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

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Question reference: S6O-00375

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 10 November 2021
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 17 November 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the Minister for Parliamentary Business has had with ministerial colleagues regarding steps that can be taken in relation to transparency of its activities to better enable scrutiny during parliamentary business.

Question reference: S6W-04053

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 01 November 2021
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 9 November 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the Scotch whisky industry regarding its contribution to the economy and how to support its further growth.

Question reference: S6W-03846

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 19 October 2021
Current Status: Answered by Lorna Slater on 8 November 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what incentives it provides to encourage businesses to invest in training and retraining for their staff.

As part of our Future Skills Action Plan, we will provide more opportunities for the current workforce to upskill and retrain. To support this, we increased our investment in workforce development to £20m per annum from
‎ 2020-21.

The Flexible workforce Development Fund is now open to all employers, with up to £15,000 per year available for UK Government Apprenticeship Levy payers and £5,000 for SMEs to support workforce development supporting business growth.

In some sectors, such as Tourism and Hospitality, Cyber Security, green Construction, Aviation, Aerospace, and Digital, the National Transition Training Fund is supporting in-work skills development to enable economic recovery from Covid-19 and EU exit, as well as helping businesses gain the skills to for the transition to net zero.

In the current financial year, there is also support for businesses in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire through the North East Economic Recovery and Skills Fund. This £14.3m fund recognises the dual impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the downturn in Oil and Gas/ Local partners are working with businesses in key sectors to provide skills support to aid economic recovery in the area.

The need to raise awareness amongst employers on the necessary behaviour changes that will support a just transition to net zero is also recognised as a priority area in the Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan (CESAP), which was published in December 2020.

The current activity taken as part of the CESAP includes training developed by Keep Scotland Beautiful that has helped organisations to better understand the climate emergency and respond to the risks and opportunities it presents and the development of multi-disciplinary training on natural capital approaches. In addition to the actions already being taken, over the next year there will be a ‘toolkit’ developed to help small/micro businesses develop the skills and knowledge they need to adapt to the demands of the transition to net zero.

Question reference: S6F-00402

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 01 November 2021
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 4 November 2021

To ask the First Minister whether Scotland is on track to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.

Question reference: S6W-03399

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 October 2021
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 27 October 2021

To ask the Scottish Government whether any funding has been given to (a) BP, (b) Shell and (c) Siccar Point Energy through the Net Zero Technology Centre.

The Net Zero Technology Centre has not provided any funding directly for the benefit of any of the three Operators in question.

The Net Zero Technology Centre model provides funding for developers with a prerequisite that the project has industry support in order to provide match funding, industry engagement and access to the facilities and expertise that is required to prove the technology. This is in line with the Business Case approved as part of the Aberdeen City Region Deal, in which joint Government funding of £180m over ten years was to be matched by industry and academia to a target amount of £174.1m.

Question reference: S6W-03398

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 October 2021
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 26 October 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to tackle the health, social and environmental impacts of food.

The Scottish Government recognises that the food we produce and consume has wide-ranging impacts in many areas of life. Our ambition is for Scotland to be a Good Food Nation where people from every walk of life take pride and pleasure in, and benefit from, the food they produce, buy, cook, serve, and eat each day. We have already been working across government on an extensive programme of measures to deliver on this ambition. This work will now be supported and underpinned in law by the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill, introduced on 7 October 2021.

The Bill will provide an over-arching framework for clear, consistent and coherent future Scottish food policy. It places duties on Scottish Ministers and certain public authorities to produce plans of their policies in relation to food and set out what they will do to make those plans real. These plans will also have to set out the main outcomes to be achieved in relation to food-related issues, the policies needed to do this and the measures we will use to assess progress. We want these plans to deliver outcomes which support our nation’s social and economic wellbeing, the environment, people’s health and economic development.

Question reference: S6W-03420

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 October 2021
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 21 October 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many websites it has launched in each year since 2016.

Question reference: S6W-03419

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 October 2021
Current Status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 21 October 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many websites it operates.

Question reference: S6W-03336

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 27 September 2021
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 13 October 2021

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it takes to address police officer base operational levels when they are below what is considered safe, and how routinely each step has been deployed in the last 12 months.

Question reference: S6W-03339

Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 27 September 2021
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 13 October 2021

To ask the Scottish Government how many police drivers are trained in standard response driving, and what proportion of the force this represents.

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