Chamber and committees

We are investing over £432 million over three years in the Childcare Strategy and pre-school education. This will help provide good quality, affordable childcare in every neighbourhood. A further £42 million is also available for Sure Start Scotland to support vulnerable families with very young children.

I refer to my answer to question S1W-4873.

Central records are not maintained of all grant schemes which Volvo may have been eligible to apply for. However, the principal form of government grant assistance made available to industry is Regional Selective Assistance. In 1994 Volvo was offered Regional Selective Assistance amounting to £1,400,000 to help expand production capacity at Irvine. Having met initial targets set out in the offer of grant, Volvo was paid £620,000. Following the announcement of the closure of Volvo's Irvine plant the grant was repaid in full.Volvo therefore has no outstanding obligations under the Regional Selective Assistance Scheme.

Applications submitted for CCTV and community safety projects under the "Make Our Communities Safer" Challenge Competition are being evaluated. We hope to be able to announce the results shortly.

There is no conclusive evidence of specific actions which if taken would lead to a reduction in the incidence of prostate cancer, although some evidence suggests that a low fat, high fruit and vegetable diet with reduced red meat consumption may reduce the risk of prostate cancer (i.e. a healthy diet of the type recommended as reducing heart disease).The Scottish Executive Health Department has recently provided funding up to a maximum of £360,000 to undertake a national prospective clinical audit of all urological cancers, of which prostate is one, commencing early in 2000 for three years. The aim of this programme is to describe the delivery of investigations and treatments and to audit these in terms of outcome.

Yes. A survey is being arranged to establish whether the use of lead solder in cold water plumbing is widespread in houses recently completed in Scotland.

Checks of entitlement to free prescriptions (point of dispensing checks) were introduced as a deterrent to fraud against the NHS. Patients have been asked by community pharmacists to provide proof of entitlement since January 1999, and by dispensing doctors since August 1999.It is too early to quantify savings arising from these arrangements, not least because income from prescription charges is subject to a variety of influences. However, although increased income cannot be attributed solely to the introduction of point of dispensing checks, this is likely to be a factor. Since their introduction there has been an increase in the number of prescriptions on which charges have been paid, and in the number of prescription prepayment certificates (season tickets) issued.

The provision of bus services is a matter for individual bus operators using their commercial judgement on the level and frequency of services. It is the responsibility of the relevant local authority or public transport authority to identify where there is a social need for particular bus services which are not provided by operators on a commercial basis, and to make subsidy available, if it so chooses, to procure such services through competitive tendering. We will be bringing forward, later this session, new bus legislation in a Transport Bill which will seek to provide a statutory basis for bus quality partnerships.

The use of lead solder in domestic drinking water systems has been prohibited by the Water Supply Byelaws since 1987. A contravention of the Byelaws is a criminal offence liable to fines at level 4 on summary conviction and £50 per day for a continuing offence.The recent discovery of lead solders in new buildings has resulted in the West of Scotland Water Authority issuing letters to the offending contractors requiring them to rectify the faults. The water authority has powers to rectify the faults and to recover the cost if the contractors concerned do not comply. In addition the water authorities have written to all plumbers and related trade organisations to remind them of the Byelaw requirements.

The tariff used by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) to assign points to entry qualifications for use by higher education institutions is a matter for UCAS itself. The level and type of qualifications required for admission to courses is in turn a matter for higher education institutions themselves to determine and the Scottish Executive has no locus.Relevant work experience can of course already be accredited towards Scottish Vocational Qualifications (SVQs). The Scottish Credit Accumulation and Transfer system (SCOTCAT), which is the existing system for credit arrangements in higher education, also makes provision for accrediting work-based and other experiential learning towards HE qualifications. The SCOTCAT system is a major building block in the comprehensive Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework which is intended to cover all Scottish qualifications from the basic Access level to postgraduate HE level. The extent to which the proposed Framework takes account of qualifications based on quality work experience will be a matter for decision by the partnership steering its development.