- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 01 March 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Allan Wilson on 15 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive whether there will be a triennial review of the Forestry Commission and, if so, when the review will commence, what the membership of the review panel will be and what the structure of the review will be.
Answer
The Forestry Commission is across border public authority, and is not subject to triennial review.
Forestry CommissionScotland, which serves as the Executive’s forestry department, was set upfollowing the recommendations of the forestry devolution review on 1 April 2003. Atthe same time Forest Enterprise, which was originally set up as an Executive agencyon 1 April 1996 with a Great Britain remit, was trisected on 1 April 2003 to createseparate agencies in Scotland, England and Wales.
Following a review of theappropriate status for Forest Enterprise in Scotland, Ministers decided thatcontinuation as an Executive agency of Forestry Commission Scotland was themost appropriate course of action. A draft framework document will shortly besubmitted to ministers.
The framework document willbe reviewed by the national committee no later than 31 March 2007.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 18 February 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 15 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it shares the concerns of the Alliance of UK Health Regulators on Europe that doctors from Europe's 10 accession countries will no longer have to pass an English test in order to be registered to work in the UK from 1 May 2004, whereas doctors from America, New Zealand and Australia will still be tested and, if so, what measures it will take to ensure all registered doctors are language competent.
Answer
Doctors who are European economicarea nationals do not have to undertake an English language competency test inorder to be registered with the General Medical Council (GMC). The law does notcurrently permit this. However, the NHS must ensure that all doctors theyemploy have the necessary knowledge of English to carry out their duties safelyand may require a doctor to undertake a language assessment as part of therecruitment process, regardless of which country they come from.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 27 February 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 12 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what steps will be taken to ensure that NHS boards assign responsibility to an executive board member to help ensure that medical equipment is available to deliver care in line with national strategies and clinical practice, as referred to in recommendation 1 of Audit Scotland's report, Better Equipped to Care? - Follow-up report on managing medical equipment.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer given to question S2W-6519 on 11 March 2004.All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 26 February 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 11 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what measures it is, or will be, taking to give strategic management of medical equipment a higher priority at local and national levels, as referred to in Audit Scotland's report, Better Equipped to Care? - Follow-up report on managing medical equipment.
Answer
All NHS boards will be askedto respond to the recommendations of the Audit Scotland report and detail howthey will address these recommendations. The Health Department will monitorsuch action plans on a regular basis.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 13 February 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 10 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive when the report by the Mental Welfare Commission on the Miss X case will be published.
Answer
The MentalWelfare Commission does not propose to publish a report on the Miss X case. Avery brief anonymised summary of the case, with the Commission’s findings andits recommendations, will be available on its website next month.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 13 February 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Peter Peacock on 10 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive , further to the answer to question S2W-5141 by Peter Peacock on February 2004 and the point of order by Euan Robson on 13 November 2003 (Official Report, c 3234), whether the full report, with its recommendations, was not sent to Scottish Borders Council a week after 13 November 2003 as stated by Euan Robson and what the reasons are for its position on the matter.
Answer
The full report, includinganalysis and conclusions, was sent to Scottish Borders Council the weekfollowing 13 November 2003. The council provided the Social Work ServicesInspectorate with written comments on 24 December 2003. These comments are being taken into account in the finalisation of thereport. No date has been set for publication.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 11 February 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 10 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive how much funding it has provided to address alcohol misuse in each year since 1999 and what percentage of such funding was spent on advertising.
Answer
The information requested isgiven in the following table. Budgets for 2004-05 have still to be agreed.
Specific central Executivebudgets to address alcohol problems from 1999 to 2004, showing proportionatespend on national advertising.
| Year | Budget | Of which spend on national advertising | % advertising spend |
| 1999-00 | £1,361,000 | £25,000 | 1.8% |
| 2000-01 | £1,675,299 | £496,970 | 29.7% |
| 2001-02 | £1,605,840 | £315,086 | 19.6% |
| 2002-03 | £2,918,622 | £1,073,516 | 36.8% |
| 2003-04 | £2,785,458 | £785,000 | 28.2% |
Funding for services addressing alcohol problems is provided within resources allocated to NHS boards and local authorities, but is not specifically identified by the Executive.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 11 February 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 10 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what plans it has to collect information centrally on the level of funding allocated by NHS boards to address (a) alcohol and (b) drug misuse.
Answer
Some information on thelevel of spend by NHS boards on addressing drug misuse is currently collectedthrough drug action team corporate action plans, available at
http://www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org/dat/cap/dat.htm,and alcohol action team local action plans, available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/health/alcoholproblems/plans.asp.Information on direct spendon both drugs and alcohol will be collected within combined drug and alcohol actionteam plans for 2004-05. However, many services, particularly for alcohol, areprovided within a generic setting and funded from general allocations, andtherefore expenditure cannot be separately identified by the Executive. Someinformation which will be collected will also cover combined addictionsservices, where drugs and alcohol spend cannot be separately identified.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 11 February 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 10 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to section 12AA of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 as amended by the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002, what monitoring is in place in respect of the notification by local authorities to carers regarding their possible entitlement to an assessment for accessing services.
Answer
From 2004-05 we will becollecting data from local authorities on the numbers of carers’ assessmentsbeing carried out. We propose to build on this by collecting additional data onthe numbers of carers requesting assessments. These indicators should provide apicture over time of local authority performance in ensuring that carers aremade aware of their right to an assessment. Other performance indicators andoutcome measures for carers will be developed in due course and we are alreadyworking closely on this with key stakeholders.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 11 February 2004
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 10 March 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what measures it will take at a national level, other than advertising, to address (a) alcohol and (b) drug misuse.
Answer
The Plan for Action onalcohol problems (
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/health/alcoholproblems/docs/paap-00.asp)sets out a range of actions under the headings of culture change, preventionand education, provision of services, protection and controls and delivery.The drugs strategy (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library/documents-w7/tdis-00.htm)and subsequent reports identify a range of actions under the four pillars of young people, communities, treatment andavailability.
