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-25251

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 05 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 21 February 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how many jobs have been created in the renewables sector in the (a) Aberdeen City and (b) Aberdeenshire Council area in each of the last five years.

Statistics from the ONS Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy (LCREE) survey provide estimates of renewable employment statistics in Scotland. No data is available to provide additional geographic breakdowns below the Scotland level at present.

As the following table shows, the estimated number of direct jobs in renewable electricity was 9,200 in 2021, up from 5,600 in 2017.

Employment (Full-time equivalent)	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
Scotland	5,600	5,400	5,400	6,500	9,200

The LCREE estimates presented in the table above are survey-based and are therefore subject to a degree of uncertainty.

Question reference: S6W-25269

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 20 February 2024

To ask the Scottish Government when the final Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan will be published, in light of the draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan being published on 10 January 2023.

Question reference: S6F-02845

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 19 February 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 22 February 2024

To ask the First Minister whether the Scottish Government still has a policy of a presumption against any new oil and gas licences.

Question reference: S6W-25252

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 05 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 19 February 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has spent on safety improvements at the A90 Toll of Birness junction since 1 April 2017.

The Scottish Government has spent £67,232 on the construction of safety improvements on the A90 Toll of Birness junction since 1 April 2017. These safety improvements have been delivered through Transport Scotland’s Trunk Road Casualty Reduction programme of works. This spend was primarily associated with the provision of three vehicle activated signs (VAS) recommended from previous safety studies. Two signs were erected in 2017 with a third sign to supplement the northbound VAS erected in 2021. Other work involved the provision of an additional northbound advance direction sign.

This spend does may not include some elements of wider spend across the North East Operating Company Unit as it is not possible identify those that relate specifically to the A90 at this location.

Question reference: S6W-25259

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 19 February 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how much has been spent on safety improvements on the A96 between Inverness and Aberdeen in each of the last three financial years.

The following amounts have been spent on safety improvements on the A96 between Inverness and Aberdeen in each of the last full three financial years:

Year	Spent
2020-21	£102,076.99
2021-22	£102,018.66
2022-23	£610,017.72

This spend is delivered through Transport Scotland’s Trunk Road Casualty Reduction programme of works. These figures include costs for investigation and design.

These amounts do not include some elements of wider spend across the North East Operating Company Unit as it is not possible identify those that relate specifically to the A96.

Question reference: S6W-25273

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 19 February 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how many times the A90 from Dundee to Aberdeen has been closed due to a lack of adequate drainage in each financial year from 2019-20 to date.

Question reference: S6W-25264

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 19 February 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what percentage of money from the Just Transition Fund to date has gone to (a) businesses and (b) community groups.

Question reference: S6W-25272

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 19 February 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what the value of oil and gas exports, as a percentage of Scotland’s total exports, has been in each financial year from 2014-15 to date.

There are no statistics available on Scotland’s total exports including oil and gas on a quarterly or a financial year basis. On a calendar year basis, the latest available official statistics in development (previously known as experimental statistics) include estimates up to 2021.

	Exports of oil and gas as a percentage of total exports
2014	21.5%
2015	16.7%
2016	15.1%
2017	17.5%
2018	22.2%
2019	20.1%
2020(provisional)	15.1%
2021(provisional)	22.0%

Source: Supply and Use Satellite Accounts for Extra-Regio Activities: 1998-2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) (28 June 2023), calculations based on data from Table 1

Question reference: S6W-25274

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 06 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 19 February 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how much has been spent on improving drainage on the A90 from Dundee to Aberdeen in each financial year from 2019-20 to date.

As trunk road maintenance costs are held on a whole route basis we are unable to provide figures for the section of the A90 trunk road from Dundee to Aberdeen.

However, please see the following table for details of how much was spent on improving drainage on the whole of the A90 trunk road for the financial years 2019-20 onwards. These works are in addition to regular asset inspections undertaken through the maintenance contracts, which then develop and prioritises programmes of works.

	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23	2023-24	Total spend
Total	£612,625	£92,056	£564,815	£122,464	£1,035	£1,392,995

Please note that these figures relate to drainage-specific works. On occasions where drainage elements were included in larger schemes (e.g. major resurfacing works), we are unable to disaggregate drainage costs in those situations and as such, those figures will not appear in the table above.

Due to the condition of the drainage assets on the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR) section of the A90 trunk road, there have been no drainage-specific improvement schemes undertaken in this period.

Question reference: S6W-25140

Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 February 2024
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 19 February 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has undertaken an analysis of the total (scope 1, 2 and 3) carbon cost of replacing fossil fuel boilers in Scotland with air source heat pumps and heat networks.

We monitor the operational carbon caused both directly and indirectly by the polluting heating systems used in the majority of Scotland’s buildings via the Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics ( Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) , which provides statistics on the level of emissions by source. Estimates of Scotland’s consumption emissions (broadly analogous to upstream scope 3 emissions) are published in Scotland’s Carbon Footprint ( Scotland’s Carbon Footprint 1998 – 2019 – gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . However, it is not possible to isolate heating systems from other similar products using this dataset.

We are continuing to investigate how we can improve whole life emissions reporting in Scotland’s buildings.