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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-03386

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 24 April 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 2 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what analysis it has conducted of the impact of its reformed dental payments system, introduced on 1 November 2023, in the Mid Scotland and Fife region.

Question reference: S6W-26979

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Current Status: Answer expected on 8 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government when the 2023-24 Scottish Recommended Allowance for foster and kinship carers will be passed on to children living with foster carers from independent fostering providers.

Question reference: S6T-01893

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 25 March 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 26 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that Scotland has become the "worst country in Europe" for unqualified beauticians injecting customers with cosmetic treatments.

Question reference: S6W-26101

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 March 2024
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 22 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made on delivering on the recommendations of the review of the Town Centres Action Plan.

Since the review of the Town Centre Action Plan (TCAP), we continue to implement the Town Centre First Principle and work closely with partners including COSLA and Scotland’s Towns Partnership (STP) to support progress on the delivery of actions outlined in TCAP. The National Planning Framework 4, published in February 2023, recognises town centres as national assets and aims to promote and facilitate development within them, including encouraging town centre living and limiting out of town retail development.

In collaboration with STP, progress towards town centre regeneration has also been showcased in a number of forums, including recent workshops on town centre living, place-based investment and the annual Scotland’s Towns conference.

Support for town centre action is backed by our multiple capital investment programmes, including the Place Based Investment Programme, Regeneration Capital Grant Fund and the Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme. However, the UK Government’s reduction in our capital budget will adversely impact the support that we can provide in 2024-25.

Question reference: S6W-25978

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 March 2024
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don on 20 March 2024

The early learning and childcare (ELC) census Early learning and childcare statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) is the Scottish Government’s current annual data collection on funded ELC.

The census collects data on the number of registrations for funded ELC by age. It does not collect data on the number of hours each child accesses.

Number of two year old registrations for funded ELC at the time of each census:

2021	6,474
2022	7,042
2023	6,636

Plans are in place to update the ELC census process which will allow us to collect child-level data, including the number of hours used by each child.

The Improvement Service collects data on funded ELC to support local authorities in the delivery of their service. While this is not Scottish Government data, it provides information on the number of hours. The following figures can be found in their Delivery Progress Reports ( ELC Delivery Progress Reports | Improvement Service ) :

Two year old children receiving 1,140 hours:

September 2021	4,300
September 2022	5,156
September 2023	5,648

Question reference: S6W-26100

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 12 March 2024
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 19 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made on delivering on the recommendations of the City Centre Recovery Taskforce.

Question reference: S6W-25981

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 March 2024
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 15 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the implementation of the Town Centre Action Plan.

The Town Centre Action Plan (TCAP) sets out our shared ambition for the future of town centres and is a call to action for partners, both locally and nationally, to re-build, re-energise and re-imagine our towns. This is a joint endeavour with responsibilities shared across the sectors.

We continue to take forward actions that we have direct responsibility for, working closely with cross-sector partners to support the delivery of TCAP. In collaboration with Scotland’s Towns Partnership, progress towards town centre regeneration has been showcased via a number of forums, including recent workshops on town centre living, place-based investment and the annual Scotland’s Towns conference.

Support for town centre action is also backed by our multiple capital investment programmes, including the Place Based Investment Programme, Regeneration Capital Grant Fund and the Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme, all of which help to accelerate shared ambitions for town centre action. However, following the UK Government's Autumn Statement and Spring Budget, a reduction in our capital budget will adversely impact the support that we can provide in 2024-25.

Question reference: S6W-25979

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 March 2024
Current Status: Answered by Natalie Don on 14 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how (a) many families have received support and (b) much has been spent from the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding to date, broken down by local authority area.

Whole Family Wellbeing Funding was provided by the Scottish Government to deliver transformational change to improve holistic family support so that families get the right support, in the right way and at the right time. This includes £32m for Children’s Services Planning Partnerships (CSPPs) to build local service capacity for transformation and the scaling up of holistic family support in local areas. The work is driven by Children's Services Planning Partnerships at the local level, who have responsibility for deciding how to spend their allocation. Our Evaluation of year 1 activity was published on 31 January 2024 and can be found here https://www.gov.scot/publications/whole-family-wellbeing-funding-wfwf-year-1-process-evaluation-final-report/

We are distributing funding through three distinct Elements co-produced with stakeholders including The Promise Scotland:

