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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.

Find out more about parliamentary questions

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Question reference: S6W-11303

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answers to questions S6W-10436 and S6W-10437 by Shona Robison on 21 September 2022, and in light of the Report to Aberdeenshire Council’s Business Services’ Licensing Sub-Committee of 2 September 2022 under item six, paragraph 3.8.1, whether it can confirm that licensing officers from Aberdeenshire Council told the Scottish Government that it would not be possible to establish the short-term lets licensing scheme by 1 October 2022; and what its response is to the comment in the report regarding this deadline that “other Scottish Licensing Authorities are in the same position as Aberdeenshire Council”.

In the lead up to the commencement of short-term let licensing on 1 October 2022, we spoke to local authorities about their readiness to implement licensing schemes. This included regular group meetings and individual discussions.

A small number of local authorities informed us that their elected members would not meet to ratify their draft short-term let policies until after 1 October 2022. In these cases local authorities have ensured their websites have information about their licensing scheme including the draft policy, draft application forms, and an email address to submit enquiries to.

Question reference: S6W-11260

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 30 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it has given to the reported proposal from the Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers (ASSC) to delay the introduction of short-term lets licensing in light of the current cost of living crisis.

Question reference: S6W-11522

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 19 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what the total cost has been of funding any private dental treatment for NHS patients due to a lack of available NHS services in (a) 2020, (b) 2021, and (c) 2022 to date, broken down by NHS board.

Question reference: S6W-11523

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 October 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 19 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many times NHS boards have funded private dental treatment for NHS patients due to a lack of available NHS services in (a) 2020, (b) 2021 and (c) 2022 to date, broken down by NHS board.

Question reference: S6O-01418

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 28 September 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 5 October 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to improve the resilience of island communities.

Question reference: S6W-10715

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 23 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government when it will publish the findings from the 2021 Scottish House Condition Survey.

The Scottish Government intends to publish the key findings from the 2021 Scottish House Condition Survey in February 2023. This was communicated to users through a ScotStat email and is published on forthcoming publications and Scottish Household Survey webpages on the Scottish Government website.

Any changes to this date will be communicated to users, in line with the code of practice for statistics .

Question reference: S6W-10970

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 08 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 23 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much has been (a) budgeted for and (b) distributed from the Fuel Insecurity Fund in each year of its operation.

The Fuel Insecurity Fund was first established in the winter of 2020, as part of the wider Winter Support Fund, to help households struggling with their energy costs who were at risk of severely rationing, or self-disconnecting entirely because they could not afford their energy costs.

Fuel Insecurity Fund
Year	Budgeted	Distributed
2020-21	£7m	£3.595m
2021-22	£10m	£10m
2022-23	£10m	£4.1m*

In financial year 2020-21, £3.595m was spent by our partners.

As set out in our Programme for Government this year we have committed to using the Emergency Budget Review to double our Fuel Insecurity Fund to £20 million, to provide further support for the many households across Scotland who are already struggling to pay their bills and heat their homes.

* Full current 2022-23 budget of £10 million has been allocated across our third sector partner organisations, which they have the flexibility to drawdown in the financial year to best support and target customer needs up to the end March 2023.

Question reference: S6W-10955

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 08 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 23 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the First Minister’s statement to the Parliament on the Programme for Government, on 6 September 2022, that a proposed Housing Bill would "implement key policies on short-term lets", whether this refers to enacted or new regulations on the matter.

Question reference: S6W-10793

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 21 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many recorded incidents of bicycle theft there have been in each year since 2017, and, of those, how many resulted in a conviction.

The following table details the number of recorded crimes of theft of a pedal cycle for the March year end data for reporting years 2016-17 to 2021-22.

Table: Number of theft of a pedal cycle crimes recorded by the police, Scotland, 2016-17 to 2021-22

Reporting Year	Crimes
2016-17	5,430
2017-18	6,069
2018-19	5,093
2019-20	4,600
2020-21	5,484
2021-22	4,441

Source: Recorded Crime in Scotland National Statistics dataset

Information on the number of people convicted for bicycle theft isn’t held centrally as crimes of bicycle theft are reported under the charge of ‘other theft’ and a further breakdown by article(s) stolen is not available.

Question reference: S6W-10436

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 18 August 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether any local authority has requested an extension to the deadline for establishing a short-term lets licensing scheme by 1 October 2022, and what consideration has been given to any such request.