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-39600

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 13 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what enforcement notices or other regulatory actions the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has issued in relation to the Mossmorran natural gas liquids plant since 1 January 2022, and what remedial steps were required in each case.

Question reference: S6W-39607

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 31 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 13 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what contingency arrangements it has in place to support households that are reliant on (a) heating oil and (b) liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in the event of supply disruptions during winter 2025-26.

Question reference: S6W-39595

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 11 August 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 8 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government when its ministers last met with (a) Shell UK Limited, (b) ExxonMobil, (c) the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and (d) the Health and Safety Executive to discuss the Mossmorran complex, and what issues were discussed on each occasion.

Question reference: S6W-39597

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 11 August 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 8 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has received on which upstream fields supply feedstock directly to the Mossmorran natural gas liquids plant, and how many tonnes each field supplied in financial years (a) 2022-23, (b) 2023-24, (c) 2024-25 and (d) 2025 to date.

Question reference: S6W-39603

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 6 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many domestic properties rely on (a) heating oil and (b) liquefied petroleum gas as their primary heating fuel, broken down by local authority area.

The most recently available Local Authority analysis from the Scottish House Condition Survey (SHCS) is from 2017 to 2019

Table 1 shows the estimated number of dwellings that use heating oil, or LPG as their primary heating fuel, broken down by Local Authority.

Table 1: Estimated number of households using LPG and Oil as primary heating fuel 2017-19.

	LPG	Oil	Total Households
Aberdeen City	*	[c]	108,000
Aberdeenshire	3,000	26,000	111,000
Angus	2,000	5,000	54,000
Argyll and Bute	2,000	6,000	42,000
Clackmannanshire	*	0	24,000
Dumfries and Galloway	2,000	13,000	70,000
Dundee City	[c]	[c]	70,000
East Ayrshire	[c]	2,000	55,000
East Dunbartonshire	*	*	46,000
East Lothian	*	2,000	46,000
East Renfrewshire	[c]	*	39,000
Edinburgh, City of	[c]	1,000	236,000
Na h-Eileanan Siar	1,000	6,000	13,000
Falkirk	*	1,000	72,000
Fife	*	4,000	168,000
Glasgow City	[c]	[c]	293,000
Highland	3,000	26,000	109,000
Inverclyde	1,000	[c]	38,000
Midlothian	1,000	1,000	39,000
Moray	1,000	7,000	43,000
North Ayrshire	*	1,000	64,000
North Lanarkshire	[c]	2,000	152,000
Orkney Islands	[c]	4,000	10,000
Perth and Kinross	2,000	9,000	68,000
Renfrewshire	[c]	[c]	86,000
Scottish Borders	1,000	7,000	54,000
Shetland Islands	*	3,000	10,000
South Ayrshire	1,000	4,000	52,000
South Lanarkshire	1,000	6,000	146,000
Stirling	1,000	2,000	39,000
West Dunbartonshire	*	*	43,000
West Lothian	*	1,000	78,000
Scotland	25,000	139,000	2,479,000

Notes

1.The SHCS is a sample survey and therefore all figures are estimates which lie at the midpoint of a confidence interval which depends primarily on sample size.

2.A * indicates suppression has been applied where the base sample is too small to report (below 30 cases) or the estimate represents 2 or fewer sampled households.

3.A [c] indicates 0 sampled cases.

4.Figures may not sum due to rounding.

The Scottish Government publishes local authority analysis using a three-year pooled data set from the SHCS, to ensure sufficient sample sizes. As set out in the Scottish House Condition Survey 2023 Key Findings Report (available at Scottish House Condition Survey: 2023 Key Findings - gov.scot) the lack of SHCS data for 2020 and the enforced changes for 2021 means that the next set of local authority estimates will be for the 2022 to 2024 period, scheduled for publication in early 2026.

Question reference: S6W-39605

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 31 July 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 28 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what representations it has made to the UK Government regarding (a) the regulation of prices and (b) supply chains for (i) heating oil and (ii) liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) serving rural communities in Scotland since 1 January 2020, and what response it has received.

