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-07205

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 17 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of grant support options for SME hospitality businesses seeking to fund expansion and growth projects.

Hospitality businesses, like all other businesses, may seek advice on SME funding sources from the Business Gateway ( https://www.bgateway.com/ ) who have a network of offices across Scotland and will tailor the advice dependant on the particular business needs and location. This could include advice on possible grant support in areas such as Research and Development to help bring new ideas to market, on technical and commercial feasibility studies, or on knowledge transfer partnerships with educational institutions. Hospitality businesses can also search the ‘FindBusinessSupport’ portal ( https://findbusinesssupport.gov.scot/ ) which lists all the main sources of advice, training and funding – including the loans and equity funds under the Scottish Growth Scheme - for businesses in any sector.

Question reference: S6W-06851

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 25 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by George Adam on 10 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it records when special advisers are asked to comment on freedom of information requests and, if (a) so, how many times this happened in each of the last three years and (b) not, what the reasons are for its position on this matter.

Our decision-making criteria agreed between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Information Commissioner defines the roles and responsibilities of different parties in relation to FOI request handling, including the role of Special Advisers in providing views and comments and is available here .

Documentation for all FOI requests is held in individual case files. We do not keep a collated record of all cases on which Special Advisers have been asked to comment, since we have no business need to do so.

Question reference: S6W-06696

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 22 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 3 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of the amount spent on initiatives to promote the re-use of electrical waste in each of the last 10 years.

Question reference: S6W-06281

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 1 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on whether a producer registration system has been established for its Deposit Return Scheme, and, if not, when one will be established.

Under the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020, producers must register with SEPA either directly or via a scheme administrator for their products to be sold legally onto the Scottish market. In line with the full implementation date that I announced in my statement to Parliament on 14 December 2021, the window for producers to make such registrations will run from 1 January-28 February 2023.

SEPA’s digital registration service is currently in development and will be online from 1 January 2023 in accordance with the producer registration window.

Question reference: S6W-06418

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether municipal waste incinerators in Scotland are currently required to accurately measure direct CO2 emissions through the use of calibrated flow rates and calibrated CO2 continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS), and, if not, what plans there are to require this, in line with the approach taken by the UK Government Environment Agency.

As per S6W-06417 answered on 28 February 2022 , measurement of CO2 emissions using calibrated flow meters and CEMS is not a current requirement in SEPA permits for existing MWIs.

All SEPA Permits for existing sites must comply with the requirements of the Waste Incineration BAT Conclusions (WI BATCs) by 3 December 2023. SEPA will review Permits for MWIs to ensure they will be compliant by the deadline. This will include the new requirement for a calibrated flow meter.

The calibration of CO2 CEMS is not required by the WI BATCs. However, as part of the BAT review process, SEPA will consider whether to include a requirement for calibration of CEMS for CO2 and reporting of CO2 mass emissions to align with the approach taken by the Environment Agency. Whether or not each MWI has an appropriate CEMS in place which is able to be calibrated for measurement of CO2 will be confirmed during the BAT Review for each Permit.

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

Question reference: S6W-06423

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-05517 by Lorna Slater on 24 January 2022, whether the 27% figure was calculated without accounting for landfill releasing less biogenic CO2 than incineration, and what its position is on this matter.

Question reference: S6W-06419

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of the amount of (a) waste incinerated and (b) electricity exported at each municipal waste incinerator in Scotland in each of the last three years.

Please see a breakdown of the available data for a) and b)

Waste Incinerated and electricity produced at MWIs 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021

1. Waste incinerated by site (Tonnes)

The following data is from Waste Data Returns. Please refer to attached table which notes that the data below is higher for some sites than incinerated tonnages in Annual Reports made under the Permit.

Site	Permit Number	2018	2019	2020	2021*
Lerwick Energy Recovery Plant	PPC/A/1003141	23,054	20,890	22,850	19,037
MVV Environment Baldovie	PPC/A/1003157	94,625	102,819	104,519	160,632
Viridor Dunbar ERF	PPC/A/1032878	41,284	262,138	324,762	320,373
Viridor GRREC	PPC/A/111002		93,340	123,831	98,975
FCC Millerhill	PPC/A/1136072	16,460	142,490	156,654	159,481

Levenseat Renewable Energy Limited is still in commissioning - Site is reporting waste inputs and outputs but no incineration tonnages.

1. Electricity exported to grid (MWh)

Site	Permit Number	2018	2019	2020	2021
Lerwick Energy Recovery Plant	PPC/A/1003141	Nil - Note 1	Nil - Note 1	Nil - Note 1	Nil - Note 1
MVV Environment Baldovie	PPC/A/1003157	Note 2	Note 2	33,800 Note 3	Data is not yet available
Viridor Dunbar ERF	PPC/A/1032878	Note 2	Note 2	224,848	237,524
Viridor GRREC	PPC/A/111002	Note 2	Note 2	46,668	Data is not yet available
FCC Millerhill	PPC/A/1136072	Note 2	Note 2	100,765	103,760

1. Heat recovery plant only.

2. No data held post cyber-attack.

3. Lower figures than 2019 due to operation without steam turbine from October 2021.

4. Levenseat Renewable Energy Limited is still in commissioning and are therefore not required to report this data.

Question reference: S6W-06422

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-05517 by Lorna Slater on 24 January 2022, regarding the estimated 27% lower impact of incineration over landfill, whether it will confirm that this involves an underlying assumption that (a) it is an estimate of historical (circa 2018) impacts rather than current or anticipated climate impacts of incineration, (b) it is based on sending waste directly to landfill with no biostabilisation component, (c) the impact of displaced energy is modelled using the UK grid rather than the relatively more decarbonised Scotland grid and (d) the technical report that contains the 27% estimate acknowledges data gaps in the composition of municipal waste and the energy outputs of energy from waste (EfW) plants.

All the underlying assumptions used in the analysis, including the information requested by the member, are available in the Zero Waste Scotland report The Climate Change Impacts of Burning Municipal Waste in Scotland and the accompanying technical report. Both are available on the Zero Waste Scotland website: The climate change impact of burning municipal waste in Scotland | Zero Waste Scotland .

Question reference: S6W-06417

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 February 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown for the most recent year for which data is available of direct CO2 emissions recorded through calibrated flow rates and calibrated CO2 continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS) from each municipal waste incinerator in Scotland; what proportion of the CO2 was (a) fossil-based and (b) biogenic, and how this split was derived.

There is no requirement for the direct measurements of CO2 via calibrated flow meters and calibrated CO2 CEMS in SEPA permits for municipal waste incinerators (MWI) in Scotland. The requested information is therefore not available either in total, or as a breakdown by proportion derived from fossil fuel and proportion derived from biogenic sources.

Permit holders are however required to report their annual CO2 emissions via the Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory (SPRI) and SEPA can therefore provide this data for the last reported year although this may include CO2 from additional sources to those from the incineration process eg. standby generators. This data can be found in SEPA’s SPRI data tool informatics.sepa.org.uk/SPRI/ . This is usually estimated using emission factors. There is no requirement in SPRI for MWIs to further breakdown their reported CO2 emission data into the proportions derived from fossil fuel or biogenic sources so this data is not available.

Question reference: S6O-00804

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 February 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to promote the welfare of dogs.