Chamber and committees

This information is not held centrally. Fire Service training can take place at a number of facilities but this is arranged by Brigade Development Officers according to the needs of the brigade and the firefighter.

In the draft Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Bill we propose that any individual organisation meeting the charity test, by both having charitable purposes and being able to demonstrate that it provides a public benefit, will be eligible for charitable status. Granting charitable status to a category or class of charities, such as housing co-operatives, would involve a presumption of public benefit and would negate the value of having the public benefit test.

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

As part of the procurement of its contract for prisoner escort and court custody services, SPS collected data on prison-based escort volumes for the twelve month period from December 2001. These data were commercially confidential at the time they were collected but are no longer subject to that restriction. From these data and from information on SPS establishment staff and overhead costs in relation to escorts, SPS estimated that the cost to it of providing prisoner escorts in that 12 month period was about £5 million. This estimate included staff time and vehicle costs so far as they could be reliably identified. It did not include the cost to the police of escorting prisoners to court from police custody, the cost of risks associated with escort duties and the opportunity costs represented by assigning prison and police officers to escort duties.

Treatment in hospital cantake place in either an out-patient or in-patient setting. Information is notheld centrally on waiting times for completion of treatment or for treatmentwhich starts in an out-patient setting.

Information is availablecentrally for the waiting time for a first out-patient appointment with aconsultant following referral by a general medical/dental practitioner and onthe time between a patient being placed on the inpatient and day case waitinglist for treatment and their admission to hospital. The mean waiting time for afirst out-patient consultation and for inpatient and day case treatment for thequarter ended 31 March 2004, has been provided in my answer to parliamentary questionS2W-9487 given on 27 July 2004. All answersto 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

The mean waiting time for a first outpatient appointment with a consultant, following general medical/dental practitioner referral and for in-patient and day case treatment, by NHS Board area of residence, during the quarter ended 31 March 2004, is given in the following table.

Reducing waiting times is one of the Executive’s key priorities for NHSScotland. By 2005, no patient will wait more than 6 months for a firstout-patient appointment with a consultant, following referral by their general medical/dental practitioner, and the current nine month national maximum waiting time for inpatient and day case treatment will be reduced to six months.

NHSScotland: Mean Waiting Time for In-patient and Day Case Treatment and for a First Out-patient Appointment with a Consultant, following referral by a General Medical or Dental Practitioner, During the Quarter Ended 31 March 2004^P.

	Mean Waiting Time (days)
NHS Board	In-patient and Day Case Treatment	First Out-patient Appointments
Argyll and Clyde	73	83
Ayrshire and Arran	86	74
Borders	75	67
Dumfries and Galloway	80	69
Fife	95	90
Forth Valley	89	100
Grampian	77	92
Greater Glasgow	72	89
Highland	84	76
Lanarkshire	83	94
Lothian	88	78
Orkney Islands	50	49
Shetland Islands	62	98
Tayside	82	88
Western Isles	74	47
NHSScotland	81	85

Source: ISD Scotland,SMR00 and SMR01.

NoteP: ^PProvisional.

The Executive supports the principle of civic participation, and we are taking this commitment forward in a number of ways. Examples of specific activities include: providing support for the Scottish Civic Forum; promoting citizenship education in schools; supporting volunteering and the voluntary sector; promoting community engagement locally in Community Planning Partnerships and supporting grassroots capacity-building through the Community Learning and Development strategy. We are also providing increased opportunities for civic participation and stakeholder engagement in Executive policy-making processes and promoting good practice in our consultations.

Civic participation complements a healthy representative democracy, and the measures contained in the Local Governance (Scotland) Bill will improve democratic participation and widen the range of people who can become involved in local government.

The resources allocated by the Executive to local authorities to support carers, including resources to develop respite services, have risen from £5 million in 1999-2000 to £21 million in 2003-04. The Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002 places a duty on local authorities to notify carers who appear to them to be eligible to have an assessment of their support needs as a carer, that they may be entitled to have such an assessment. The act also provides powers to require health boards to draw up NHS Carer Information Strategies that will set out how NHS staff will similarly inform carers of their right to an assessment. The Executive will shortly be publishing for consultation draft guidance to health boards on the preparation of these strategies.

We are committed to monitoring the impact of our Carers Strategy, including the new legislative measures to support carers. From 2004-05 the Executive will be collecting data from local authorities on the numbers of carers’ assessments being carried out. Other performance indicators and outcome measures will be developed in due course.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advises all UK Health Departments on issues relating to vaccination and immunisation, based on currently available scientific evidence.

At its June meeting, the committee agreed that the 2004-05 programme should again focus on protecting older people (65 years and over) and younger people, who have specified on-going medical conditions that make them particularly susceptible to flu and its often attendant complications.

As a future development, the committee also accepted its Influenza Panel's recommendation that the free flu vaccinations should be offered to essential carers of the elderly or disabled people at the discretion of the GP, where sickness in the carer might jeopardise home care arrangements. Discussions on how best to take this forward in 2005-06 are already in train.

However, the final decision on immunisation in any particular case is for the person’s medical practitioner, taking into account the individual’s medical condition and personal circumstances.

Since the introduction of our Carers Strategy we have worked closely with carers’ organisations at a national level to ensure that carers of all ages have access to appropriate information on their rights and about support, including financial support, available to them. Since April 2000, the NHS Helpline has provided such information and this is now made being available through NHS 24. We have worked with carers’ organisations on national publicity campaigns to help raise carer awareness and to alert carers to sources of support and advice.

This month we will be issuing for consultation to local authorities, NHS boards and the voluntary sector draft guidance about the preparation of NHS Carer Information Strategies. These strategies will cover issues such as carer identification and the provision of information to carers within NHS settings. They should enable more carers to be aware of the range of support available to them including financial support.

The Executive’s commitments in relation to concessionary travel are set out in the partnership agreement and include a national free off-peak bus scheme for older people and people with disabilities and a scheme of national bus, rail and ferry concessionary travel for young people, initially for all in full-time education. We are also committed to carrying out an assessment of improved public transport concessions for people with disabilities.