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-12625

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 29 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 12 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the progress being made by the Lord Justice Clerk's Review Governance Group.

The Lady Dorrian Review Governance Group has met on six occasions since it was established in December 2021 facilitating cross justice sector consideration of the Review's recommendations. The Governance Group established four working groups to conduct detailed consideration of a number of recommendations made by the Review. Three of the working groups have now concluded and their findings have been considered and endorsed by the Governance Group. The findings and recommendations of those working groups will be published in December 2022.

Question reference: S6W-12707

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 12 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many short-term lets licences have been approved since 1 October 2022, broken down by local authority.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022 requires licensing authorities to maintain and publish a public register of short-term let licences on their website, or other website established for that purpose. The register is required to include a note of the kind and terms of each licence granted by the licensing authority, as well as other information set out in paragraph 13 of Schedule 2 of the Licensing Order.

Licensing authorities are also required to share content of their public register with the Scottish Government on a quarterly basis for statistical analysis purposes. We expect to receive the first quarterly return for processing and analysis early in the new year. This initial return will include data relating to the number of short-term let licence applications received by 31 December 2022, and the status of those applications.

Question reference: S6W-12801

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 December 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 12 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many island communities impact assessments it has carried out since the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 was passed, broken down by year.

Question reference: S6W-12541

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 9 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether there is any duty on those operating in Scotland or its waters to report gas escapes, and if this is the case, what the threshold escape volume of CO2-equivalent gas for reporting is, in light of The Guardian article from 8 November 2022, World’s ‘most potent greenhouse gas’ escaped during work on UK windfarm.

Question reference: S6W-12542

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 9 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many incidents have been recorded of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) escaping from (a) onshore and (b) offshore power generation sites in each of the last three years.

The Scottish Government does not hold recorded information on the number of leakage incidents of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) from onshore and offshore power generation sites that have been recorded in the last three years.

The Scottish Government is aware of the impact of this potent greenhouse gas on the environment and of the risk of leakage incidents. We are currently working with the UK and Welsh Governments to review the F-gas Regulation. We have already done a retrospective assessment of the Regulation and will publish an assessment report on the findings in the coming weeks.

Following the report, we will jointly consider policy options to ensure our regulations continue to support our ambitious Net Zero targets. As part of this, we will also consider other important issues including leakage. We expect to publish a joint consultation on these future policy proposals in due course.

Question reference: S6O-01687

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 December 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 14 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government when it last met Orkney Islands Council regarding the Scottish Budget 2023-24 and what issues were discussed.

Question reference: S6W-12622

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 28 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 7 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what its plans are to progress the introduction of a specialist court for hearing sexual offence cases, and what its proposed timescale is for doing this.

The proposal to establish a specialist sexual offences court as recommended by the Lady Dorrian Review remains under consideration. In delivering against our commitment to give serious consideration to the Review’s recommendations we have consulted with stakeholders and the public on proposals to establish a specialist court and have convened a Working Group which brings together partners from across the justice system to give detailed consideration to proposals for implementing a specialist court.

Both the independent analysis of consultation responses and the Working Group’s findings are expected to be published in the coming weeks and will inform our decision on whether to proceed with proposals to establish a specialist sexual offences court, although I am unable to provide a specific timescale for this.

Question reference: S6W-12313

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 5 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the Clyde Catamaran Group regarding its Scottish ferry shipbuilding strategy.

Question reference: S6W-12312

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 5 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the Clyde Catamaran Group regarding the procurement of new vessels for Orkney and Shetland's internal ferry services.

Question reference: S6W-12180

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 5 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many ChargePlace Scotland EV charging stations have not been operational in each month of the current contract, broken down by local authority area.

The most robust method for reporting ChargePlace Scotland (CPS) operational performance across the current contract to-date is by presenting the average daily number of non-operational charge point units. The following table provides a monthly breakdown of this information across the entire ChargePlace Scotland network under the current contract. The transitional period immediately after the migration to the current operator focused on network stabilisation, including resolving technical issues across the network, hence the disparity in operational performance in the months of August and September.

Most faults on the network are short-lived and in the majority of cases require no physical intervention by an engineer.

The Scottish Government do not currently hold this information by Local Authority area. However, CPS has recently published a new Network Performance page on the website which will be continuously updated with detailed information on the performance of the public charging network, such as uptime by Local Authority area.

Month	Number of charge points	Total daily number of non-operational charge points
August 2021	1760	366
September 2021	2065	136
October 2021	2101	79
November 2021	2126	136
December 2021	2148	90
January 2022	2168	118
February 2022	2216	96
March 2022	2227	73
April 2022	2249	124
May 2022	2268	96
June 2022	2284	126
July 2022	2319	68
August 2022	2363	108
September 2022	2389	44
October 2022	2388	76