km (4.6 miles) A9 Dualling Kincraig to Dalraddy project opened to traffic. Construction is also progressing well on the A9 Dualling Luncarty to Pass of Birnam project. This section represents 9.5 km (5.9 miles) and is expected to open in spring 2021, subject to any unforeseen circumstances such as exceptional adverse weather. At the same time design work continues at pace with eight of the remaining nine dualling schemes now subject to the statutory process.

On the A96 Dualling Programme, design work is well underway. Construction of the schemes that make up the programme can only commence if each scheme is approved under the relevant statutory procedures and thereafter a timetable for their progress can be set.

Question reference: S5W-27272

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 27 February 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many police station front counters have been open in each council area in each year since 2007.

Question reference: S5O-04224

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 26 February 2020
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 5 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how it will ensure that all information required and requested by the OECD as part of the review of the curriculum for excellence will be made available.

Question reference: S5W-27371

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 07 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 26 February 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how much money from the Rural Supplement, delivered by Skills Development Scotland, has been spent to date, also broken down by (a) council area and (b) frameworks covered.

Skills Development Scotland report that annual spend on the Rural Supplement has been as follows:

2017-18: £939,750
2018-19: £1,034,750
2019-20 (as at 10 February 2020): £533,000

For 2017-18 and 2018-19 SDS paid a lump sum to training providers, based on a list of eligible apprentices. Consequently further breakdown is not available. Following a review with key stakeholders, eligibility criteria has been refined and is now based on the employer postcode. For 2019-20 the breakdown of spend by local authority and framework is provided in the following tables.

Local Authority*	Rural Supplement spend 2019-20 as at 10 February 2020**
Aberdeen City	£1,500
Aberdeenshire	£39,750
Angus	£1,500
Argyll & Bute	£72,250
Dumfries & Galloway	£43,750
Dundee City	£750
East Ayrshire	£4,750
East Lothian	£3,750
East Renfrewshire	£250
Glasgow City	£500
Highland	£149,250
Midlothian	£750
Moray	£15,750
Na h-Eileanan Siar	£10,250
North Ayrshire	£3,000
North Lanarkshire	£500
Orkney Islands	£21,750
Perth & Kinross	£35,500
Scottish Borders	£18,250
Shetland Islands	£47,250
South Ayrshire	£4,000
South Lanarkshire	£2,000
Stirling	£2,000
West Dunbartonshire	£4,000

Framework	Rural Supplement Spend 2019/20 as at 10 February 2020
Accounting	£750
Active Leisure, Learning and Wellbeing	£4,250
Agriculture	£12,750
Aquaculture	£23,500
Aquaculture Management Technical Apprenticeship	£2,750
Automotive	£28,500
Business & Administration	£13,250
Construction: Building	£49,250
Construction: Civil Engineering	£2,000
Construction: Technical	£10,250
Construction: Technical Apprenticeship	£2,500
Creative	£250
Creative and Digital Media	£1,000
Customer Service	£2,000
Dental Nursing	£1,000
Domestic Plumbing and Heating	£8,500
Electrical Installation	£16,500
Engineering	£30,000
Engineering Construction	£2,000
Equine	£2,250
Facilities Management	£500
Fashion & Textile Heritage	£250
Food and Drink Operations	£32,000
Freight Logistics	£18,750
Game & Wildlife Management	£1,500
Hairdressing & Barbering	£6,750
Healthcare Support	£250
Horticulture	£4,250
Hospitality	£81,750
Hospitality Management Skills Technical Apprenticeship	£26,250
Industrial Applications	£250
IT and Telecommunications	£23,500
Land-based Engineering	£3,500
Management	£15,000
Maritime Occupations	£1,750
Occupational Health & Safety Practice	£1,000
Power Distribution	£6,500
Procurement	£500
Providing Financial Services	£1,500
Retail	£8,250
Social Services (Children and Young People)	£9,000
Social Services (Children and Young People) Technical Apprenticeship	£1,250
Social Services and Healthcare	£22,000
Social Services and Healthcare Technical Apprenticeship	£3,500

* in some cases Local Authority spend has been attributed to employer HQ locations. However, clarification has been sought to ensure the employer is based within an eligible postcode area.

** The total in the above tables is £483,000 as £50,000 of claims were for an archived assignment, where, as with previous years, no local authority or framework is recorded.

Question reference: S5W-27370

Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 07 February 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 26 February 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how much money from the Flexible Workforce Development Fund has been spent in each year since 2017-18, also broken down by provider.

The following table provides a breakdown of Flexible Workforce Development Fund for the 2017-18 (£6.1m) and 2018-19 (£9.6m) Academic Years. Full information on the 2019-20 Academic Year, which is still in progress, is not available at this point.

Details are as follows:

College Region	Total Spend A/Y 2018-19
Ayrshire	£400,019
Borders	£140,220
Dumfries & Galloway	£158,998
Dundee & Angus	£473,384
Edinburgh	£1,622,273
Fife	£636,104
Forth Valley	£555,422
Glasgow	£1,936,586
Highlands & Islands	£764,103
Lanarkshire	£755,736
North East Scotland	£1,112,197
SRUC	£90,000
West	£672,000
West Lothian	£329,540
Total	£9,646,582

College Region	Total Spend A/Y 2017-18
Ayrshire College	£238,640
Borders	£110,750
Dumfries & Galloway	£48,255
Dundee & Angus	£382,877
Edinburgh	£603,923
Fife	£653,291
Forth Valley	£494,697
Glasgow	£1,067,787
Highlands & Islands	£576,745
Lanarkshire	£412,448
North East Scotland	£708,901
SRUC	£39,720
West	£536,931
West Lothian	£272,005
Total	£6,146,971