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-33950

Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 6 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what experience each VisitScotland board member has in relation to their role in the organisation, and where each is located.

Question reference: S6W-33930

Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 6 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many people were prosecuted on the suspicion of committing an offence listed in the (a) Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 2003 and (b) Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2007, in each year since 2021, broken down by offence.

The latest available information on convictions is for the financial year 2022-23.

(a)Number of people prosecuted under the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation)(Scotland) Act 2003, where main crime, 2021-22 to 2022-23.

	2021-22	2022-23
Total prosecuted	1	4

Source: Scottish Government Criminal Proceedings database.

Please note: data for 2021-22 and 2022-23 are affected by the pandemic, subsequent court closures, reduced court capacity due to physical distancing measures and delays to cases where key participants were forced to self-isolate after testing positive for COVID-19, and may not be considered indicative of long term trends.

(b)There were no prosecutions under the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2007, where main crime, between 2021-22 and 2022-23.

Question reference: S6W-33931

Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 6 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many people were prosecuted on the suspicion of committing an offence listed in the Freshwater Fish Conservative (Prohibition on Fishing for Eels) (Scotland) Regulations 2008 in each year since 2021.

Question reference: S6W-34022

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 27 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 6 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government which national flags it owns.

Question reference: S6W-34023

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 27 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 6 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has cost to maintain the national flags that it owns in each of the last 10 years.

Question reference: S6W-33975

Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 5 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what recourse is open to people impacted by Huntington’s disease in the NHS Highland area who have been refused statutory mental health care due to their condition, and how this compares with the rest of the country.

NHS Health Boards must ensure that everyone, regardless of their background or circumstances, has equitable access to mental health care.

If a patient is dissatisfied with their care or access to services, they should first raise their concerns with their local Health Board. If unsatisfied with the response, they can also escalate the matter to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) for an independent review.

We acknowledge that Highland has some of the highest rates of Huntington disease, we do not hold information to compare this to the rest of the country.

Question reference: S6W-33997

Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Alasdair Allan on 5 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government in what year it was decided that the community benefit for wind farms should be £5,000 per megawatt.

Despite the powers to mandate community benefits being reserved to the UK Government, Scotland has made significant progress with the voluntary approach through the Scottish Government’s Good Practice Principles (GPPs) for Onshore Developments, which recommends community benefit equivalent to £5,000 per MW per annum. This was first published in the GPPs in 2014 and maintained in the 2019 refresh, following a public consultation and co-development with communities and industry. These Principles have been widely adopted with over £30 million offered to Scottish communities in the last 12 months.

We are currently undertaking a consultation on our Good Practice Principles for onshore and offshore renewable energy developments, which closes on the 11 April. We want to gather a wide range of views to ensure Scottish guidance supports sustainable and meaningful outcomes, and encourage everyone to take part in the consultation.

Question reference: S6W-33955

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 24 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Siobhian Brown on 5 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the impact of the fixed fees system on the number of solicitors taking on legal aid cases.

The fixed fee system was introduced over 25 years ago, in 1999. The initial move to fixed fees in 1999 was designed to reverse the substantial growth in costs seen throughout the 1990s and which led to significant reforms both in Scotland and England and Wales.

Fixed payments and block fees reduce the administrative burden on providers and streamlines the accounts process. That system was designed upon a basis that solicitors should be paid fixed sums for specified work recognising that different cases will require different amounts of work, and that different cases will have different degrees of profitability, but over the total population of summary criminal cases that a solicitor undertakes in a year, the sums that will be paid from the legal aid fund will provide reasonable remuneration. Solicitors can “opt out” of the respective fixed/block fee regime and charge on a ‘time and line’ basis in certain circumstances.

One of our short-term priorities for Legal Aid Reform, which arose from the Legal Aid Payment Panel is to progress fee review planning and collaborate with stakeholders on reform of legal aid fees in 2025. I intend to publish the Legal Aid Reform Discussion paper shortly.

Question reference: S6W-33496

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 5 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has carried out any review of the value for money of its newspaper subscriptions in the last five years and, if so, what the outcome was.

Question reference: S6W-33773

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 5 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it is supporting local authorities to improve mobile connectivity in areas with poor reception.

From 2018 to 2023, the Scottish Government invested £28.75 million to build 55 new mobile masts in longstanding ‘notspots’, bringing 4G connectivity for the first time to communities and businesses across rural and island Scotland. The Scottish Government has also funded the creation of Infralink. This is a dedicated toolkit designed to help Scotland’s public sector organisations more easily leverage publicly owned property and assets in the rollout of new telecommunications infrastructure.