Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-14913

Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 07 February 2023
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 21 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the UK Government regarding applicable safety standards to protect (a) offshore workers and (b) seafarers from Scotland working on internationally flagged vessels in waters over 12 nautical miles from the Scottish coastline.

The Scottish Government expects the highest safety and crew welfare and employment conditions for all workers employed in offshore and maritime industries.

Safety standards for offshore workers in the UK Continental Shelf are regulated in Great Britain by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and is a reserved matter for the UK Government. All relevant legislation was enacted prior to devolution.

Maritime safety is also a reserved competence of the UK Government undertaken by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. The Maritime Labour Convention came into force in the UK on 7 August 2014. It sets out the minimum working and living rights for seafarers with the onus on operators.

Question reference: S6W-14556

Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 30 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 21 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many hectares of land each local authority (a) currently owns and (b) owned (i) five, (ii) 10 and (iii) 20 years ago.

This is a question for the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland. She advises me that current ownership for each local authority is provided in the following table. This is provided from a combination of titles in the Land Register and General Register of Sasines, and as the areas held in Sasines are indicative rather than definitive it provides a best estimate.

Whilst it is possible to retrieve historic ownership details for specific plots of land, Scotland-wide views of the Land Register showing aggregate ownership by specific parties at five, 10, or 20 years ago are not maintained, and the nature of the General Register of Sasines means it is not feasible to retrieve historic ownership information en masse .

Local Authority	Area (hectares)
Aberdeen City	1,100
Aberdeenshire	764
Angus	825
Argyll and Bute	143
City of Edinburgh	1,434
Clackmannanshire	665
Dumfries and Galloway	454
Dundee City	523
East Ayrshire	645
East Dunbartonshire	325
East Lothian	854
East Renfrewshire	405
Falkirk	798
Fife	2,823
Glasgow City	1,622
Highland	1,164
Inverclyde	1,956
Midlothian	378
Moray	424
Na h-Eileanan an Iar	4
North Ayrshire	1,858
North Lanarkshire	7,018
Orkney Islands	417
Perth and Kinross	440
Renfrewshire	1,849
Scottish Borders	1,391
Shetland Islands	2,989
South Ayrshire	186
South Lanarkshire	3,653
Stirling	1,091
West Dunbartonshire	478
West Lothian	5,274
Total	43,949

Figures were current on 6 February 2023.

Question reference: S6W-14865

Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 13 February 2023
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 16 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answers to questions S6W-13235 and S6W-13236 by Mairi Gougeon on 20 December 2022, when it anticipates that (a) the report from the UK Animal Welfare Committee regarding the welfare of farmed fish at slaughter will be published and (b) any recommendations in the report will be implemented, following its completion.

Question reference: S6W-14344

Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 27 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 13 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the UK Government regarding a suspected fatality among workers on the Liberia-registered rig, Valaris 121, in the North Sea on 22 January 2022.

Question reference: S6F-01802

Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 06 February 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 9 February 2023

To ask the First Minister, in light of reports of people being forced onto prepayment meters, what steps the Scottish Government is taking to support vulnerable people in Scotland with rising energy costs.

Question reference: S6W-14299

Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 6 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what plans Transport Scotland has to include any road traffic accidents that are caused by wild deer in its annual statistics.

Statistical information about injury road accidents is collected by the police and reported to the Scottish Government using the GB-wide "STATS 19" returns.

At the moment, the only information available from STATS-19 is accidents involving an animal in the carriageway and we cannot determine from the database, what type of animal.

Transport Scotland have no plans to seek to include accidents that are caused by deer in STATS-19. You may be interested to refer to the last review of the database here: Road accidents and safety statistics: user engagement - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) .

Question reference: S6W-14301

Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 6 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how it (a) monitors and (b) records road traffic accidents that are caused by wild deer.

Question reference: S6W-14300

Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 31 January 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many serious road traffic accidents have been caused by wild deer in the last 12 months.

We do not hold this information in the Transport Scotland injury road accidents database. At the moment, the only information we collect is accidents involving an animal in the carriageway and we cannot determine from the database, what type of animal. The only other information that we are aware of in relation to traffic accidents involving deer, is available in an Nature Scot study publication here: NatureScot Commissioned Report 950 - Deer-vehicle collisions in Scotland - data collection and collation to end 2015 | NatureScot

Question reference: S6W-14343

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S6W-13876

Asked by: Mercedes Villalba, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 12 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Elena Whitham on 20 January 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what measures it is taking to ensure there are welfare facilities within all fire stations in Scotland, so that firefighters can decontaminate themselves following any exposure to cancerogenic fire contaminants.

The safety and wellbeing of all fire and rescue officers is of upmost importance to the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government has continued the commitment to support SFRS service delivery and reform with a further uplift of £10m resource for 2023-24, which will bring the total budget to £362.7m.

I am aware that SFRS has been engaged with the FBU and the work of Lancaster University for a number of years and its well established contamination working group has taken action across all aspects of operations to reduce exposure to harmful contaminants. This includes investment in new fire appliances and fire station facilities.

This continues to be a priority for SFRS and the contaminants group will continue to consider the research and take appropriate action.

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