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-32502

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its plans to develop advice and support services for community food redistribution projects; what services have been developed; where they have been deployed, and which projects have benefited from them.

Zero Waste Scotland has carried out a mapping of the redistribution landscape in Scotland, including analysis of the challenges and barriers facing redistribution activities and engagement with stakeholders on the potential solutions and support needs.

We also remain committed to consulting on the Scottish Government’s proposals for an obligation for food retail sites over a certain size to ensure that they redistribute edible products in due course that will inform the development and scope of what an advice and support service for community redistribution projects could deliver and how.

Question reference: S5W-32496

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how business advice and support services to identify and demonstrate the value of food waste to the hospitality sector have been expanded since 2019.

Requests for assessments under the Food Waste Reduction Business Support Service have significantly reduced compared to the previous year due to the impact of COVID-19.

However next year we hope to increase the support to the hospitality sector, increasing opportunities for staff training and providing more bespoke support in measuring and monitoring of waste, supporting behaviour change. The advice and support service will offer support to non-SMEs, whereas in previous years support was SME-focused.

Question reference: S5W-32509

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 13 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its planned 2020 review of its national litter strategy, Towards A Litter-Free Scotland: A Strategic Approach To Higher Quality Local Environments.

Towards a litter free Scotland was reviewed in 2019-20 by a steering group of organisations. The key findings were as follows:

The focus should move to a more holistic approach, tackling throwaway culture by setting prevention within the context of the circular economy and linking to wider policy areas such as marine litter, climate change and biodiversity loss.
Improving the collection and use of data is vital to inform action and measure the impacts.
Future work should be led by a steering group to ensure ownership by a range of stakeholders, reflecting the need to work together across geography and sectors.

Further work on the review is planned for 2021 and will take into account the impacts of COVID-19 on littering and littering behaviours.

Question reference: S5W-32948

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 02 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how much has been allocated to Scottish Enterprise’s research and development budget in the current fiscal year; on what date this budget was approved, and how it compares with the equivalent budget in each of the last five years.

Question reference: S5W-32910

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 30 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 13 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-32549 by Michael Matheson on 29 October 2020, whether it will provide the information requested regarding what date it last met representatives of the aviation industry.

Question reference: S5W-32636

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 October 2020
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 12 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the progress of the Scottish Youth Guarantee and when young people will begin to be supported by this scheme; how much money has been spent on the scheme since it was announced; how many (a) young people have received assistance from the scheme, (b) young people have been consulted about the scheme since it was announced, (c) jobs have been created by the scheme and (d) civil servants are working on the scheme, including what this represents as a percentage of the staffing capacity of its economy directorate.

The Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Fair Work and Culture set out further details on how the Young Person's Guarantee would be delivered, including details on the £60m of additional funding and how young people would be supported, in her statement to Parliament on 5 November.

The Scottish Government is supporting the commitment set out by Sandy Begbie, that within 2 years every 16-24 year old in Scotland will either be in paid employment for a period of between 12 and 24 months, enrolled in education, actively involved on an apprenticeship or training programme, or engaged on a formal volunteering or supported activity programme. As the Guarantee includes a range of existing interventions and will include new offers it is not yet possible to aggregate the total number of young people who have received support.

The Scottish Government has engaged young people and the organisations who represent them on an ongoing basis. We published the reports from the work Young Scot and Intercultural Youth Scotland took forward alongside our implementation plan.

A range of employers have already signalled their willingness to support the Young Person’s Guarantee such as Cap Gemini, SSE, Lothian Health Board and the Scottish Government. We will continue to build broad support by engaging with a range of stakeholders including employers, young people, Unions and third sector organisations.

In order to support the delivery of the Young Person's Guarantee a new Division has been created in the Economy Directorate. The division currently has 24 members of staff who are coordinating the work to support the Guarantee across the Scottish Government and its agencies as well as supporting other related areas of policy, including Developing the Young Workforce, Apprenticeships and Careers Information Advice and Guidance.

