Chamber and committees

The Scottish Executive delegation will take a scheduled flight to Johannesburg for the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development.The Scottish Executive delegation will stay in hotel rooms allocated to the UK delegation.

The Scottish Executive makes representations to EU bodies through the UK government, ensuring that the UK line takes full account of the Scottish position. The Scottish Executive is in regular contact with the UK Government on a wide range of issues, including the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development.

The Scottish Executive's objectives in attending the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development are:

• to show that Scotland takes sustainable development seriously. Whilst the focus of the summit is the sustainable development of poorer countries, this means that developed countries must set their house in order too. Sustainable development is a devolved issue and we shall not shirk from our responsibility to the planet;
• to show that sustainable development matters to the people of Scotland. We have listened to what ordinary Scots have to say and will represent these views in Johannesburg, and

to inform our actions. The Scottish Executive and civic Scotland will act to ensure that sustainable development here reflects the decisions and discussions in Johannesburg.

Much of the preparatory work, which included two comprehensive public consultations, is described in a report which is available in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 22146).In addition to the work summarised in that report, we have outlined our vision for a Sustainable Scotland and indicators to measure progress towards that vision in Meeting the Needs... which is available in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 20879).In preparation for the Summit we are sharing our work with others - the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development spoke to the Stakeholder Forum conference on the World Summit on Sustainable Development on 16 July, 2002 in Birmingham. We have also brought together business, unions, public sector, voluntary organisations and interested members of the public for the first Scottish Sustainable Development Forum to discuss how we can take sustainable development forward in Scotland.We are also helping the young people's civic delegate, Stephanie Wiseman, to collect views about the Summit and sustainable development in preparation for the Summit.

The programme for the Scottish Executive delegation is not yet finalised as the full programme for the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development has not been announced.The response to question S1W-27506 explains that the civic delegates will organise their own programmes.

We announced our decisions on local authority bids for revenue support for school Public Private Partnership projects on 25 June 2002. I refer the member to the answer given on that day to question S1W-27026.

The Scottish Executive is in the process of establishing the reasons for this proposed withdrawal of funding.

The Scottish Executive does not contribute directly to the Scottish European Resource Centre's funding. It was, however, content that Community Learning Scotland and currently YouthLink Scotland use some of the Executive's grant for match funding of the centre.

Under the terms of the consent to release this variety of genetically modified oilseed rape, the consent holder must ensure that no harvested rapeseed from oilseed rape grown within 50 metres of the GM plants will be put into the human food or animal feed chains. The farmer is at liberty to market any conventional oilseed rape growing beyond this 50 metre separation distance. Our advisers are confident that such a crop poses absolutely no threat to human or animal health.

The Executive is considering this matter.