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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.

Find out more about parliamentary questions

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Question reference: S6O-03587

Asked by: Patrick Harvie, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what action it is taking to recognise Pride Month, including how it supports LGBTQ+ staff and visitors by ensuring that the Parliament remains a visibly inclusive environment.

Question reference: S6O-03548

Asked by: Pam Gosal, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will provide an update on how it is widening access to its educational services.

Question reference: S6O-03582

Asked by: Sharon Dowey, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will provide an update on the review commissioned by the security team, in light of the protest that took place on 21 February 2024.

Question reference: S6O-03584

Asked by: Karen Adam, MSP for Banffshire and Buchan Coast, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how much of its annual budget is allocated to the provision of BSL services to ensure that the Parliament is accessible to those who use BSL, in light of the 2022 Census results showing that BSL is used by 117,300 people or 2.2% of the population.

Question reference: S6O-03586

Asked by: Ben Macpherson, MSP for Edinburgh Northern and Leith, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it would consider increasing the £500 annual training budget that is allocated to MSP offices for staff training.

Question reference: S6O-03583

Asked by: Lorna Slater, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether any of its contracted catering companies source produce or products from occupied land in Gaza or the West Bank.

Question reference: S6O-03585

Asked by: Tess White, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 06 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will review the process for admitting visitors to the public gallery in the chamber.

Question reference: S6W-27739

Asked by: Pam Duncan-Glancy, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 6 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has undertaken an analysis to establish any reasons for students withdrawing from college courses between weeks five and 12 of their courses.

The Scottish Government hasn’t carried out analysis to establish reasons for students withdrawing from college, by week of course.

Information on college withdrawals is collected by the Scottish Funding Council. Some data on the reason for withdrawing is included in the technical annex of the College Performance Indicators publication, though this isn’t broken down to week of course. College Performance Indicators 2022-23 - Scottish Funding Council (sfc.ac.uk)

Question reference: S6W-27710

Asked by: Paul Sweeney, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 6 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will ensure that all mental health hospitals and the State Hospital, Carstairs, have supplies of Samaritans freepost envelopes available to patients.

The Scottish Government is working closely with Samaritans Scotland, as one of our key partners driving the delivery of the suicide prevention Creating Hope Together strategy, to better understand help seeking behaviour and increase signposting to local and national support. We recognise that there may be benefits for some mental health patients in accessing Samaritans’ listening services alongside NHS care.

At present, Samaritans provide pre-printed freepost envelopes in prison settings as part of their broader work to support people in prisons. However, while there is no specific scheme to provide pre-marked envelopes within hospitals, any individual can write to them for free by marking an envelope “FREEPOST SAMARITANS LETTERS”.

Samaritans can also be contacted 24/7 by phone for free on 116 123 and by email at Jo@samaritans.org. They aim to respond to all emails within 24 hours.

We will continue to work alongside Samaritans Scotland to support any plans to further promote and expand access to its listening services within the NHS estate.

Question reference: S6W-27877

Asked by: Paul O'Kane, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 6 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to the introduction and operation of Carer Support Payment, whether it has made an assessment of the potential merits of taking steps to prevent the accumulation of debt among carers in receipt of Carer's Allowance in Scotland due to (a) delayed investigation and (b) non-investigation of overpayment alerts.

We have taken on board lessons from Carer’s Allowance in designing Carer Support Payment to better prevent overpayments. Information on earnings rules and when to report changes are much clearer. We are making better use of the ability to average out carers’ earnings, and using data from HMRC and scheduled reviews for self-employed carers to check and track carers’ earnings. Our systems use automated decision making for the most straightforward applications, allowing more time and resource to focus on complex cases and earnings processes. We pay Carer Support Payment four weekly in arrears as standard, reducing the potential for overpayments by allowing more time for a change of circumstances to be reported and reflected in a carer’s award. As part of the case transfer process, we also have processes in place to check earnings once carer’s awards are in payment to reduce the risk of inheriting existing overpayments. We are continuing to take feedback from carers and stakeholders to consider how we can continue to improve our earnings processes.