Element 1 – Providing Direct Support to CSPPs:Funding allocated across all CSPPs to build local service capacity and transform family support services.
Element 2 – National Support for Local Delivery - a package of activity aimed at supporting local transformation. This includes:

o establishing collaborative learning partnerships with three CSPPs [East Ayrshire, East Lothian, Glasgow City] and a dedicated national support team to support planning and provide local learning that can be shared nationally

o a Learning into Action Network and a Knowledge Hub to share learning, facilitate peer support and collaborate ;

o an independent evaluation of the implementation and initial impacts of the programme to help shape and develop activity across WFWF going forward;

o research to support continuous improvement of the transformation support provided to the CSPPs as well as to generate learning about how transformational capability is built.

Element 3 – Taking a cross SG approach to system change – funding approved for twelve projects led by wider SG policy teams which would progress the aims of WFW.

To date the Scottish Government has spent £65.5m across financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24.This figure does not include funding in addition to the local authority allocations for 2023-24 which have yet to be finalised. The following table provides a breakdown of the distribution of funding per Local Authority.

Local Authority	2022-23 Allocation (£m)	2023-24 Allocation (£m)
Aberdeen City	1.025	1.029
Aberdeenshire	1.464	1.467
Angus	0.657	0.654
Argyll and Bute	0.439	0.438
City of Edinburgh	2.199	2.201
Clackmannanshire	0.337	0.337
Dumfries and Galloway	0.917	0.917
Dundee City	0.894	0.893
East Ayrshire	0.832	0.833
East Dunbartonshire	0.471	0.473
East Lothian	0.579	0.583
East Renfrewshire	0.492	0.495
Falkirk	0.923	0.921
Fife	2.289	2.288
Glasgow City	4.666	4.663
Highland	1.420	1.417
Inverclyde	0.423	0.421
Midlothian	0.535	0.540
Moray	0.546	0.545
Na h-Eileanan Siar	0.161	0.159
North Ayrshire	0.959	0.954
North Lanarkshire	2.351	2.346
Orkney Islands	0.132	0.133
Perth and Kinross	0.805	0.806
Renfrewshire	0.988	0.986
Scottish Borders	0.668	0.669
Shetland Islands	0.158	0.157
South Ayrshire	0.604	0.603
South Lanarkshire	1.827	1.835
Stirling	0.495	0.493
West Dunbartonshire	0.604	0.602
West Lothian	1.140	1.143

Variations in allocations are due to data refreshes to reflect population movement.

In addition East Lothian received £1863.00 2022-23 for collaborative planning support and provide local learning that can be shared nationally.

Question reference: S6W-25980

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 05 March 2024
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 14 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the progress of the City Centre Recovery Task Force.

The City Centre Recovery Task Force published a report of their findings ( At the Heart of Economic Transformation: Report of the City Centre Recovery Task Force, 2021-22 (wpengine.com) ) in March 2022 which identified a number of priority outcomes to work towards over a five year period. The Scottish Government is currently working with Scottish cities, via the Scottish Cities Alliance ( Scottish Cities Alliance ) to progress work in two of these key areas:

Priority area 1: Increased residential capacity and occupancy and
Priority area 3: Reducing the amount of vacant and derelict land and property.

Scottish Government’s low carbon Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme is investing nearly £10m in 2023-24 and over £8m in 2024-25 supporting projects that will bring vacant and derelict land back into positive use to benefit communities and help tackle climate change. This is in addition to the Vacant and Derelict Land Fund which will see the five eligible local authorities receive a share of £5m investment in 2024-25.

The Scottish Cities Alliance have recently launched a Peer-to-Peer network built around the strategic objectives in the City Centre Recovery Taskforce Report, with the aim of:

Sharing knowledge and best practice from Scottish and international cities drawing on expertise from academia and the private and third sectors; and
Identifying and agreeing opportunities for future collaborative action.

The programme of knowledge exchange activity has been co-developed by the Alliance partners with Innovate UK, the Built Environment-Smarter Transformation Innovation Centre and the Connected Places Catapult to leverage in experience from wider UK and Irish Cities as well as research and knowledge exchange networks.

Question reference: S6W-25970

Asked by: Roz McCall, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 04 March 2024
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 8 March 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether the proposed introduction of a non-domestic rates public health supplement on retailers, as set out in its Budget for 2024-25, would result in any grocery stores liable for the surtax paying the highest business rate poundage in the UK.