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-08079

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 14 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 4 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to prevent student homelessness, including for care experienced students.

Local authorities are obliged by law to offer the minimum of temporary accommodation, advice and assistance to anyone at risk of homelessness. Anyone who is threatened with or experiencing homelessness should contact their local authority in the first instance.

We already have a national strategy to end homelessness and rough sleeping in Scotland, which was updated in October 2020. Our Ending Homelessness Together action plan, backed by funding of £100 million between 2018-26, demonstrates our commitment to end homelessness in Scotland and we publish an annual report to show the progress being made to tackle these issues.

The Scottish Government is committed to bringing forward a Student Accommodation Strategy for Scotland which, in part, will be informed by a review of Purpose Built Student Accommodation, now underway. We will look to develop and incorporate this alongside and within the Rented Sector Strategy. This will include issues such as supply, affordability and wider planning and regulatory issues.

Question reference: S6W-08067

Asked by: Sharon Dowey, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 14 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 4 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the SNP manifesto commitment to work with Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland to improve the business support available to the creative industries, including how much money has been made available to businesses for this purpose to date.

The Scottish Government has worked at pace to deliver emergency business support to creative businesses, via Creative Scotland, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Scottish Government has announced £256 million support to the culture, creative, heritage and events sectors.

In March 2021, the Scottish Government launched a £1 million Creative Digital Initiative to help develop the digital capabilities of creative businesses in response to the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The programme has been developed through a partnership of enterprise and development agencies, including Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland.

The Scottish Government established a creative industries ‘Future Focus’ working group to enable detailed discussion with Scottish Enterprise, Creative Scotland and other key partner agencies throughout the pandemic to consider key issues facing the creative industries, business resilience and support, and opportunities for partnership working.

The Scottish Government has a Programme for Government commitment to refresh the Creative Industries Policy Statement and will work with CS, SE and other partner agencies to refresh this statement, as well as the Creative Industries Framework Agreement , in order to ensure these documents reflect the priorities of the creative industries and signpost creative businesses to the expertise and business support available to the sector.

Question reference: S6T-00678

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 May 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the ruling of the Scottish Information Commissioner that it should release legal advice that it received regarding a second independence referendum.

Question reference: S6T-00680

Asked by: Emma Roddick, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 May 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the potential impact on households and businesses in Scotland of the National Grid’s locational pricing system, in light of Scottish Renewables' reported assessment that Transmission Network Use of System charges make projects in Scotland almost 20% more expensive than equivalent projects in the south of England.

Question reference: S6T-00671

Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 May 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what measures it is putting in place to ensure that Ukrainian families understand the conditions of its Super Sponsor Scheme.

Question reference: S6W-07847

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will review access to pre-eclampsia testing for expectant mothers.

The Scottish Government expects women to receive high quality, safe care including in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of pre-eclampsia.

We are working with the Scottish Perinatal Network to examine the adoption of PlGF testing for pre-eclampsia in Scotland. This will include consideration of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidance on PlGF (DG23) that is currently out for consultation and expected to be published in July 2022.

Question reference: S6W-07804

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on progress on the commitment in its Programme for Government to provide an extra £150 million for flood risk management over the next five years.

Confirmation of the additional £150 million for flood risk management was provided to COSLA by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance in her letter of 4 February 2021. The indicative annual capital allocations, as set out in the letter, are provided in the attached table. The initial £10 million tranche was distributed to local authorities in the 2021-2022 financial year. Discussions are ongoing with COSLA on the arrangements for distribution of the remaining £140 million.

	2021-22	2022-23	2023-24	2024-25	2025-26
Allocation (£m)	10	19	21	46.5	53.5

Question reference: S6W-07807

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the new capital budget of £12 million over four years for coastal change adaptation, and how it will be distributed.

We announced the new capital budget of £11.7 million for coastal change adaptation in the 2020 Programme for Government. Scottish Ministers and COSLA agreed a methodology to distribute the new budget to coastal local authorities based on evidence from Dynamic Coast which identifies assets most at risk from erosion ( https://www.dynamiccoast.com/ ). The budget covers the four-year period from 2022-23 until 2025-26, split as follows:

2022-23 - £1.6 million

2023-24 - £2.6 million

2024-25 - £2.7 million

2025-26 - £5.0 million

Total - £11.7 million

The distribution for 2022-23 and intended distribution for 2023-24 are as follows:

Council	2022-23	2023-24
Argyll & Bute	£160,000
Dumfries & Galloway	£160,000
East Lothian	£160,000
Fife	£160,000
Highland	£160,000
Moray	£160,000
North Ayrshire	£160,000
Orkney Islands	£160,000
Shetland Islands	£160,000
South Ayrshire	£160,000
Aberdeen City		£150,000
Aberdeenshire		£150,000
Angus		£150,000
City of Edinburgh		£150,000
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar		£150,000
Dundee City		£150,000
Falkirk		£150,000
Inverclyde		£150,000
Scottish Borders		£150,000
Clackmannan		£100,000
Perth & Kinross		£100,000
Renfrewshire		£100,000
West Dunbartonshire		£100,000
West Lothian		£100,000
Emergency works and case studies – to be allocated		£550,000
Total	£1.6 million	£2.4 million

Local authorities were informed by letter of their allocation in February and they will receive the funds in their general capital grant settlement.

We continue to work with councils and COSLA to agree a distribution methodology for the £550,000 unallocated from the 2023-24 budget and the 2024-25 and 2025-26 budgets.

Question reference: S6W-07817

Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how it determined the level of virus that is acceptable in a seed potato crop before it should be ordered to be destroyed.

The Seed Potatoes (Scotland) Regulations 2015 stipulate the disease tolerances for seed potato crops in Scotland, and all seed crops must comply with the requirements laid down in the Regulations to be certified as a seed crop.

The tolerance permitted for total virus in a seed crop is 0.8%, which includes a tighter tolerance of 0.4% combined for infection with the three most damaging viruses (PLRV, PVY and PVA). Seed crops are inspected at least twice during the growing season and monitored for disease and trueness to type. Leaf samples from all crops displaying virus symptoms are tested in the laboratory at SASA for 12 virus species to confirm the presence of virus infection in a crop. Crops that have a virus level that exceeds that permitted for a seed crop may be downgraded to ware.

A crop would only be destroyed if the virus levels were 4% or above and therefore posed an unacceptable plant health risk to other neighbouring potato crops.

Question reference: S6W-07721

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 22 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 3 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what advice and guidance has been given to SEPA following the data breach in December 2020.