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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: S5W-13566

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 19 December 2017
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 10 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government whether registered social landlords can issue factoring policy charges to tenants for (a) the provision of bad debt write-offs, (b) marketing and (c) office rent, rates or utilities and, if so, under what legislation.

Question reference: S5O-01611

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 13 December 2017
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 21 December 2017

To ask the Scottish Government when the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport will next visit Stranraer.

Question reference: S5O-01658

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 20 December 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 10 January 2018

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to promote Galloway's natural features to attract tourists.

Question reference: S5W-13124

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 04 December 2017
Current Status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 18 December 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how many hen harrier nests there were on (a) RSPB and (b) non-RSPB reserves in each of the last five years, and what information it has regarding how many failed to have any chicks fledge, broken down by the reason for the failures.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on hen harrier nests broken down by nature reserves on which the nests are located, or on reasons for nest failure.

The Scottish Raptor Monitoring Scheme (SRMS) and RSPB have provided the data in Table 1 for RSPB reserves. The data is from 2011-2015. Data for 2016 will be available in early 2018.

Table 1

Year	No of pairs monitored	Successful	Failed/Outcome unknown
2011	42	13	29
2012	37	15	22
2013	37	12	25
2014	37	13	24
2015	43	15	28

Around 80% of the records in Table 1 are from RSPB Orkney reserves. The Orkney harrier population is well known for high levels of polygyny with males often breeding with 2 or 3 females. Most of these additional females either fail or produce very few young, as normally males struggle to feed more than one female and brood. This affects the failure rate overall and the proportion of successful nesting attempts is higher on non-Orkney RSPB reserves compared to Orkney reserves.

Table 2 provides data on breeding hen harriers across Scotland from the SRMS. It does not include the data included in Table 1.

Table 2

Year	No of pairs monitored	Successful	Failed/Outcome unknown
2011	204	98	106
2012	180	92	88
2013	210	97	113
2014	256	164	92
2015	233	105	128

The SRMS annual report for 2015 includes an article on Patterns of Breeding and Causes of Failure in 2015 (see http://raptormonitoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/SRMS_Report15.pdf). It shows the regional variation in both the success/failure rates and stage of nesting attempt when failure occurred for hen harriers, as well as providing a summary of causes of failure for all species reported in 2015. It highlights the difficulty in accurately assigning causes of failure, with the majority of failures being in the unknown reason category.

Question reference: S5W-12970

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 11 December 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what facilities are available to allow motorists who are experiencing tiredness while driving on motorways to rest.

Question reference: S5W-12994

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 11 December 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on motorists who experience tiredness while driving on motorways pulling over to a service station car park to rest.

Question reference: S5W-12995

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 11 December 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to motorists who have pulled over to a service station car park to rest after experiencing tiredness while driving on motorways being fined by service station owners because of the length of time they rested.

Motorway service areas in Scotland are managed by commercial operators with their car parks managed by private car park companies. Any private car park operator can charge for parking, but only those operators who are members of an Accredited Trade Association (ATA) can obtain vehicle keeper information from the DVLA for parking enforcement purposes.It is our understanding that most motorway service areas in Scotland operate a regime of allowing at least 2 hours free parking and signs are placed to inform road users of the terms and conditions of the car park.

Question reference: S5W-12969

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 24 November 2017
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 7 December 2017

To ask the Scottish Government who authorised the rebranding of police vehicles to include Gaelic language, and how much the rebranding has cost.

Question reference: S5O-01544

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 November 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 December 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what the scope is of the recently-announced report on developing the A75 and A77.

Question reference: S5W-12212

Asked by: Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 27 October 2017
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 21 November 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to promote Galloway as a visitor destination, and what future plans it has.

The Scottish Government provides funding for VisitScotland to promote Scotland, highlighting aspects and strengths of Scotland. VisitScotland have recently worked with Stena Line to brand up their arrival hall at Cairnryan with some local artwork to encourage visits to this area.

Forest Enterprise Scotland will continue to work with VisitScotland in promoting Galloway Forest Park and the Dark Sky Park in addition to providing infrastructure and visitor services, building on the estimated 433,640 visitors during 2016.

The Scottish Government set out in the Programme for Government our ambition for promoting the south of Scotland and Ayrshire as a tourism destination for coastal and forest tourism activities. We will continue to work with partners to promote tourism, particularly for heritage, culture and creative arts, wildlife and green tourism and local food and drink.

The future location of a substantive part of the Galloway Hoard will also provide opportunities for Galloway as a visitor destination.