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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: S6W-36507

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 23 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what support it will provide to producers in sectors such as brewing, who may not be able to absorb extended producer responsibility costs, in light of it not being categorised as a tax.

Extended producer responsibility for packaging (pEPR) has exemptions to avoid unnecessarily burden on small producers. Producers with an annual turnover less than £2m and 50 tonnes of packaging supplied are exempt from pEPR payments, but are required to report packaging data. This exempts approximately 70% of the UK's smaller producers from paying scheme fees. The four UK nations will keep these thresholds under review.

Question reference: S6W-36503

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 23 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, regarding the extended producer responsibility scheme, how it plans to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of local authorities' recycling services, and what penalties will be imposed if councils do not meet the required standards for recycling performance.

Question reference: S6W-36499

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 23 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what measures it will take to ensure that extended producer responsibility scheme funding is allocated to recycling by local authorities.

Question reference: S6W-36502

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 23 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether local authorities will be required to ringfence extended producer responsibility payments that they receive, for the purpose of improving collection and recycling rates of packaging materials, or for any other purpose.

Question reference: S6W-36509

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 23 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the Defra Extended Producer Responsibility Impact Assessment, what its position is on whether the cost of implementing extended producer responsibility for brewers and producers should be passed onto consumers.

Extended producer responsibility for packaging ensures that producers take full responsibility for the environmental impacts of the packaging they place on the market. Existing costs for the management of packaging waste are transferred from taxpayers to producers.

The Scottish Government has considered the impact on businesses through the publication of a Full Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA)

Question reference: S6W-36501

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 23 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what criteria will be used to assess the recycling efficiency of local authorities under the extended producer responsibility scheme, and what the penalties will be for councils that fail to meet these standards.

An efficient waste management service is defined by the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024 as a waste management service where disposal costs are as low as reasonable possible, taking into account the waste management service provided by a local authority, and any other factors specific to that authority, or to the area in relation to which it exercises its waste management functions, which in the opinion of PackUK (the EPR scheme administrator) are likely to affect its disposal costs.

Effectiveness assessments of local authorities waste management services are carried out by PackUK. The assessment of whether a local authority is running an effective waste management service for household packaging waste will include the amounts of household packaging waste managed, and the proportions recycled, recovered or disposed of. It will also account for local authority specific factors including population density, accessibility, deprivation, and government policies in each nation, as well as other relevant factors. Metrics will be agreed between PackUK and local authorities.

If PackUK determines that a local authority is not providing an effective waste management service, they will give notice to the local authority and work with them to determine how the services could be improved. Only if a local authority is not doing everything they can be reasonably expected to do to improve its waste management service and has no mitigating circumstances, could they then be subject to a deduction of their payment up to 20%.

Effectiveness assessments can be brought in from 2026 if sufficient data is available to make assessments, but must be brought in by 2028.

Question reference: S6W-36508

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 April 2025
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 23 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to evaluate the economic impact of the extended producer responsibility scheme on brewers and pubs in Scotland, including whether packaging costs have affected prices.

The Scottish Government has considered the impact on businesses through the publication of a Full Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA).

We will be evaluating the impacts of extended producer responsibility for packaging in future years through a four nation evaluation of the policy. The evaluation is being led by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and will run from
2024-2029.

Question reference: S6W-36609

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 04 April 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 22 April 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-32778 by Ivan McKee on 7 January 2025, what the cost would have been in each year since 2016-17 of bringing the Higher Property Rate into line with that in England, broken down by industry sector.

Table 1 presents the estimated gross cost of setting the Higher Property Rate equal to the Standard Multiplier in England, from 2016-2017 until 2020-2021.

The Higher Property Rate in Scotland was 1.3p higher than the Standard Multiplier in England from 2016-2017 until 2018-2019, and 1.2p higher in 2019-2020 and
2021-2022. The Higher Property Rate and the Standard Multiplier in each year are shown in Table 2.

Figures for years from 2021-2022 until 2025-2026 are available in answers to questions S6W-25972 on 18 March 2024, S6W-25588 on 1 March 2024 and
S6W-32778 on 7 January 2025.

In 2016-2017, the threshold for the Standard Multiplier was £18,000, while the threshold for the Higher Property Rate was £51,000. Both thresholds were set to £51,000 from 2017-2018 until 2019-2020. From 2020-2021, the threshold for the Higher Property Rate was increased to £95,000, while the threshold for the Standard Multiplier remained at £51,000.

All figures are gross estimates, and are not adjusted for any relief. Figures are broken down by property class, as the Scottish Government does not hold property-level data on industry sectors. Property class is a classification used by Scottish Assessors to describe the type of property, and does not necessarily accurately reflect the use of a property.

This table is based on the valuation roll as at 1 October 2016, 1 October 2017, 1 October 2018, 1 October 2019, and 1 October 2020.

Figures in this table are rounded to the nearest £1,000, and may not sum due to rounding.

Table 1: Estimated gross cost of reducing the Higher Property Rate to the level of the English Standard Multiplier (£), broken down by property class

Property class	2016-2017 (£)	2017-2018 (£)	2018-2019 (£)	2019-2020 (£)	2020-2021 (£)
Shops	16,118,000	14,275,000	14,139,000	12,898,000	10,783,000
Public houses and restaurants	802,000	881,000	860,000	733,000	390,000
Offices	11,314,000	9,156,000	9,171,000	8,222,000	6,689,000
Hotels	2,072,000	2,824,000	2,886,000	2,686,000	2,334,000
Industrial subjects	11,080,000	11,145,000	11,184,000	10,374,000	8,814,000
Leisure and entertainment	2,262,000	2,292,000	2,310,000	2,126,000	1,848,000
Garages and petrol stations	518,000	538,000	536,000	499,000	351,000
Cultural	458,000	489,000	496,000	494,000	443,000
Sporting subjects	149,000	143,000	139,000	128,000	113,000
Education and training	6,461,000	6,846,000	6,973,000	6,394,000	5,735,000
Public service subjects	3,244,000	3,406,000	3,420,000	3,161,000	2,741,000
Communications	282,000	294,000	378,000	275,000	249,000
Quarries, mines, etc.	215,000	177,000	168,000	151,000	110,000
Petrochemical	1,533,000	1,579,000	1,565,000	1,442,000	1,432,000
Religious	179,000	99,000	102,000	95,000	41,000
Health and medical	2,360,000	2,473,000	2,531,000	2,345,000	2,120,000
Other	941,000	1,221,000	1,244,000	1,136,000	1,098,000
Care facilities	1,070,000	1,048,000	1,075,000	993,000	611,000
Advertising	29,000	44,000	45,000	43,000	34,000
Statutory undertaking	9,275,000	11,952,000	12,096,000	11,195,000	10,953,000
All	70,361,000	70,881,000	71,320,000	65,392,000	56,889,000

Table 2: The Standard Multiplier in England and the Higher Property Rate in Scotland, 2016-2017 to 2020-2021, pence per £1 of rateable value

Rate	2016-2017	2017-2018	2018-2019	2019-2020	2020-2021
Higher Property Rate (Scotland)	51.0	49.2	50.6	51.6	52.4
Standard Multiplier (England)	49.7	47.9	49.3	50.4	51.2
Difference	1.3	1.3	1.3	1.2	1.2

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Question reference: S6W-36665

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 April 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 6 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the effectiveness of the system of traffic regulation orders.

Question reference: S6W-36668

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 April 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 6 May 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to review the operation of temporary traffic regulation orders.