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: S5O-03862

Asked by: Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 27 November 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 4 December 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether the rural economy secretary’s offer to lead the end year fisheries negotiations in Brussels has been accepted by the UK Government.

Question reference: S5O-03815

Asked by: Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 20 November 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 27 November 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how homeless people may be assisted this winter by the removal of the requirement to be found “unintentionally” homeless as a precondition of receiving local authority accommodation.

Question reference: S5W-26437

Asked by: Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Monday, 18 November 2019
Current Status: Initiated by the Scottish Government. Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 19 November 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide details of the role that Scottish Natural Heritage plays in protecting, enhancing and promoting Scotland’s nature, mitigating climate change and supporting sustainable development.

Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) is a significant Scottish public body and they play an important role in coordinating delivery of Scotland’s biodiversity strategy, which is integral to tackling climate change. SNH also supports the achievement of a number of Scotland’s national outcomes related to the economy and wellbeing.

SNH delivers its statutory functions and priorities agreed with Scottish Ministers, including playing a lead role in Scottish Government funded peatland restoration. They also manage substantial additional expenditure programmes, such as the Green Infrastructure Strategic Intervention using European Regional Structural Funds which creates more green spaces across Scotland’s deprived towns and cities.

SNH will be playing an important role over the next year in the run up to the major biodiversity Conference of the Parties in China in October 2020, when new international biodiversity targets will be agreed. These targets will inform Scotland’s next biodiversity strategy and plans.

Over recent years, SNH has renewed its efforts to promote understanding and action to address biodiversity loss and climate change, including its work with partners and the public. As part of that it changed its domain name to ‘nature.scot’ in December 2017 and since then has adopted this for its brand identity, including on social media, corporate clothing, fleet livery and marketing material. SNH has now decided to complete this re-branding by changing the organisation’s public-facing name to ‘NatureScot’. This will come into effect from May 2020. Neither the organisation’s legal persona nor its responsibilities will change.

Question reference: S5O-03781

Asked by: Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 20 November 2019

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason complaints regarding The Open University, which is registered as both a charity and a university, cannot be referred to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman.

Question reference: S5W-25890

Asked by: Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 1 November 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made toward completing the Land Register of Scotland by 2024, and what information it has regarding how many local authorities have not engaged in registering publicly-owned lands in their area.

This is a question for the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland (RoS). She advises that they continue to work with public and private landowners to complete the Land Register of Scotland by 2024.

As of 30 September 2019 the Land Register has 36.6% of land mass (estimated as 67.9% of titles). Projections show that RoS are on target to complete 50% land mass by March 2021 and to reach completion by 2024.

Across the programme to complete the land register, RoS have engaged with all local authorities with varying degrees of activity demonstrated across the 32.

To date 110 voluntary applications have been made across 25 local authorities. No local authority has engaged in a full programme of completion.

Six local authorities have actively engaged with RoS on a workstream to register housing stock within research areas.

In total five local authorities have not engaged in registering publicly-owned lands in their area through RoS’ programme of land register completion.

Question reference: S5O-03722

Asked by: Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 October 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 November 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure the continuation of Scottish seed potato exports in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Question reference: S5O-03701

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S5W-25736

Asked by: Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 October 2019
Current Status: Initiated by the Scottish Government. Answered by Paul Wheelhouse on 10 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the appointment of a preferred bidder(s) for the R100 contracts.

The £600 million R100 programme is a vital investment in our infrastructure. It will help to deliver a future-proofed network, making Scotland one of the best connected places anywhere in Europe.

Procurement for R100 has been split into three lots – North, Central and South – with funding allocated to each. Final tenders were submitted on 23 August and detailed evaluation is currently in progress. I can confirm that BT plc were the only bidder for the Central and South lots, and that, subject to due diligence and governance, we intend to proceed to contract with BT as soon as possible. Further details of the bid will be announced when the contracts are signed later this year.

More than one bid was received for the North lot and we will announce a preferred bidder in due course. However, I am confident that the scale of our investment coupled with the ambition we have shown, will result in an excellent outcome for Scotland – one that underpins digital connectivity and economic growth for decades to come.

Question reference: S5W-25410

Asked by: Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 30 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding it has provided to (a) Weslo Housing Management and (b) the Paragon Housing Association in each year since 2016, and for what purposes.

Since April 2016 to end August 2019, the Scottish Government has provided £1.323m to Paragon Housing Association and £2.703m to Weslo Housing Management.

Funding Received (£m)
Applicant	2016-2017	2017-2018	2018-2019	2019-2020*	Total
Paragon Housing Association	0.910	0.059	0.354		1.323
Weslo Housing Management	1.559	0.716	0.257	0.171	2.703
*Note: 1 March 2019 – 31 August 2019 only

A breakdown of this funding and for what purpose is listed below.

Funding Breakdown (£m)
	AHSP Housing Association Rent	AHSP Housing Association Mid Market Rent	RSL Adaptations	Home Owner Support Fund	HEEPS RSL Loan Scheme
2016-2017
Paragon Housing Association			0.068		0.842
Weslo Housing Management	1.102		0.129	0.328

2017-2018
Paragon Housing Association			0.059
Weslo Housing Management	0.107	0.510	0.099

2018-2019
Paragon Housing Association	0.225		0.065	0.064
Weslo Housing Management			0.171	0.086

2019-2020
Paragon Housing Association
Weslo Housing Management	0.107		0.064

Funding has been provided from 1 April 2016 to end August 2019 through the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) to Weslo Housing Management to help deliver 17 units for Mid-market Rent, 52 units for social rent and 6 units through the Home Owner Support Fund (HOSF). Funding for Paragon Housing Association contributed to the delivery of 10 units for social rent and 1 unit through the HOSF.

The Home Owner Support Fund helps home owners who find it difficult to pay their mortgage – or loans secured against their property – to stay in their homes.

Both organisations have received funding for housing adaptations. These adaptations make an important contribution to supporting older people and disabled people to live safely, comfortably and independently at home.

Loan funding was provided to Paragon Housing Association through the Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland (HEEPS) Loan scheme. These are interest-free loans to households and Registered Social Landlords to enable the installation of energy efficient measures.

Question reference: S5W-25251

Asked by: Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 10 September 2019
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 24 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government whether the cost of participation in the proposed deposit return system is likely to be more or less than full cost recovery from glass producers under the proposals for extended producer responsibility that are under consultation.

Work to develop detailed proposals for reform of UK-wide packaging producer responsibility arrangements is ongoing, building on the outputs of the public consultation which concluded on 13 May. The final costs of that scheme are not yet known but it is clear that moving towards a scheme which requires producers to pay 100% of the costs of recovering packaging at the end of life will require business to take greater responsibility for the costs than is currently the case.

The Scottish Government has proposed an industry owned and operated deposit return scheme. The management of the costs of the scheme, including the setting of any fees specific to particular materials, are therefore a matter for industry. However, our analysis indicates that deposit return is a cost-effective means of meeting producer responsibility obligations.