Chamber and committees

No specific monitoring was carried out on non-GM crops situated in the vicinity of the GM crop trial at Munlochy.Separation distances are in place around GM crop trials to minimise the potential for cross-pollination. They do not reflect any doubts about safety; they are used to maintain high levels of purity in adjacent crops and are a recognised method of enabling different crops to co-exist. The Executive's scientific advisers are satisfied that neither cross-pollination involving the variety of GM herbicide tolerant oil seed rape being grown in the farm-scale trials, nor the pollen itself landing on neighbouring crops, poses a threat to human health or the environment. The harvested GM crop and any sexually compatible crops grown within the separation distances surrounding GM crop trials will not enter the human food or animal feed chain.

The Scottish Executive has no such plans.

The Scottish Executive has provided £228 million to more than 700 voluntary groups in 2002-03. The majority of these operate at a national level and their programmes and services are not always disaggregated by geographical area. Although many of these will impact upon the East Dunbartonshire Council area, the Executive would need to ask each grant recipient to provide the information requested. This would include a disproportionate cost.

Facilitate (Scotland) applied for funding for 2002-03 under section 16B of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978. Applications for funding were also made for the previous year both under section 16B, and under section 10 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968. All three applications were assessed against the publicly available criteria for these grant schemes, but were not successful.

Local authorities have generic multi-agency response plans in place to prepare for a flood emergency in their areas. It is for councils to make appropriate arrangements for the deployment of emergency defences in light of local needs and concerns.

It is for local authorities to determine the emergency flood defence needs of their areas and to arrange for the provision of any measures they might identify.

The police have a duty to protect life and property and co-ordinate the multi-agency response by local authorities, emergency services and others to a civil emergency including flooding. In areas affected by flooding, multi-agency response groups can be brought together at the earliest sign of a potential risk. Through the Military Aid to the Civil Community Scheme the authorities can request the assistance of the services when appropriate. The Executive provides the police with specific grants for emergency planning for all types of civil emergencies including floods and can in certain circumstances offer further financial support under the Bellwin Scheme to councils incurring eligible costs in dealing with a large scale emergency. More specifically, the primary responsibility to protect property from flooding lies with the owners concerned. However, since 1997, councils have had a statutory duty to assess watercourses in their areas and maintain them in a due state of efficiency where this would substantially reduce the likelihood of flooding of non-agricultural land in their areas. The Executive also supports councils in their efforts to address flood risk to non-agricultural land through flood prevention schemes and has ensured that councils have the necessary powers and resources. Additionally, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has powers to operate flood warning schemes. The Executive provided financial support to SEPA to enable the introduction, last November, of the Floodline flood warning service. The Executive is committed to helping councils protect vulnerable communities from flooding and consequently reducing the likely need for emergency action, demonstrated by the substantially increased resources it has made available for major flood prevention schemes.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-28462.

The Scottish Executive is unable to confirm when Aventis CropScience first knew of impurities in their GM seed. However, Aventis formally notified the Scottish Executive of low levels of additional GM material in the oil seed rape seeds used in farm scale trials in a letter dated 2 August 2002. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs was also notified at the same time. The text of the letter from Aventis notifying the Scottish Executive of the details of this incident was attached to the Executive's News Release dated 15 August 2002.

There are no specific funds available from the European Union for the improvement of flood defences.