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: S5W-07703

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 06 March 2017
Current Status: Answered by Derek Mackay on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the statement in the publication, On Board: A Guide for Board Members of Public Bodies in Scotland, that it is the responsibility of boards to participate "in shared services and/or collaborative service delivery arrangements", what its position is on boards having the right to refuse to participate in collaborative service delivery arrangements if they deem them to be damaging to their own roles and responsibilities.

Question reference: S5W-07780

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 06 March 2017
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what funding it will provide to the rural economy hub.

Question reference: S5W-07698

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 03 March 2017
Current Status: Answered by Annabelle Ewing on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding it has provided toward supervised bail services in each year since 2007.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-05429 on 14 December 2016. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

Further to the information previously provided, an additional £1.5m has been allocated for distribution amongst the 32 local authorities to support bail services for women in 2017-18.

Question reference: S5W-07781

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 06 March 2017
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government which stakeholders have been notified about the creation of the rural economy hub, and how they will engage with the hub in future.

Question reference: S5W-07778

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 06 March 2017
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what the remit of the rural economy hub is, and what considerations it will give to island communities.

The Rural Economy Hub is an internal Scottish Government mechanism that brings together all parts of Government working in areas that support Scotland's rural economy, and co-ordinates them into a single coherent framework that maximises the impact of policy interventions on the rural economy, and thus the delivery of the Scottish Government's aspirations for rural Scotland.

This co-ordinating mechanism is resourced by officials from within existing resources, with a remit to develop actions which will help to grow economic activity which flows from and directly supports rural communities, including those on the islands, which will benefit from this focused approach.

One of the actions of this work will be engagement with stakeholders on how to build on the current platform and increase the delivery of a strong sustainable rural economy and stakeholders will be asked for their views in due course.

Given that this is an internal mechanism, there are no plans to publish the names of officials who are engaged on the work or any minutes of meetings at this time. However, the Scottish Government is committed to being inclusive and transparent and therefore another action flowing for this Hub will consider how best to ensure that there is a two way flow of information on this important subject.

Question reference: S5W-07642

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 01 March 2017
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions and correspondence it has had with local authorities in the last six months regarding tackling fuel poverty; what agreements were reached, and whether it will publish any correspondence and minutes of meetings on this issue.

The Minister for Local Government and Communities attended the COSLA Housing Convenors Conference on 13 December where, as part of a wide ranging discussion, tackling fuel poverty was discussed.

Scottish Government officials meet regularly with COSLA and Local Authorities to discuss fuel poverty and our programmes. Officials met with COSLA on 20 January and 21 September, no formal record of these meetings was taken. COSLA are also represented on our Scotland’s Energy Efficiency Programme Board which met on
5 September and 14 December and tackling fuel poverty is sometimes discussed at these. A note of these meetings is taken but not published. Minutes can be made available on request if needed.

Officials met with Local Authority officers working on energy efficiency on
12 September. These events are not minuted.

Local Authorities are also represented on the Fuel Poverty Forum which last met on 15 December. The minutes of the December 2016 meeting will be published following sign off by members at the next scheduled meeting on 20 April. Minutes of 2016 meetings are published via the following link

https://beta.gov.scot/groups/fuel-poverty-forum/

The Scottish Government’s consultation on Scotland’s Energy Efficiency Programme runs until 30 May 2017 and the Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies, and Regulation of District Heating is open until 18 April 2018. A series of workshops and events have been held to support this and numerous local authorities have been involved. Tackling fuel poverty has been discussed at these sessions but no minutes have been taken.

Question reference: S5W-07272

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-06417 by Michael Matheson on 3 February 2017, in how many cases a court decision was made to prevent a young offender on remand to be held overnight in an adult prison in each year since 2012.

Question reference: S5W-07275

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-06417 by Michael Matheson on 3 February 2017, how many young offenders on remand have been placed in each prison since 2010, broken down by those being held for (a) up to one night, (b) two to three nights, (c) four to five nights and (d) six or more nights.

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

This information is not readily available on our electronic Prisoner Records System and requires significant resource time to extract this data. Given the quantity of prisoner movements involved in this enquiry, this response covers the 5 year period 2013 to 2017 in the following table.

	2013				2014				2015	2016	2017
	1nt	2-3nt	4-5nt	6+nt	1nt	2-3nt	4-5nt	6+nt	1nt	1nt	1nt
Aberdeen	2	1	1	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Addiewell	8	5	6	27	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Grampian	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	6	7	0
Greenock	4	4	3	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Inverness	0	4	1	5	1	3	2	1	5	6	2
Perth	2	5	3	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Totals	16	19	14	44	1	3	2	1	11	13	2

Question reference: S5W-07232

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-02951 by Fergus Ewing on 3 October 2016, whether it will publish the findings of its analysis, and what subsequent steps it has taken.

The Scottish Government is absolutely committed to supporting food and drink producers from across Scotland, including those located across the islands and regions. The industry leadership body, Scotland Food and Drink, has recently facilitated an extensive engagement exercise with businesses across Scotland to help inform the development of a new national food and drink strategy - as part of that, ideas were sought on actions to further promote island and regional produce. The new strategy will be published soon and, when it is, we will set out our plans for further supporting the industry.

Question reference: S5W-07233

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 15 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answers to questions S5W-00157, S5W-00158, S5W-00159, S5W-00160, S5W-00161 and S5W-00162 by Fergus Ewing on 1 June 2016, whether it will provide an update on (a) what progress is being made with and (b) how it will ensure that organisations, businesses and charities will receive support from, the investment to support island and rural produce that it pledged in the SNP Manifesto for the Islands.