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: S5W-22350

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 25 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 4 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether its plan to introduce a legal duty on ministers regarding EU environmental principles, as set out in the consultation on environmental principles and governance, will require legislation.

Question reference: S5W-22352

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 25 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 4 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government when it will publish its proposals for interim measures for environmental governance in the event of a no deal Brexit.

Question reference: S5W-22351

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 25 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 4 April 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what interim measures it is considering to address any environmental governance gap arising from the loss of functions currently carried out by EU agencies, the European Commission and European Court of Justice in the event of a no deal Brexit, and whether it will seek stakeholder input on their development.

Question reference: S5W-22183

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 15 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Ash Denham on 29 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-21864 by Ash Denham on 14 March 2019, what discussions it has had with the Inspector of Prosecution regarding the follow-up review; when it was informed that she would be undertaking the review; what information it has regarding the proposed contents of the review, and whether this will include analysis of (a) the protracted timescales, (b) structural barriers and (c) public confidence in the process.

The Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland (IPS) is the independent inspectorate for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) which is the sole prosecuting authority in Scotland and is also responsible for investigating sudden deaths. Under the terms of the Criminal Proceedings etc. (Reform) (Scotland) Act 2007, in exercising her inspection functions, the Chief Inspector acts independently of any other person.

The Inspectorate of Prosecution confirmed that a follow-up report on fatal accident inquiries (FAIs) would be included in their future work programme in their Annual Report which was laid before Parliament in December 2018:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/inspectorate-prosecution-scotland-annual-report-2017-18/pages/4/

The Scottish Government has made additional funding available to COPFS which has used some of this resource to allow the Scottish Fatalities Investigation Unit to try to reduce the time required to complete death investigations. In her Annual Report, the Chief Inspector of Prosecution indicated that she had deferred the follow-up report on FAIs to allow the additional resource to become established and make an impact.

The content of the follow-up report is entirely a matter for the Chief Inspector who has, however, noted in the Annual Report that a robust follow-up process is a critical part of an effective inspection regime.

Question reference: S5W-22317

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 21 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Ash Denham on 28 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Scottish Law Commission paper, Report on Moveable Transactions; what plans it has to launch a consultation based on the findings, and what assessment it has made of the impact that restrictions in the law regarding these transactions have had on businesses.

As indicated to the Scottish Law Commission, the Scottish Government is continuing to consider whether and when there would be a suitable opportunity to take forward the recommendations contained in the Commission’s report on Moveable Transactions. The Government currently faces the challenge of developing and delivering its legislative programmes for the rest of this session within the context of significant pressures and uncertainty created by Brexit.

As part of their work on this project, the Scottish Law Commission completed a Business Regulatory Impact Assessment in which they set out the impact that restrictions in the law regarding these transactions have had on businesses: https://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/files/7415/1359/9231/Business_and_Regulatory_Impact_
Assessment_-_Report_on_Moveable_Transactions_Report_No_249.pdf .

Officials have also meet with the Commission’s advisory group set up for this project and have heard at first hand the issues arising with working under the current law.

Question reference: S5W-21970

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 07 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 21 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-21538 by Humza Yousaf on 1 March 2019, in which specific circumstances datasets are not in an analysable format, in light of the answer to question S5W-21539 on the same date.

At present, questions that require historical data dating from 2014 onwards are only answerable at disproportionate cost. Answers to parliamentary questions S5W-20884 on 31 January 2019 and S5W-21538 on 1 March 2019 explain why this is the case. Questions that do not rely on historical data from 2014 onwards may be answered using routine, internal Scottish Prison Service reports or snapshot extracts from the live operational database.

The answer to question S5W-21539, breaking down the prison population by ethnicity, was based on a snapshot extracted from the live database on 18 February 2019.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Question reference: S5W-21968

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 07 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 21 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-21539 by Humza Yousaf on 1 March 2019, whether the data provided on the prison population, disaggregated by ethnicity, can be broken down further, by (a) age and (b) location.

Question reference: S5W-21969

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 07 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 20 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-21538 by Humza Yousaf on 1 March 2019, when it expects to have agreed a mechanism to publish data captured by operational databases with the Scottish Prison Service.

The Scottish Government and the Scottish Prison Service aims to have agreed a shared approach to publishing further data by end March 2019.

Timelines for publishing this further data will be shared following formal agreement of the approach and once accompanying plans for delivery are in place.

The Scottish Government will provide updates for users on these via the Scottish Government webpages and other appropriate communication channels.

Question reference: S5W-21953

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 07 March 2019
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 19 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to its response to the Freedom of Information request FOI/19/00340, regarding the provision of a breakdown of the time delay between the imposition and start of community payback order work placements for 2017-18, how many of the orders referred to in the response were delayed each month due to (a) the ongoing completion of community payback orders, (b) medical reasons and (c) other reasons.

The information is provided in the following table:

Time between imposition of order and start of work placement	Reason for work placement starting later than 7 working days after order imposed
	Person currently on order or supervision	Person ill(1)	Other reason(1)	Reason not provided	Total
Over 2 months to 3 months	72	5	170	18	265
Over 3 months to 4 months	45	5	93	6	149
Over 4 months to 5 months	45	3	78	7	133
Over 5 months to 6 months	32	1	65	5	103
Over 6 months to 7 months	17	0	25	3	45
Over 7 months to 8 months	8	1	33	2	44
Over 8 months to 9 months	10	1	34	2	47
Over 9 months to 10 months	7	0	13	1	21
Over 10 months to 11 months	7	0	4	1	12
Over 11 months to 12 months	3	1	3	0	7
Over 12 months	1	0	4	2	7
Total	247	17	522	47	833

(1) There may be instances where the delay results from medically related matters but where the reason is recorded under "other client based" reason (part of the "other reason" category) rather than the "person ill" category.

Question reference: S5W-21628

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 February 2019
Current Status: Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 15 March 2019

To ask the Scottish Government on what dates the Saltire Prize Committee has met since its establishment, and whether it will place a copy of the minutes of all of these meetings in SPICe.

The Saltire Prize Committee has met or held teleconference discussions with officials on the following dates:

03 October 2008
02 December 2008
22 & 23 April 2009
07 October 2010
22 March 2011
22 March 2012
18 March 2013
17 May 2013
18 March 2014
24 April 2015
08 May 2015
10 November 2016
27 January 2017
7 Februrary 2018

Committee meetings have not been routinely minuted. Meetings of the Saltire Prize Committee have been to inform ongoing policy development and will not be published in SPICe at this time.