Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, what proportion of civil servants on temporary contracts in his Department are women.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
The Scotland Office has no civil servants on temporary contracts.
Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, what proportion of SCS2 civil servants on full-time equivalent contracts in his Department are women.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
The Scotland Office has only one SCS2 post which is not currently held by a woman.
Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, how many contracts for polling public attitudes his Department has commissioned in Scotland in each of the last three years; and how many of those polls included questions on the (i) constitutional settlement of Scotland and (ii) Scottish independence.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
The Office has not commissioned any contracts for polling public attitudes in Scotland in the last three years.
Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, how many staff were employed in his Department who were based in (a) London and (b) Scotland on (i) September 2020 and (ii) 1 April in each year from 2015 to 2020.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
The Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland does not employ staff directly. All staff that join do so on an assignment, loan or secondment from other government bodies; principally the Scottish Government and the Ministry of Justice, who remain the employers.
Staff on assignment, loan or secondment from other government bodies to the Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland were based as follows:
Date | London | Scotland |
31 March 2015 | 27 | 44 |
31 March 2016 | 35 | 41 |
31 March 2017 | 34 | 38 |
31 March 2018 | 32 | 42 |
31 March 2019 | 40 | 45 |
31 March 2020 | 34 | 47 |
31 August 2020* | 37 | 48 |
*Data provided from 31 August as nearest recorded information held to the requested dates.
Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, how much his Department spent on salaries for staff based in (a) Scotland and (b) London in each of the last five financial years.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
The Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland spend on salaries for staff based in Scotland and London in each of the last five financial years is shown below:
| 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 |
| £000 | £000 | £000 | £000 | £000 |
Scotland | 2,137 | 2,326 | 2,309 | 2,690 | 2,849 |
London | 1,612 | 1,708 | 1,817 | 2,016 | 2,421 |
Total | 3,749 | 4,034 | 4,126 | 4,706 | 5,270 |
Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, what the absence rate was for staff of his Department based in (a) Scotland and (b) London in each of the last five financial years.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
The Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland does not employ staff directly, all staff that join do so on an assignment, loan or secondment from other government bodies, who remain the employer. All absence is reported to and recorded by the parent employers, who retain and manage the detailed absence data relevant to their staff.
Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, what proportion of the cost of the recent refit of Queen Elizabeth House was borne by (a) his Department and (b) HM Treasury.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
HMRC is responsible for the construction and fit out of Queen Elizabeth House which will house nearly 3,000 civil servants from over 13 UKG departments.
My department will be responsible for part of the overall running costs of the building, supported by funding from HM Treasury as part of our annual settlement.
Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, when he plans to respond to the letter from the hon. Member for Edinburgh East of 25 July 2019 requesting a meeting with the Secretary of State.
Answered by Alister Jack - Secretary of State for Scotland
My office has been in touch on the matters raised in the honourable Member’s letter.
Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, what the cost was of his Department's communications team in 2016-17; and what the projected costs are for 2017-18.
Answered by David Mundell
The communications team in the Scotland Office is resourced to enable effective engagement and communication with the public on matters relating to the UK Government. This includes supporting communications and engagement from the Secretary of State for Scotland and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State on Scotland’s constitutional arrangements, including the delivery and implementation of significant new tax and welfare powers associated with the Scotland Act 2016. More recently, the Department has undertaken significant engagement on the UK Government’s approach to EU Exit, meeting and feeding information directly to the UK negotiating team from a large number of businesses and organisations across a wide variety of sectors. The team also supports all UK Government departments in their communications activities in Scotland. The cost of the communications team at the Scotland Office was £686,166.29 in 2016-17. In 2017-8 we expect the cost to be £774,567.