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-10702

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 31 August 2022
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 26 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government which local authorities are (a) using and (b) seeking to use their powers under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 to reduce business rates in 2022-23.

The administration of the non-domestic rates system, including the award of reliefs, is a matter for local authorities. In the Non-domestic rates income - provisional contributable amount returns, provided by local authorities to the Scottish Government at the start of 2022-23, no local authority indicated that they expect to award rates reliefs under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 in 2022-23.

Question reference: S6W-10700

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 31 August 2022
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 26 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what the (a) higher property rate and (b) large business rates supplement have been in each of the last 15 years, broken down by how much tax revenue this generated.

Table 1 shows the estimated net income from the large business supplement in 2019-20. Figures for 2019-20 and earlier are available in the answer to S5W-25592, available at: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers/question?ref=S5W-25592 . Table 1 updates the previously given figure for 2019-20 with more recent data, which was not available at the time of the original answer.

Table 2 shows the estimated gross and net income from the higher property rate since 2020-21. It is not possible for the Scottish Government to robustly estimate the net income in 2022-23, due to the application of a £27,500 cap per ratepayer on retail, hospitality and leisure relief, therefore only the gross figure is given.

Table 1: Net income from the large business supplement

Year	2019-20
Estimated net income from the large business supplement	125,878,000
Large business supplement (pence)	2.6
Large business supplement threshold	51,000
Income figures are rounded to the nearest £1,000. Data: Scottish Assessors’ Valuation Roll, local authority billing information.

Table 2: Gross and net income from the higher property rate

Year	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23
Estimated net income from the higher property rate	80,648,000	93,250,000	[not available]
Estimated gross income from the higher property rate	123,260,000	121,745,000	122,017,000
Higher property rate (in pence, in addition to the poundage)	2.6	2.6	2.6
Threshold for the higher property rate	95,000	95,000	95,000
Income figures are rounded to the nearest £1,000. Data: Scottish Assessors’ Valuation Roll, local authority billing information.

Question reference: S6W-10664

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 31 August 2022
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 26 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many times rates relief has been (a) applied for and (b) awarded under the Non-Domestic Rates (Reverse Vending Machine Relief) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 in (i) 2020-21, (ii) 2021-22 and (iii) 2022-23 to date, broken down by local authority area.

Question reference: S6W-10697

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 08 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 21 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to restore parity with England regarding commercial premises liable for the higher property rate, and, if so, when this will take place.

Decisions on non-domestic rates, including the poundage and any reliefs or supplements, are generally considered in the context of the Scottish Budget in line with other government priorities.

The Scottish Budget 2022-23 delivers the lowest poundage in the UK for the fourth year in a row, ensuring that over 95% of non-domestic properties continue to be liable for a lower property tax rate than anywhere else in the UK.

Question reference: S6W-10696

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 31 August 2022
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 20 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what representations it has received from (a) business and (b) trade representative organisations following the announcement of its emergency budget review.

The Scottish Government and senior officials engage regularly with business leaders, representative organisations and industry bodies. During those conversations business have called for measures relating to the cost crisis including: energy price cap for business, VAT reduction, improvements to the occupation shortage list to tackle staff shortages and support in handling business debt.

As the powers to act on these requests fall within reserved responsibilities, I wrote to the UK Government on 8 August to urge it to act in response to these business concerns. I also called for the introduction of an energy price cap for SMEs and support for businesses to prevent closures, as well as investment in economic stimulus to minimise the scale of the projected recession.

The First Minister also wrote to the new Prime Minister in similar terms.

Business organisations have also suggested ways in which Scottish Government can help, including an easing of regulatory burdens; affordability of commercial rent; encouraging continuation of prompt payment; incentivising investment in renewable technologies coupled with improvements to the planning process to accelerate that investment; a freeze on non-domestic rates; capital investment for those businesses who are able to invest for the future; and a resilience fund to support the most extreme cases of hardship and where the business has a viable future.

We will set out the outcome of our Emergency Budget Review to Parliament in due course

Question reference: S6W-10957

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 08 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 20 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to its proposals on Transforming Our Economy, included in the Programme for Government 2022-23, when it expects to have completed its work "with the business community to identify further measures that can assist in addressing the increased costs and economic disruption that they face", and when it will publish the conclusions of this work.

We regularly engage with businesses and over recent months this engagement has focussed on the difficulties businesses are facing in the current cost crisis and the lack of concrete action from the UK Government.

We continue to press the UK Government to use their reserved powers to help ease the current pressures, including expansion of shortage occupation lists, a VAT reduction on SME energy bills and an extension of the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

In the meantime we are continuing to work across government to consider a range of options to help businesses through these difficult times within the powers we possess.

Question reference: S6W-10701

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 31 August 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much it estimates households spent installing interlinked domestic smoke alarms in the six months before the statutory deadline in February 2022.

It is not possible to estimate how much households have spent in total on installing these alarms during the six months before the statutory deadline in February 2022 as the number of households installing alarms during that period is not known.

Estimates of the number of households with legislation-compliant alarms will only be available when the results of the 2022 Scottish House Condition Survey are published. This is expected to be in late 2023 / early 2024.

Question reference: S6O-01370

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 September 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 22 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it is having with local authorities regarding child protection policies in schools.

Question reference: S6O-01340

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 31 August 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 8 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions ministers have had with residential outdoor education centres regarding the provision of bed spaces for 2023.

Question reference: S6W-10113

Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 02 August 2022
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 29 August 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to reduce any impact on patients in NHS (a) Tayside and (b) Fife, in light of the reported rising number of unscheduled closures of community pharmacies.

While pharmacy closures can occur, this on the whole represents a small proportion of the network and is often limited to a small proportion of the required model hours. The Scottish Government continue to work with all Health Boards and community pharmacies representatives who are responsible for the provision of local pharmaceutical care services to ensure that any challenges faced by community pharmacies in providing the safe and effective dispensing of treatments are discussed with the local Health Board to minimise impact and risk to patients. Health boards can take a range of actions in response to any breach of terms by a pharmacy contractor.