Question reference: S6W-38835

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 June 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 18 July 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many tonnes of waste it has directly generated in each of the last five financial years; how many tonnes of this waste were sent to landfill; how many tonnes it estimates it will generate in 2026, and how many tonnes of this waste it estimates will be sent to England from January 2026.

The Core Scottish Government reports the following figures for waste generated by its operations across premises over the past five financial years:

2019-2020: 1,497 tonnes total waste , includes 92.76 tonnes of landfilled waste
2020-2021: 867 tonnes total waste, includes 128.94 tonnes of landfilled waste
2021-2022: 1,648 tonnes total waste, includes 136.72. tonnes of landfilled waste
2022-2023: 1,760 tonnes total waste, includes 69.28 tonnes of landfilled waste
2023-2024: 1,127 tonnes total waste , includes 58.61 tonnes of landfilled waste

No landfilled waste was sent to England during this period.

The Core Scottish Government does not forecast future waste generation. Waste data is reported retrospectively after the end of each financial year.

The Core Scottish Government remains committed to reducing all forms of waste across its operations and continues to implement measures to improve sustainability and resource efficiency.

Question reference: S6W-38832

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 26 June 2025
Current Status: Answered by Claire Baker (on behalf of the SPCB) on 16 July 2025

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how much waste generated by the Scottish Parliament will be transported to England once the Scottish Government's landfill ban comes into effect at the end of 2025, and what excess carbon dioxide will be generated as a result.

Currently no waste generated by the Scottish Parliament is sent to landfill. General waste is sent to the Viridor Energy Recovery Centre in Dunbar and food waste is sent to the Anaerobic digestion centre at Millerhill. Other materials such as paper and glass are recycled. We expect this to remain the same when the Scottish Government's landfill ban comes into effect at the end of 2025. Carbon emissions from all waste processing including recycling are included in our Sustainable Development Annual Report.

Question reference: S6W-38657

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 June 2025
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 3 July 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the potential impact of its amendment to the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, to reduce the threshold at which provisions apply to land from 3,000 hectares to 1,000 hectares, on the (a) likely number of sales and transfers of land and (b) costs to rural businesses.

Amendment 38 to the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, agreed to by the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee at Stage 2, lowered the threshold in relation to the land which community engagement obligations (the primary of these being the land management plans) may be imposed from 3,000 to 1,000 hectares. This aligns the thresholds for these provisions with those for the pre-notification and transfer test provisions, which relate to transfers of land. The threshold for pre-notification and transfer test provisions were already set at 1,000 hectares at Bill introduction.

To understand the impact of all the Bill's proposals on businesses, the Scottish Government conducted a Scottish firms impact test, involving engagement with landowners, land agents and representative organisations of land-based businesses. The assessment of the potential impacts of the Bill provisions applying to land over 1,000 hectares on a) transfers of land and b) costs for rural businesses can be found in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill - Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment.

Question reference: S6W-38653

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 12 June 2025
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 26 June 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether any consultation with the financial services sector was undertaken during the development of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill.

The Scottish Government undertook a range of consultation to develop the proposals in the Bill. Engagement with landowners and wider stakeholders is set out in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill - Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment and the results of our public consultation is set out in our 5. Regulating the market in large-scale land transfers: a new Public Interest Test, and a requirement to notify an intention to sell - Land reform in a Net Zero nation: consultation analysis - gov.scot

As part of further development during Stage 1, consultation was undertaken with a range of stakeholders including the following bodies:

UK Infrastructure Bank (now National Wealth Fund)
Scottish National Investment Bank
Scottish Futures Trust

This engagement highlighted the importance of clarity for both landowners and lenders on the timescales and decision process for the transfer test provisions in the Bill. Amendments have now been agreed by the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee at Stage 2 which will introduce timescales for Ministerial transfer test decisions and place a duty on Ministers to publish guidance on the process.