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: S6O-00865

Asked by: Paul O'Kane, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 March 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 16 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to tackle antisocial behaviour on Scotland's railways.

Question reference: S6O-00872

Asked by: Jackie Dunbar, MSP for Aberdeen Donside, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 March 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 16 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what the impact will be on the Scottish budget, in light of reports that UK Government funding consequentials relating to the cost of living may not be provided in addition to provisional allocations.

Question reference: S6O-00874

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 March 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 16 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what financial support it provides to Glasgow businesses that have been impacted by a loss of earnings as a result of street closures due to a variety of recent projects.

Question reference: S6O-00877

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 March 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 16 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the impact of removing rates relief on small businesses after the first quarter of 2022-23.

Question reference: S6O-00868

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S6O-00876

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 March 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 16 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the number of low-income households that will not be eligible for the £150 payment to help tackle the rising cost of living.

Question reference: S6W-07028

Asked by: Sharon Dowey, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 9 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what support it provides to the National Performing Companies.

The Scottish Government has provided funding of £22.5m for the five National Performing Companies for 2021-22, and maintained their International Touring Fund of £350,000. The same amount of funding is in the 2022-23 budget.

The breakdown of funding is below:

National Performing Company	Amount
Scottish Ballet	£4.37m
Scottish Chamber Orchestra	£1.99m
Royal Scottish National Orchestra	£3.96m
National Theatre of Scotland	£4.17m
Scottish Opera	£8m

The five National Performing Companies also shared £2m in additional support for 2021-22 as a result of the recent Covid19 restrictions. This funding covers cancellations and also support to recover from the pandemic.

Question reference: S6W-06735

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 9 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to tackle the reported decline in wader populations, and how many it estimates have been lost in each year since 2007.

The Scottish Government’s Agri-Environment Climate Scheme fund includes options to help support waders and has so far committed £38.8m that will directly benefit waders since the scheme opened in 2015.

Working for Waders is a partnership project involving a wide range of land management and conservation organisations and groups across Scotland. The project provides financial support through small grants directly to farmers and other land managers for activities which support waders. NatureScot have provided £392,000 to the project in direct support of wader work in Scotland over the last four years, with contributions in kind from project partners including expertise and support to deliver outcomes.

It is not possible to provide year-on-year declines in the numbers of waders in Scotland as data on breeding birds in not gathered in a way that can provide this information. However the table below provides trend figures taken from the latest Breeding Bird Survey, published by the British Trust for Ornithology, for the main 5 species of wader that breed on Scottish farmland over five and ten years. Further details on that data, and the full Breeding Bird Survey, is available at: https://www.bto.org/our-science/publications/birdtrends/2020

% changes	Scotland
	Trends for five years 2013 – 2018	Trends for ten years 2008 - 2018
Oystercatcher	-10	-19
Lapwing	10	-39
Curlew	-7	-20
Snipe	6	-21
Redshank	No Scottish trend

Question reference: S6W-06156

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 9 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many recorded offences of (a) actual and (b) attempted (i) theft from a motor vehicle by opening a lockfast place, (ii) theft of a motor vehicle, (iii) theft by opening a lockfast place, (iv) theft by housebreaking, including housebreaking "with intent", and (v) house burglary there have been in each of the last 10 years, and, of these, (A) how many and (B) what percentage (1) were reported by the public, (2) were subsequently investigated by police, (3) led to charges being brought and (4) resulted in a successful prosecution.

As this requires several tables of data to answer, a response has been provided through the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 63198). Across all crime and justice-related statistics, house burglary is not identified separately from housebreaking. As such each table shows actual and attempted crimes for theft from a motor vehicle by opening a lockfast place, theft of a motor vehicle, theft by opening a lockfast place and theft by housebreaking, including housebreaking ‘with intent’.

Table 1 shows crimes recorded by the police between 2011-12 and 2020-21. We do not hold information on the number or percentage of these crimes that were reported to the police by the public. For information the Scottish Crime & Justice Survey includes estimates of how many property crimes were committed over 2008-09 to 2019-20, and the percentage of them that were reported to the police. Further information on this has been provided alongside the tables. All crimes presented in Table 1 will have been investigated by the police as a crime was recorded by them. Table 2 and Table 3 show the number and percentage of these crime types that were cleared up the police.

Table 4 shows charges brought by Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

Tables 5 and 6 show the number of people proceeded against and the number of people convicted respectively, for these crime types over 2009-10 to 2019-20, and the overall percentage is shown in table 7. The 2020-21 National Statistics will be published later this year.

Care should be taken when comparing different data sources relating to the criminal justice system. For example recorded crime statistics count crimes and offences at the time that they came to the attention of Police Scotland while criminal proceedings statistics report on cases which have concluded in court. This means that a crime may be recorded by the police in one year, charges brought and court proceedings concluded in subsequent years. In addition, a person may be proceeded against for more than one crime, or a set of crimes with more than one victim, in a proceeding, but only the main charge is counted in these court proceedings statistics. There is also the possibility that the crime recorded by the police may be altered in the course of judicial proceedings.

Question reference: S6W-06425

Asked by: Willie Rennie, MSP for North East Fife, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 9 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-05791 by Clare Haughey on 3 February 2022, which of the suggestions made by the Children and Young People's Commissioner Scotland in response to the consultation on the National Guidance for Child Protection were (a) taken into consideration and put into the guidance and (b) not taken into consideration, and, for any that were not taken into consideration, what the reasons were for this.

The Scottish Government welcomed engagement with the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland during the revision of the National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland. The Commissioner’s Office provided permission to publish their response to the formal Scottish Government public consultation on Citizen Space .

The Commissioner asked for a comprehensive re-draft of the guidance to ensure that children’s human and statutory rights are threaded throughout; a consistent application of a rights-based approach across health, justice and local authority Children’s Services and Planning Partnerships with greater clarity that children’s rights to protection apply to all those with a duty of care; extending a trauma-informed approach to children in conflict with the law; and a request that Children’s Hearings should be extended to all children under the age of 18.

The Scottish Government met with the Commissioner’s Office to discuss their response and incorporated suggestions into the final published guidance to further strengthen the focus on rights, relationships, collaboration and support for families, building on strengths. It was noted at this meeting that forthcoming Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) support materials will support improved consistency across Scotland in appropriately balancing rights to privacy and family life with rights to be supported and protected. The Commissioner’s Office subsequently reviewed and contributed to the Guidance Supporting Narrative which sets out how our approach to child protection in Scotland aligns with and supports strategic developments including UNCRC implementation.

Some suggestions made in connection with legislation and practice relating to 16 and 17 year olds are beyond the scope of the guidance which reflects the current legislative, policy and practice context. The Scottish Government has committed to review the guidance on an annual basis to ensure that it remains consistent with wider changes.