- Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of reports of some women who experience significant delays to their ovarian cancer treatment seeking private treatment in England, what agreement is in place between NHS boards to help address this.
Answer
Formal multidisciplinary processes have been established for second opinions regarding treatment between the regional cancer centres, when required. Boards can explore the option of referral to other boards to facilitate earlier surgical dates where they feel clinically necessary.
- Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to move towards surgery for ovarian cancer patients being undertaken after three cycles of chemotherapy, for those being treated with neoadjuvant regime, in light of its previously reported commitment to achieve this by April-June 2024.
Answer
Jenni Minto: NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have and are continuing to take action to simplify scheduling of these complex cases. They have advised that achieving surgery within three cycles of chemotherapy for this patient group remains a Board priority. There is an improvement plan in place to achieve this, with actions being closely monitored.
Ongoing improvement work includes:
- Early access to radiology scanning
- Multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meeting one week after scan results
- Efficient scheduling of colorectal input for joint surgery cases
- Additional colorectal surgical time being allocated to work with gynaecology oncology team
- Maximum use of protected 14 weekly theatre sessions
NHSGGC has advised that the number of patients receiving more than three cycles of chemotherapy while waiting surgery has significantly decreased.
- Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to undertake a review of current ovarian cancer surgery provision, and, if not, how it plans to address the reported concerns about access to ovarian cancer surgery without undertaking such a review.
Answer
The Scottish Government is not planning to review ovarian cancer surgery provision nationally at this time as we see improvements following positive action taken by regional cancer networks and NHS Boards. The Scottish Government continues to monitor the improvement activities and support progress in improving overall care for patients experiencing ovarian cancer.
According to the most recent published data (October-December 2024), 98.4% of women are receiving their first treatment for ovarian cancer within 31 days of a decision to treat. The maximum wait during this quarter was 43 days, a decrease from 90 days in the same quarter in 2023. This includes a range of treatments, such as surgery.
I will be meeting with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde board members and clinicians in September to seek further clarity in terms of progress they have made. Officials continue to seek regular updates from all the regional cancer networks on the improvement work being undertaken.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 06 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Angela Constance on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to recover the £5 million reportedly owed in unpaid confiscation orders.
Answer
When a confiscation order is made, payment of the order is supervised by the court. Where payment is not made within the time specified by the court, further action to recover the outstanding balance can be taken by the courts.
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 06 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Angela Constance on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will publish an annual update on unpaid confiscation orders and any enforcement action taken.
Answer
The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) publish the Courts Data Scotland bulletin on a quarterly basis, which provides national level information on confiscation order penalties.
- Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 04 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that people with palliative care needs, who do not want to die in hospital, are not admitted to hospital unnecessarily.
Answer
The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that everyone who needs it can access high-quality palliative care that is right for their circumstances.
Through our upcoming palliative care strategy, we will promote person-centred future care planning. Future care planning is important for people of all ages living with long-term conditions, disabilities, frailty in older age or rare conditions, as well as people with life shortening conditions. A future care plan summarises what matters to the individual and has key information for staff providing urgent or emergency care about the person, their health and care. Planning ahead can help people manage or avoid crisis situations and improve experiences of urgent or emergency health and social care, as well as avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions.
The strategy will be published alongside a delivery plan, which will set out our approach to ensuring that everyone who needs it can access timely palliative care and care around dying.
- Asked by: Russell Findlay, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-37209 by Shona Robison on 12 May 2025, in light of this information being sought via a parliamentary question and not via a Freedom of Information request, whether it will provide the information requested regarding how much it has spent on advertising in (a) national and (b) local newspapers, broken down by title, in each of the last five years, and for what reason it considers that exemptions under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 apply to parliamentary questions.
Answer
We acknowledge there was an error in sharing an FOI response to S6W-37209 on 12 May 2025.
The information requested is highly commercially sensitive and therefore we are unable to provide the expenditure broken down by newspaper title, as requested.
As per the initial response, disclosure of this information would materially disadvantage the Scottish Government contractor. Providing the specific expenditure for a newspaper or outlet would potentially allow competitors of the media buying agency to calculate the rates negotiated by the appointed media buying agency who work on behalf of the Scottish Government. It would also impact the newspaper titles involved as their competitors (other newspaper titles) would be able to work out the rates they are selling at.
Please see the advertising spend for press, for the last five years, outlined below.
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| To be published on 19 June |
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Angela Constance on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what guidance it has issued to Police Scotland on the recording of sex and gender in criminal justice processes.
Answer
The Office of the Chief Statistician published guidance for public bodies in Scotland on the collection of data on sex and gender in 2021. The Scottish Government has committed to reviewing this guidance on collecting data on sex and gender by the end of 2026. The Scottish Government has not issued other specific guidance to Police Scotland on the recording of sex and gender in criminal justice processes. These are operational matters for the Chief Constable, who is responsible for ensuring compliance with legal obligations and for maintaining accurate and consistent recording practices.
- Asked by: Sharon Dowey, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 09 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Gillian Martin on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether it has considered any legislative or policy options to address the reported legal and regulatory challenges posed by "ownerless" contaminated sites like Tarbolton Moss landfill site.
Answer
Scottish Government officials continue to consider the issue of ownership at Tarbolton Moss, engaging with partners, including South Ayrshire Council and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).
There are provisions in the Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations 2012 and the Landfill (Scotland) Regulations 2003 to require companies to make adequate financial provisions for landfill aftercare, and this requirement will also be included in the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025. However, in the case of Tarbolton Moss the company was dissolved without any such funds remaining.
Officials continue to work with SEPA to understand how this occurred to ensure that the risk for similar future scenarios is minimised.
Furthermore, to minimise risk of further site abandonment, we continue to work closely with local authorities and commercial operators to examine challenges faced before the commencement of the ban on landfilling biodegradable municipal waste on 31 December 2025.
- Asked by: Ariane Burgess, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Green Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 06 June 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 16 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the reported delays in implementing the mandatory remote electronic monitoring requirements and tackling illegal discarding, how it is managing any risks to Scotland's global reputation for quality and sustainable seafood.
Answer
There are no delays with the implementation of Scotland’s mandatory remote electronic monitoring requirements for fishing vessels. The scallop requirements are in force, and the pelagic requirements are due to come into force as planned on 7 March 2026.
Under existing legislation fishing vessels are required to record and land all quota species of fish unless subject to a permitted exemption. Our Future Catching Policy is intended to improve on the current requirements and we will be consulting on relevant improvements to technical standards later this year. Fishing vessels are subject to a wide range of rules and regulations which support them to fish responsibly and sustainably and which help to safeguard Scotland’s reputation in the international marketplace.
