Chamber and committees

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-06072

Asked by: Colin Smyth, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 25 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to bring forward any new incentives for land managers in relation to deer management.

Work to improve the sustainability of Scotland’s deer management systems, including recommendations made by the Deer Working Group, will be taken forward under the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy.

Priorities will be broadly split across four streams: legislation; regulation; incentives; and operational delivery. The work stream focusing on incentives will include proposals to mainstream deer management into existing schemes, and scope for any new schemes.

We will lay out further details of this work in due course.

Question reference: S6W-06076

Asked by: Paul Sweeney, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 25 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what recent engagement it has had with HM Treasury on reducing VAT charges on (a) general building renovations and conversions and (b) listed building renovations and conversions.

The then Housing Minister, Mr Stewart, wrote to the UK Government in March 2021 to raise this issue, but the response received from HM Treasury suggested this would be prohibitively expensive to VAT receipts. Whilst cost is clearly a consideration, we believe this alone should not dictate policy decisions and that the changes suggested would help communities retain existing - often historic - buildings. This would also contribute towards our net-zero ambitions by reducing the emissions caused by demolition and new construction, which benefits from lower VAT rates.

Question reference: S6W-06066

Asked by: Colin Smyth, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 25 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has for new cull targets for deer populations.

As we set out in our 2021 Programme for Government we will: ‘modernise deer management, implementing the recommendations of the Deer Management Working Group.’

The Deer Working Group report includes recommendations relating to cull targets, including those for a cull approval system, and we are working with NatureScot, and other relevant agencies, to progress those recommendations under the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy Programme.

Question reference: S6W-06068

Asked by: Colin Smyth, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 25 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what impact COVID-19 restrictions had on the numbers of deer culled in 2021-22.

Question reference: S6W-06070

Asked by: Colin Smyth, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 25 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government when it will publish an updated deer management strategy to implement the recommendations in the Deer Working Group report.

Question reference: S6W-06416

Asked by: Dean Lockhart, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 25 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government when the proposed National Public Energy Agency will be operational; how many full-time dedicated staff it will employ; what its annual budget will be, and when it anticipates that the virtual agency will move to being a standalone organisation.

As set out in the Scottish Government's A Fairer, Greener Scotland: Programme for Government 2021-22, published on 7 September 2021, we made a commitment to create a National Public Energy Company. We will work to have a virtual agency established this year, and a dedicated physical agency by September 2025. The virtual agency will be in place throughout the transition period until the standalone Agency is in place.

This is an ongoing area of work, and as a first step we launched a consultation in December 2021 which closed on 8 February to help inform development of the design of the new body. Consultation responses are currently being analysed and further details will be released as the work evolves.

Question reference: S6W-06451

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ash Regan on 25 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government when regulations will be laid to bring into force (a) section 1 (dealing with serious harm); (b) section 6 (dealing with publication on a matter of public interest), and (c) section 32 (dealing with the single publication provisions) of the Defamation and Malicious Publication (Scotland) Act 2021.

Question reference: S6W-06235

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ben Macpherson on 25 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how it is working with the Department for Work and Pensions to improve Universal Credit service delivery in order to reduce complaints from service users in Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-06108

Asked by: Tess White, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 25 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the findings of the Centre for Cities report, Cities Outlook 2022, showing that Aberdeen city centre and Dundee city centre lost 39 and 32 weeks of sales, respectively, between March 2020 and September 2021.

The Scottish Government recognises the difficulties facing Scotland’s cities and businesses as a result of the global pandemic as highlighted in the Centre for Cities report. The Scottish Government has provided more than £4.4 billion of business support since March 2020. This includes COVID-19 non-domestic rates reliefs which have saved businesses around £1.6bn in reduced rates bills since 1 April 2020. In addition last year, we awarded £2m directly to our cities through the City Centre Recovery Fund, to kick-start their recovery.

The Omicron variant in late 2021 further impacted on city centre recovery and has exacerbated the economic challenges faced by our city centres and their businesses. As such, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance announced an additional £3m of funding this financial year through the City Centre Recovery Fund on 10 February. These monies will support all seven cities build sustainable recovery for their centres and their businesses and will take forward the priorities of the City Centre Recovery Task Force.

Question reference: S6W-06067

Asked by: Colin Smyth, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 25 February 2022

NatureScot, in their role as Scotland’s deer authority, gather and publish data on annual deer cull returns.

Formal cull return requests are now being issued for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons. The requests were delayed due to difficulties in sending out cull return requests as a result of Covid-19 measures. Once those completed returns have been received annual deer cull returns will then be published.

As the 2021-22 season is ongoing, cull return requests for this year have not yet been issued.