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.

Find out more about parliamentary questions

Filter your results Hide all filters

Displaying 43050 questions Show Answers

Order by |

Question reference: S6W-10003

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it has given to extending the free concessionary travel on buses for under-22s to young island residents travelling on ferries.

Question reference: S6W-09998

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether a Fit and Proper Person Test for park owners and managers will be introduced, and, if so, when this will take place.

Question reference: S6W-10015

Asked by: Dean Lockhart, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much it paid private consultants in the financial year 2021-22 for technical advisory services in relation to ScotRail, and how much it estimates it will pay for this in the financial year 2022-23.

For details of consultant costs for 2021-22 in relation to the Abellio ScotRail Franchise I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-08601 on 6 June 2022. 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

Following the move in April 2022 to bring ScotRail services into public ownership, any ScotRail costs for consultants in financial year 2022-23 are costs incurred by ScotRail Trains Ltd and as such the full details of this will provided by ScotRail Trains Ltd as soon as practicable after the end of the financial year in March 2023.

Question reference: S6W-09996

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what plans are in place to amend the Mobile Homes Act 1983 (Amendment of Schedule 1) (Scotland) Order 2013 to use CPI rather than RPI as the measure of inflation for the purposes of annual reviews of pitch fees for park homes.

Question reference: S6W-09994

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether there will be review of the 10% maximum commission of the price of a mobile home upon sale, and, if so, when this review will take place.

Question reference: S6W-10041

Asked by: Mark Ruskell, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Green Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will consider the introduction of the full registration of all non-native gamebird releases for monitoring purposes.

Question reference: S6W-09955

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 25 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many ScotRail staff have reported being assaulted in the period since April 2022; whether it holds records on how many assaults on ScotRail staff were reported in each year since 2016 and, if so, whether it will provide this data, and what measures it has taken since ScotRail's nationalisation to reduce the number of assaults on staff.

Safety and security on our railways is reserved to UK Government and as such the British Transport Police (BTP) is responsible for the enforcement of the law on Scotland’s rail network. BTP can only investigate matters that are reported to them and not every incident reported to and recorded by ScotRail as the employer will be reported to BTP.

Therefore, ScotRail advised the following for how many assaults on ScotRail staff were reported since 2017, noting that 2017 is the last year that ScotRail holds data for:-

Year	Physical	Verbal	Total
2017	60	106	166
2018	71	116	187
2019	60	124	184
2020	54	95	149
2021	61	166	227
2022 (to date)	46	156	202

BTP continue to work closely with ScotRail around staff assaults, particularly around encouraging the use of body worn cameras by their staff to act as a visible deterrent and ensure best evidence is captured.

ScotRail has also introduced several mitigation measures to assist in the reduction of staff assaults. These include close working with BTP on various intelligence led data initiatives, expanding the travel safe team from 8 to 28 members and reviewing the level of conflict resolution training provided to all front-line colleagues to ensure that everyone is up to date with their knowledge and to ensure the content is still relevant and captures the challenges being presented. ScotRail has also set up a Steering Group internally to look at the issues associated with anti-social behaviour.

Question reference: S6W-09929

Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 25 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many Arabic speakers in (a) Dundee, (b) Fife and (c) Clackmannanshire it has helped access certification to work in the Scottish construction industry through its New Scots Refugee Integration Delivery Project since August 2021.

Many refugees resettled in Scotland have skills and experience developed through their trade or occupation in their home country, including in the construction industry, and may want to resume their profession here.

In Scotland, everyone working on a building site must first pass a health and safety test and be certified through the UK wide Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS).

The Building Skills for Construction Certification Project has developed supporting ESOL materials, to help ESOL learners to prepare for the computer CSCS test. Pilot courses are being delivered to test the resources. The project started on 1 September 2021 and will run until 30 November 2022. Pilot courses are running in Fife, Clackmannanshire and Dundee, as well as a national online pilot for candidates across Scotland to enable those who cannot access such training in person to benefit, particularly those in remote and rural communities where a pilot course would not be viable due to numbers.

There are seven Arabic speakers enrolled in this course across Dundee, Fife and Clackmannanshire. Throughout the rest of Scotland there are an additional thirteen learners on these courses, eleven of whom are Arabic speakers.

The CSCS ESOL course resources will be a lasting legacy of the project. At the end of the project, these resources will be freely available for any learning provider or training organisation to use, allowing courses to be run across Scotland to prepare refugees for work in the construction industry. There will also be a webinar at the end of the project which will cover how these resources should be used in practice.

This project has been funded through the New Scots Refugee Integration Delivery Project which is part funded through the EU Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

Question reference: S6W-09957

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 25 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many ScotRail services were required to operate at a 20 miles per hour speed limit in the week beginning 18 July 2022 due to extreme heat, and what preparations it has undertaken since ScotRail's nationalisation to equip the network to deal with extreme weather events.

Speed restrictions on the Scottish rail network are imposed by Network Rail, as the owners of the rail infrastructure.

ScotRail advised that for week beginning 18 July 2022 there were approximately 11 services with a 20 mph speed restriction and 4 of these were likely to be as a result of rainfall rather than heat. The majority of services (approximately 26) had either a 30 or 60 mph speed restriction imposed for similar period.

Network Rail and ScotRail Trains hold weather plans in the event of extreme weather and these are activated when required.

Question reference: S6W-09941

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 25 July 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 16 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-05655 by Mairi McAllan on 19 January 2022, when it will provide a full response to the previous parliamentary session's Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee’s Inquiry into Regional Marine Planning, as committed to in the Minister for Rural Affairs and the Natural Environment’s letter to the Committee of 23 March 2021.