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-14133

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has developed a (a) commercial and (b) procurement strategy that covers all national, regional and local approaches to (i) developing and (ii) buying digital products for health and social care.

Question reference: S6W-14068

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Claire Baker on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what preparation the Parliament has made for the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme.

Question reference: S6W-14067

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Christine Grahame on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what potential impact the proposals in the Scottish Government consultation, Restricting alcohol advertising and promotion, would have on the Parliament shop, including on the sale of alcohol such as Parliament-branded whisky and gin.

Question reference: S6W-14069

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Claire Baker MSP on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body how much has been spent in preparation for the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme.

Question reference: S6W-14070

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Claire Baker on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether the Parliament has faced any challenges in preparing for the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme.

Question reference: S6W-14253

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 23 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide any data it has on which Scotland-based industries are the largest emitters of carbon in Scotland.

The Scottish Government and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency publish detailed data on industrial carbon dioxide emissions. There are three different, but complementary, sources of such data with each defining industries in different terms.

The first source of data relate to a commissioned study in 2020 which defined industries using the Standard Industrial Classification (2007), a classification scheme used in economic data. The ten largest emitting industrial groups in Scotland during the calendar year 2018 are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 - Largest CO2 emitters by industry group, excluding residential emissions, Scotland, 2018.

Industry (SIC 2007) Group	CO2 emissions (Kilotonnes)
Coke, refined petroleum products and petrochemicals	3884
Crude petroleum, natural gas and metal ores; other mining and quarrying	2910
Electricity production - gas	2673
Land transport services and transport services via pipelines, excluding rail transport	1625
Agriculture, hunting and related services	1362
Construction	1255
Electricity production - other	1176
Manufacture of cement, lime, plaster and articles of concrete, cement and plaster	761
Water transport services	700
Gas; distribution of gaseous fuels through mains; steam and air conditioning supply	614

The second source is the Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics publication. The main focus of these data relate to processes and activities conducted by industries. Table 2 shows the ten processes with the largest carbon dioxide emissions in Scotland during the calendar year 2020.

Table 2 - Largest CO2 emitting processes (IPCC category), excluding residential and land use emissions. Scotland, 2020.

Process Type (IPCC_category)	National Communications Category	CO2 emissions (Kilotonnes)
1A3bi_Cars	Transport	3912
1A4ai_Commercial/Institutional combustion	Business	1006
	Public	909
	Transport	0
1A2gviii_Other_manufacturing_industries_and_construction	Business	1882
1A3biii_Heavy_duty_trucks_and_buses	Transport	1830
1A1ai_Public_Electricity & Heat_Production	Energy Supply	1710
2B8g_Petrochemical_and_carbon_black_production:Other	Business	1546
1A1b_Petroleum_Refining	Energy Supply	1502
1A3d_Domestic_navigation	Transport	1446
1A3bii_Light_duty_trucks	Transport	1380
1A2c_Chemicals	Business	1201

Note: the cars category includes use by households as well as commercial uses.

The third source is Scottish Environment Protection Agency published data from the Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory. This source provides installation-level data on carbon dioxide emissions. The latest data from this source relate to the year 2021 and the ten largest emitters of CO2 in that year are shown in Table 3. These data have been adjusted to exclude CO2 emissions arising from the use of bioenergy, where declared by operators.

Table 3 - Largest CO2 emitting installations, excluding bioenergy emissions. Scotland, 2021.

SITE_NAME	Adjusted Release (Kilotonnes CO2)
Peterhead Power Station	1128
Petroineos Manufacturing, Grangemouth Refinery	775
Fife Ethylene Plant, Mossmorran	687
INEOS Chemicals Grangemouth Ltd, Grangemouth	602
INEOS Infrastructure (Grangemouth) Ltd	564
Grangemouth CHP, Boness Road, Grangemouth	514
Tarmac Ltd, Dunbar Plant, E.Lothian	429
Dunbar ERF , Dunbar	307
Caledonian Paper Mill, Shewalton, Irvine	301
Shell UK Ltd, St Fergus Gas Plant	277

Question reference: S6W-14153

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 23 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how it is preparing health and care staff to (a) understand and (b) interrogate data-driven (i) recommendations and (ii) decision support tools.

To support health and care staff, the Scottish Government is working alongside the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre, NHS Boards and social care organisations to promote use of our national decision support platform, The Right Decision Service .

On the subject of workforce skills, I refer the member to the answer to questions S6W-14125, S6W-14142, S6W-14143, S6W-14150 and S6W-14151 on 2 February 2023.

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 .

Question reference: S6W-14217

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 23 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how low alcohol products are defined in Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-14219

Asked by: Sandesh Gulhane, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 23 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the UK Government about updating the definitions of (a) alcohol-free and (b) low alcohol products in (i) Scotland and (ii) the UK as a whole.

Question reference: S6W-14129

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how the development of a digital platform will contribute to the twin aims of citizen and staff access to relevant real-time information across the health and care system.

Scottish Government and COSLA will shortly set out a Data Strategy for Health and Social Care, which will articulate the first set of principles and deliverables needed to improve the access and use of data.

One of the core ambitions of the Data Strategy is to: empower the people of Scotland by giving individuals clear and easy access to, and the ability to manage and contribute to, their own health and social care data where it is safe and appropriate to do so. To achieve this, we will confirm data sources and data sets that are safe to be consistently shared. For individuals, data access will be enabled through the implementation of the Digital Front Door.

To support access for our professionals, the National Digital Platform, and its associated National Clinical Data Store provide the foundation for consistent access to information. The success of this has so far been demonstrated through the accessibility of vaccination information. Establishing and expanding these platforms is a critical focus to providing staff with a safe and secure way to access clinical and care data. More details can be found at The National Digital Platform .