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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-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: 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-10437

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 what the consequences will be for any local authority that does not have its short-term lets licensing scheme established by 1 October 2022.

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.

Question reference: S6W-10716

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 20 September 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what consultation it has carried out for the Islands Energy Strategy.

Work to develop an Islands Energy Strategy was delayed during the pandemic. In the interim period there have been significant changes to the policy landscape, including the commitments to take forward an Energy Strategy Just Transition Plan for Scotland and the Carbon Neutral Islands Project. An Islands Energy Strategy will follow and build on these pieces of work in 2023 allowing alignment with Scotland's national plans. Stakeholder engagement is ongoing.

Question reference: S6W-10794

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Thursday, 01 September 2022
Current Status: Answered by Keith Brown on 20 September 2022

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

Table 1 on Crimes recorded by the police, Scotland, 2012-13 to
‎ 2021-22, from the National statistics on Recorded crime in Scotland, includes the requested information on theft of a motor vehicle. This is available within the supporting document and the associated excel tables at: Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2021-2022 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

If useful, a rolling annual picture is also available in the shorter quarterly releases of National Statistics on recorded crime, based on the most recent 5 years. Figures for the years ending June 2018 to June 2022 are available at: Recorded Crime in Scotland: year ending June 2022 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Information on the number of people convicted for ‘theft of a motor vehicle’ is available in the Main tables (table 4b) of the National Statistics on Criminal Proceedings in Scotland: 2020-21 statistical publication available at Supporting documents - Criminal proceedings in Scotland: 2020-2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . The latest available information is for the financial year 2020-21.

It should be noted that the national lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent court closures resulted in significant reduced activity in both the number of reports being referred to COPFS and the number of proceedings going through Scottish courts. Consequently the 2020-21 figures should not be considered indicative of any long-term trends.

Whilst the Scottish Government do publish data on both recorded crimes and criminal proceedings in Scotland, these are based on distinct and unlinked data sets. Care should be taken when comparing different data sources relating to the criminal justice system. Detailed information on why these two data sources are not directly comparable can be found in Annex C, paragraph 14 of the Criminal Proceedings in Scotland: 2020-21 bulletin.

For example recorded crime statistics count crimes and offences at the time that they came to the attention of Police Scotland while criminal proceedings statistics report on cases which have concluded in court. This means that a crime may be recorded by the police in one year, charges brought and court proceedings concluded in subsequent years. In addition, a person may be proceeded against for more than one crime, or a set of crimes with more than one victim, in a proceeding, but only the main charge is counted in these court proceedings statistics. There is also the possibility that the crime recorded by the police may be altered in the course of judicial proceedings.