Chamber and committees

Generic business support for small and micro-businesses is provided through Business Gateway. A range of specialised support services also exists. For example, in redundancy situations, the Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE) initiative provides support to individuals facing redundancy. The aim of PACE is to minimise the time people affected by redundancy are out of work. In light of the current economic climate, the Scottish Government set up the PACE Partnership in June of this year to bring together all agencies with an interest in PACE to oversee a continuous improvement programme to enhance the operation of PACE. An element of the work of this programme is considering issues in relation to support being provided through a range of agencies to individuals at an earlier stage.

I intend to meet all of the partners who signed the 2006 statement on tackling abusive behaviour at marches and parades, including the Orange Lodge and Cairde na h''Eireann, to consider with them how the statement can be taken forward at a local level.

Yes.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-29168, on 2 December 2009. The answers to all written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, for which the search facility can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

An extensive range of support and advice services are available to Scottish businesses of all sizes, from a wide range of public and private sector organisations including: Scottish Enterprise; Highlands and Islands Enterprise; the Business Gateway; local authorities; the third sector; financial institutions; Skills Development Scotland, and other specialist sectoral advisory bodies.

The most widely used service for small and micro-business is the Business Gateway. Local authorities are now responsible for local delivery of the Business Gateway. The recently established Business Gateway Scotland Board will take forward its ongoing development and consider proposals for any review of the service as appropriate.

No discussions have taken place between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Futures Trust regarding shared-campus schools. Individual local authorities who are receiving support for a school project through the new £1.25 billion new school building programme, which is being managed by the Scottish Futures Trust, may have had, depending on their circumstances, such discussions.

The most widely used service for small and micro business is the Business Gateway, for which local authorities are now responsible for local delivery. The Business Gateway service involves extensive marketing programmes to ensure that the services it provides and signposts are publicised to businesses as comprehensively as possible.

We have regular dialogue with the Council of Mortgage Lenders on this and other issues. We are also in correspondence with the Financial Services Authority, most recently on 11 November 2009, pressing them to require lenders to provide separate Scottish data on repossessions. In addition, I and the Minister for Community Safety met with lenders'' representatives on 1 September 2009 and 8 October 2009 and discussed the need for Scottish data.

The information requested is provided in the following table.

Number of patients waiting for a first Outpatient appointment, following referral by a general medical or dental practitioner, at Glasgow Dental Hospital, by department on 30 September 2009:

Dental Department	Number
Oral Medicine	323
Oral Surgery	533
Orthodontics	213
Paediatric Dentistry	283
Restorative Dentistry	1,053

Source: ISD Scotland “ Waiting Times Data Warehouse.

Information is available for the median wait for a first outpatient consultation following a referral from a GP or dentist. Data for the three quarters from 30 June 2007 to 31 December 2007 is derived from retrospective outpatient Scottish morbidity data. Information on median waiting times for the quarters 31 March 2008 to 30 September 2009 is derived from New Ways of Defining and Measuring Waiting Times, which was introduced on 1 January 2008. Due to the different methods of data collection the figures for 2007 are not comparable with 2008. Information on median waits is provided in the following table.

NHS Scotland: median waiting time in weeks for a first outpatient appointment following referral by a general medical or dental practitioner, at Glasgow Dental Hospital:

Quarter Ending	Median Wait (Weeks)
30 June 2007*	7
30 September 2007*	9
31 December 2007*	10
31 March 2008+	8
30 June 2008+	9
30 September 2008+	10
31 December 2008+	8
31 March 2009+	7
30 June 2009+	7
30 September 2009+	6

Notes:

^*Data source: ISD Scotland - SMR00.

⁺Data source: ISD Scotland - Waiting Times Data Warehouse (New Ways).