Chamber and committees

Companies are supported by a very wide variety of programmes from the Scottish Executive, the Scottish Enterprise Networks and other public sector bodies. Scottish Enterprise Borders received an additional £2.3 million in the current year to help meet the challenges the area is facing, the third year of increased funding. The LEC estimates that this has helped it to provide some £700,000 to textile companies in the Borders since 6 June 2000. In addition, a Faraday award of £1.2 million has been awarded by the DTI to the Technitex project, a collaborative project across the UK led by Heriot Watt at Galashiels. The total value of support is dependent on the extent to which companies and other bodies involved in the industry come forward with eligible projects and proposals.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:

Unlike mental disorder or illness where medical diagnostic categories may be applied, there are no established criteria for determining mental health problems of prisoners.Establishments operate multidisciplinary mental health teams, including medical and nursing psychologist, social work and other staff. Inpatient beds are provided in three hub establishments (Barlinnie, Perth and Polmont).

The non-housing programme capital allocation to local authorities provides resources for various capital work projects, including flood prevention schemes.

In addition, subject to completing the statutory process under the Flood Prevention (Scotland) Act 1961, supplementary allocation may be available for the construction of major flood prevention schemes (FPS). Recently, flood prevention schemes have been confirmed for Bridge of Earn, Moredun, Paisley, River Kelvin, Collier Street, Johnston and Weem Village.

Following requests by councils, supplementary allocations have been provided recently to:

Perth and Kinross Council for Bridge of Earn FPS (£0.75 million)

Renfrewshire Council for Moredun, Paisley FPS (£1 million); and

East Dunbartonshire Council for the River Kelvin FPS (£8 million).

The amounts provided fully met the councils' requests.A further request from Renfrewshire Council for a supplementary allocation of £1 million for the Collier Street, Johnston FPS has just been received and is being considered.

The single allocation which local authorities receive in support of their non-housing capital programme includes provision for, among other things, expenditure on flood prevention. Separately, following flooding in recent years, resources for this programme have been enhanced to cater for major flood prevention schemes. In response to requests from councils who had experienced severe flooding in their areas, additional funding was issued to councils to support the development of flood prevention measures as shown in the table:

1997-98	Renfrewshire Council	£1.0 million
1998-99	Moray Council	£0.4 million
	East Dunbartonshire Council	£0.3 million
	Renfrewshire Council	£0.3 million
	East Ayrshire Council	£1.2 million
1999-2000	Renfrewshire Council	£1.0 million

In addition, awards from the former Central Challenge Fund were made to East Ayrshire Council for flood prevention measures in Kilmarnock and to Perth and Kinross Council for construction of the Perth Flood Prevention Scheme:

1997-98	East Ayrshire Council	£1.47 million
	Perth and Kinross Council	£1.82 million
1998-99	East Ayrshire Council	£0.41 million
	Perth and Kinross Council	£4.4 million
1999-2000	Perth and Kinross Council	£7.1 million

Benefits, including the provision of Crisis Loans, are a matter reserved to the UK Government. It is therefore for the DSS to decide how they should best be administered. The Scottish Executive will continue its regular dialogue with UK Ministers on how the Scottish Executive and the UK Government can best work together to tackle such issues.

Iain Gray's response on 25 April 2000 to Mr Duncan Hamilton informed him that no funding would be available from the Scottish Executive in the years 1999-2000 and 2000-01 to train (a) lip readers and (b) teachers of lipreading. The Scottish Executive did not know what funding was available for this purpose from local authorities or health boards as this information is not collected.Officials have now met with the Scottish Course to Train Tutors in Lipreading based at Donaldson's College, Edinburgh to explore the possibility of funding. Section 9 Grant under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 has now been awarded. This pump priming grant will provide a basis to extend local services and develop the links between Audiology Clinics and Further and Adult Education Provision.

I refer Ms Grahame to the answer given to question S1W-12470.

The Scottish Textile Forum met on 12 June and 12 September, and the next meeting will be on 31 January. Minutes of these meetings are available on the Scottish Executive's website (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/who/elld/tra_tex.asp). Subgroups of the forum have been working on producing an action plan document for the industry. Plans are also being developed for future support of the textile industry by the Enterprise Network. Further announcements on these developments will be made in the spring.

The number of households that will qualify for assistance under the proposed scheme will depend on the charges levied by each of the water authorities in the coming year and the level at which any cap is set. As the charge levels have yet to be set and proposals for the scheme are still out to consultation it is not presently possible to identify the actual number of households that will qualify. It is however anticipated that at least 100,000 households throughout Scotland will receive assistance under the proposed scheme.With regard to the administration costs of the scheme my officials are presently discussing the implications for the billing process with local authorities. It is anticipated that suitable software adjustments can be made to the existing systems that will significantly reduce the requirement for on going administrative costs. This is however subject to any adjustments resulting from the consultation process. For this reason an estimate of the administrative costs is not available at this time.

The £10 million allocated to local authorities in 2000-01 under the Strategy for Carers in Scotland for services to support carers was distributed as follows:

Local Authority	(£000)
Aberdeen	411
Aberdeenshire	378
Angus	233
Argyll & Bute	204
Clackmannanshire	97
Dumfries & Galloway	301
Dundee City	326
East Ayrshire	244
East Dunbartonshire	166
East Lothian	177
East Renfrewshire	146
Edinburgh, City of	887
Eilean Siar	70
Falkirk	270
Fife	699
Glasgow City	1355
Highland	387
Inverclyde	181
Midlothian	134
Moray	155
North Ayrshire	283
North Lanarkshire	611
Orkney Islands	38
Perth & Kinross	274
Renfrewshire	322
Scottish Borders	237
Shetland Islands	40
South Ayrshire	244
South Lanarkshire	546
Stirling	161
West Dunbartonshire	183
West Lothian	242