Question reference: S5W-32946

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 02 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 12 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many training courses to develop the skills required for energy efficiency and low-carbon heat have been available across colleges in Scotland in each of the last five years, and what targeted funding has been made available to support each course in each year.

The latest data available are from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and go up to and including the academic year 2018-19 and pre-date the establishment of new funding streams designed to support the green recovery from the Coronavirus pandemic. The data cover training relating to energy or low carbon sectors.

	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19
No of courses (colleges only)	76	71	77	86	90
No of students (FE and HE)	1,447	1,363	1,693	1,759	2,038
Funding*	£3,130,052	£3,013,065	£2,395,131	£2,194,101	£2,352,639

*From SFC and based on credit delivery to these students and note this includes HE and FE.

The data in the table therefore do not include spend in 2019-20 or our recent commitments in 2020-21 to:

• An initial £25 million National Training Transition Fund to provide retraining opportunities for people who have lost their jobs or are at risk of doing so;

• A £60 million Youth Guarantee , so every young person aged between 16 and 24 will be guaranteed an opportunity at university or college, an apprenticeship programme, employment including work experience, or participating in a formal volunteering programme. This will be backed by additional funding for apprenticeships and the new Job Start Grant ;

• Our £100 million Green Jobs fund , investing alongside a range of sectors - such as manufacturing, tech, and land based organisations - to support new and increased opportunities for green job creation across Scotland; and

• Doubling of the Flexible Workforce Development Fund to £20m - enabling employers to access up to £15,000 each to address skills gaps in their workforce

Question reference: S5W-32197

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 September 2020
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 11 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of food waste reduction measures identified by Zero Waste Scotland through stakeholder workshops as part of the Food Waste Reduction Action Plan, and which of these measures are yet to be implemented.

The measures identified and committed to under the four action areas of the Food Waste Reduction Action Plan represent the outcome of the stakeholder workshops delivered by Zero Waste Scotland. The environmental and economic benefits of food waste prevention remain as important as ever as we deal with, and recover from, COVID-19 and a full review of progress against the commitments in the Food Waste Reduction Action Plan will be published in 2021.

Question reference: S5W-32944

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 02 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 11 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the loans issued under the SME Loan Scheme to aid energy efficiency measures, (a) how many loans have been issued and (b) what the total value of (i) issued and (ii) repaid loans has been in each year since it launched.

Since the launch of the SME Loan Scheme in its current form in 2013, 594 loans have been paid to aid businesses to implement energy efficiency measures.

SME Energy Efficiency loan paid number and value by FY budgets as at 30 th September 2020

Financial year	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 - to 30 Sep 20
Number of loans paid	35	63	55	53	79	153	139	17
Value of loans paid	£1,063,128	£1,177,773	£1,289,009	£910,486	£1,850,520	£2,662,054	£2,286,498	£248,278

SME Energy Efficiency loan repayment values received by FY as at 30 th September 2020

Financial year	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 year to 30 Sep 20
Value of loan repayments	£1,697,797	£1,869,548	£2,077,224	£2,069,221	£2,147,396	£2,101,442	£1,999,249	£658,943

These figures represent energy efficiency loans only and do not include loans which have been legally committed in 2020-21 but have yet to be drawn down.

This scheme builds on earlier support, as set out in our Energy Efficient Scotland Route map published in 2018, where at that point - including previous incarnations since 2008 - the SME Loan Scheme had financed over 800 projects resulting in financial savings of over £36 million.

Question reference: S5W-32947

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 02 November 2020
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 11 November 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of the funding awarded through the Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme (LCITP) since 2015, and what the (a) outcomes have been and (b) current status is of each funded project.

Year	Total (£m)
2020-21	£37.8
2019-20	£35.8
2018-19	£36.2
2017-18	£24.5
2016-17	£21.0