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: S6O-04650

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 May 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 14 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions it has had with Police Scotland in relation to its policy on the recording of non-crime hate incidents.

Question reference: S6O-04613

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 April 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to figures showing that farm incomes are at a five-year low.

Question reference: S6W-36030

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 21 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 4 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-35531 by Richard Lochhead on 18 March 2025, what steps it has taken to measure progress towards meeting the targets set out in its 2021 document, A Strategy for Space in Scotland.

2021’s A Strategy for Space in Scotland is a document jointly owned between industry, government and academia, and sets out the goal of achieving a £4 billion market share of the global space market and creating over 20,000 jobs in the sector by 2030.

The Scottish Government regularly engages key partners across the space eco-system to discuss sector growth and the economic progress of the sector is monitored against the UK Space Agency’s Size and Health of the Space Industry report, which is published annually.

Question reference: S6W-36029

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 21 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 4 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-35531 by Richard Lochhead on 18 March 2025, whether it remains committed to all of the targets set out in its 2021 document, A Strategy for Space in Scotland.

Question reference: S6O-04540

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 26 March 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what action it is taking to increase house building.

Question reference: S6F-03944

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 24 March 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 27 March 2025

To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to reduce waiting times for children and adolescents for the diagnosis of autism and ADHD.

Question reference: S6W-35530

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 07 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 18 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made with the development of the SaxaVord and Sutherland spaceports, and whether it is its understanding that the business sector plans to consolidate around a single launch location.

For progress on SaxaVord and Sutherland Spaceports, I refer the member to the answers to questions S6W-34559 and S6W-34600 on 6 March 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Government is supportive of multiple launch locations, which increase Scotland's offering to the global market, add resilience to the Scottish launch sector and increase the chances of delivering economic benefits to local communities.

Question reference: S6W-35531

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 07 March 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 18 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to facilitate the development of domestic space launch capabilities, and the growth of associated business sectors.

The delivery of domestic launch capability would close the last link in the end-to-end space value chain. This would allow the manufacture, launch and exploitation of small satellite data all to take place in Scotland and give the sector a unique offering to the global market.

This is something long recognised by the Scottish Government and is why we worked in collaboration with industry and academia to develop the jointly owned “A Strategy for Space in Scotland”. Published in 2021, this document sets out the ambitions for the sector regarding delivery of launch capability and facilitating wider growth of the Scottish space eco-system.

Question reference: S6W-34600

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 07 February 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 6 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the latest information that it has on the progress of the SaxaVord spaceport.

The Scottish Government are supportive of SaxaVord Spaceport and their efforts toward reaching their first launch, which is currently understood to be later this year. This milestone will contribute significantly to Scotland’s launch ambitions and deliver end-to-end capability for the sector in Scotland.

The Scottish Government maintain regular contact with Saxavord Spaceport, however, as a private enterprise, the spaceport is responsible for managing its own communications and disclosures.

Question reference: S6W-34597

Asked by: Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 07 February 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 6 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether Scotland can only be an influential responsible artificial intellegence (AI) regulator if it succeeds in attracting people to, and growing, the domestic AI sector.

Although the regulation of AI as a technology is unfortunately reserved to Westminster, Scotland can and has indeed been taking action for years to influence the national and global development of AI in a responsible way that reflects Scottish values. The purpose of Scotland’s 2021 AI Strategy is to make Scotland a leader in the development and use of trustworthy, ethical and inclusive AI. The actions to deliver this vision include multiple, complementary interventions from education, with our foundational Living with AI course, supporting our business ecosystem, with the AI Playbook geared towards SMEs, and collaboration, through forums like the monthly public sector AI Taskforce and a strong public engagement programme led by the AI Alliance. Scotland’s position globally continues to be influential with Scotland being the first country to mandate a public sector AI Register and our unique Children and AI programme, which was featured in the brochure of last month’s AI Action Summit in Paris, the most important and selective global AI event since 2023 – and to which the Head of the Scottish AI Alliance was also invited. We engage closely with the UK Government to influence UK AI Policy, and internationally though membership of multilaterals such as the Disruptive and Emerging Technology Alliance (https://detalliance.com/).