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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: S6O-02061

Asked by: Brian Whittle, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 March 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 30 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will provide an update on what progress it has made in preparing for the operation of the Deposit Return Scheme.

Question reference: S6O-02028

Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 March 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 30 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will provide an update on what preparations it has made for the launch of the Deposit Return Scheme.

Question reference: S6O-02099

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 March 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 30 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will provide an update on pay negotiations with trade unions representing Scottish Parliament staff.

Question reference: S6O-02098

Asked by: Paul Sweeney, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 March 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 30 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what discussions it has had in relation to access to translation services for cross-party groups.

Question reference: S6O-02095

Asked by: Neil Bibby, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 March 2023
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 30 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body when it will next meet with representatives from the GMB trade union MSP staff branch.

Question reference: S6W-15987

Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-13337 by Patrick Harvie on 10 January 2023, whether it will provide an update on whether it has published the data, in light of it already being used for policy formulation and implementation, and of it committing to publishing it "early this year".

Question reference: S6W-15700

Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 13 March 2023
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the Scottish National Party manifesto commitment to “introduce restrictions on alcohol advertising in locations where children would be readily exposed to it”.

Question reference: S6W-15827

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 10 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by George Adam on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that 180 Freedom of Information requests to the Scottish Government regarding Ferguson Marine and Scotland's ferry network remain outstanding, with many not being processed within the statutory timeframe.

The Scottish Government regrets any instance in which the statutory 20 working day deadline for responding to information requests is not met. It remains committed to its obligations under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act to ensure openness and transparency. The Scottish Government is working at pace to deliver the actions in its FOI Improvement Plan, including the target agreed with the Scottish Information Commissioner of answering 95% of requests on time.

The Scottish Government has received and responded to a large number of requests relating to the topics the Member highlights. The figure quoted by the Member relates to the number of such requests which remained outstanding in August 2022. Considerable progress in responding to outstanding requests has been made since that time.

Question reference: S6W-15964

Asked by: Pam Duncan-Glancy, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what (a) analysis it undertakes and (b) data it (i) holds and (ii) publishes on (A) tracking and (B) monitoring the successful sustainment, or otherwise, of the "positive destinations" of school leavers.

Information on the initial destinations of school leavers three months after the end of the school year (i.e. in October) is published in the Summary Statistics for Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations publication released in February each year. Information on the destinations of the same cohort of school leavers nine months after the end of the school year (i.e. the following April) is then published in Summary Statistics for Follow-up Leaver Destination each June.

Chart 4 of the follow-up leaver destination publication provides information on the percentage of school leavers whose follow-up destination was the same as their initial destination whilst table L1.8 of the associated supplementary tables provide more details of the percentages of school leavers who had sustained their initial destination or moved into another destination by the time of the follow-up data cut - i.e. 9 months after leaving school.

The information used to produce these destination statistics is sourced from the 'Opportunities for All' shared dataset. This dataset contains information on the activities undertaken by young people in Scotland and is managed and hosted by Skills Development Scotland (SDS). SDS supply the Scottish Government with two snapshots from this dataset throughout the year - in April and October.

Question reference: S6W-15821

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many people have accessed its Digital Planning tools in each of the last five years.

The eDevelopment service currently has 52,000 registered users.

In the last 5 years the eDevelopment homepage has been accessed 3,294,533 times. The figures in the following table set out the number of times that users have accessed the homepage. The information is broken down into each of the 5 years.

As of January 2023, over 1.41m planning and building standards applications have been submitted online via eDevelopment since the service went live in 2016.

The service regularly receives over 5,500 submissions each week.

We estimate that in 2021-2022, up to 95% of all planning submissions and 90% of building warrant applications are submitted online through the service.

No.	Year	User Sessions
1	2018	603,021
2	2019	634,241
3	2020	655,648
4	2021	722,284
5	2022	679,339