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-39556

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Friday, 01 August 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angus Robertson on 20 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, as part of its work to further the case for Scottish independence, what its policy is on whether an independent Scotland would (a) take a share of UK debt in exchange for assets or (b) adopt a position of no shared assets, no shared debt.

Question reference: S6W-39559

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Friday, 01 August 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angus Robertson on 20 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, as part of its work to further the case for Scottish independence, what its policy is on who would represent an independent Scotland in any participation at a G20 summit.

Question reference: S6W-39557

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Friday, 01 August 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angus Robertson on 20 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, as part of its work to further the case for Scottish independence, what its policy is on whether an independent Scotland would seek to join NATO.

Question reference: S6W-39566

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Monday, 28 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jim Fairlie on 19 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, as part of the £2 million made available in its 2025-26 Budget to progress free bus travel for people seeking asylum, how many asylum seekers have accessed free bus travel through this funding to date, and what assessment it has carried out on any potential benefits of this scheme.

The 2025-26 Scottish Budget, which was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 25 February, has funding allocated to provide free bus travel for people seeking asylum. My officials have reconvened the Working Group with Third Sector representatives and other interested parties to work through delivery options for a pilot scheme this financial year.

The pilot will provide free bus travel for those people seeking asylum who are not eligible for the existing statutory free bus travel schemes. It is anticipated that the pilot will commence in the Autumn. Delivery of the pilot will be monitored and an evaluation carried out to determine demand, costs and potential benefits of free bus travel to people seeking asylum in Scotland.

People seeking asylum in Scotland who are aged under 22, aged 60 or over or have an eligible disability are already entitled to concessionary travel through the existing National Concessionary Travel schemes.

Question reference: S6W-39897

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Friday, 15 August 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 12 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of its public appointments guide, which states that “terms of appointment vary from role to role and are usually between one and five years” and that “the total period of appointment in one role on one board may not exceed eight years”, for what reason a member of the Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS) Board, appointed on 1 July 2017, has reportedly had their term extended until 30 September 2025, in apparent breach of this guidance; what action is being taken in response to any such non-compliance by CHS with this appointments policy, and on what grounds the decision was made to exceed the maximum term permitted.

Question reference: S6W-39563

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Monday, 28 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 15 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding its work to help local authorities deliver Low Emissions Zones (LEZs) in Scotland’s four largest cities, what assessment it has made of the impact of LEZs on air quality in each LEZ area since their introduction.

The annual assessment and reporting of air quality and Low Emission Zone (LEZ) performance is a statutory responsibility of the relevant local authorities.

Glasgow City Council published their most recent annual air quality report in August 2025. The report found that when comparing 2024 with 2022, the last full year before enforcement of the LEZ, locations within the zone experienced an average reduction of the air pollutant nitrogen dioxide (NO2) of 34% whilst locations outside of the zone observed an annual reduction of 21%.

More generally, in 2024, the first full year of Glasgow’s LEZ enforcement, air quality within the whole of the city met all applicable statutory objectives. This is the first time full compliance has been recorded since the Local Air Quality Management process was established under Part IV of the Environment Act 1995.

In addition, in June 2025 an LEZ Update Report produced by Scottish Environment Protection Agency considered air quality in the zone since the introduction of Phase 1 of Glasgow’s LEZ (which applied only to buses from December 2018). This report found that nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels on Hope Street (historically the most polluted street in Scotland) fell from 61 µg/m³ in 2018—above the legal limit of 40 µg/m³—to 34 µg/m³ in 2024. Furthermore, tailpipe emissions of particulate matter (PM10) had reduced by over 80%, with CO2 emissions also declining.

The City Council’s for Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh will publish their annual air quality reports in the coming months. However, as enforcement of LEZs in these cities only began in mid-2024, the 2024 air quality data will not fully reflect the impact of LEZs in these cities.

While it is therefore too early to assess the impact of the LEZs in all four of Scotland’s cities, Glasgow’s LEZ demonstrates a clear and direct link between a specific policy intervention and air quality benefits.

Question reference: S6W-39562

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 31 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 15 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what the total value is of any Freight Facilities Grants that have been paid out in each of the last three financial years, broken down by the (a) value of each grant and (b) organisation that received the funding.

Question reference: S6W-39555

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Monday, 28 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 14 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has paid to polling companies in each of the last five years, and which topics were polls held on.

The amount paid to polling companies in each of the last five years for which data is available is set out in the following table. Spend information for 2024-25 is currently not held and will be available later this year. Data on which topics the polls were held could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

Fiscal Year	Spend
2023-24	£5,276,556.17
2022-23	£5,797,878.06
2021-22	£5,069,934.86
2020-21	£2,354,527.40
2019-20	£5,232,885.48

Question reference: S6W-39561

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Monday, 28 July 2025
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 13 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what policies and strategies it has in place to facilitate a freight modal shift to rail.

The Scottish Government has shown leadership in setting out positive policies that work for the rail freight industry through our rail freight strategy (published in 2016), our first of a kind regulatory growth targets for rail freight as part of our High Level Output Specification for Control Period 7 funding, and our mode shift grants. Scotland was the first UK nation to have a rail freight growth target and this focus is being retained with a target of 8.7% for the period 2024 to 2029 and a requirement for a longer term growth plan to be delivered by 2027. These policies have encouraged positive behaviours and collaborative working with the industry to grow rail freight and have been supported with investment of over £40 million in recent years in rail freight specific projects and over £421 million in wider projects with rail freight benefits. We will continue to maximise benefits for freight in our future investment in the rail network.

Question reference: S6W-39560

Asked by: Ash Regan, MSP for Edinburgh Eastern, Alba Party
Date lodged: Friday, 01 August 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 29 August 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, as part of its work to further the case for Scottish independence, what its policy is on whether an independent Scotland would seek to join the New Agenda Coalition.

Year	Value of Award	Applicant
2022-23	£718,231	Highland Spring
2023-24	£357,000	Carr's
2024-25	No Budget Available	-