Chamber and committees

Data about injury road accidents are collected by the police and reported to the Scottish Executive using the STATS 19 statistical report form. These returns cover only road accidents in which one or more people were injured: they do not cover damage only accidents.

The following table gives the numbers of road accidents which were identified in the STATS 19 returns as occurring on the A71 in 2002 and 2003, and the associated fatalities and serious casualties. The information is broken down by local authority area. I will write to the member providing the statistics for 2004 which will not be available until Key 2004 Road Accident Statistics has been published on Monday 13 June.

It should be noted that the statistics given below are based upon the data which are held in the central statistical database and which were collected by the police at the time of the accident and subsequently reported to the Executive. They may differ from any figures which the local authoritieswould provide now, because they do not take account of any subsequent changes orcorrections that local authorities may have made to the statistical information,for use at local level, about the location of each accident, based upon their knowledge of the roads and areas concerned.

Injury road accidents occurring on the A71, and the associated numbers of fatalities and seriously-injured casualties, as reported in the STATS 19 statistical returns.

Local Authority	Year	Injury Road Accidents	Fatalities	Seriously-Injured Casualties
Edinburgh	2002	37	0	4
	2003	53	1	5
West Lothian	2002	28	1	3
	2003	27	2	6
North Lanarkshire	2002	10	0	0
	2003	13	0	2
South Lanarkshire	2002	26	1	7
	2003	24	0	8
East Ayrshire	2002	23	0	6
	2003	28	1	4
North Ayrshire	2002	6	0	5
	2003	4	0	0

As I said in my answer of 2 June,this information was covered by my statement to Parliament on 9 January 2005, andit was detailed in the accompanying documents.

The information defining strategicnetwork costs is given in footnote 11 of Investing In Water Services: Objectivesfor 2006-2014, a copy of which has been placed in the Parliament’s ReferenceCentre (Bib. number 35491).

Information defining local networkcosts is given in paragraphs 45 to 49 of The Principles To Be Applied In ChargingFor Public Water And Sewerage Services In Scotland 2006-2010, a copy of whichhas been placed in the Parliament’s Reference Centre (Bib. number 35492).

The Scottish Executive has made available an international development fund of £3 million per year from 2005-06. The funding criteria and application forms for funding from the International Development budget have recently been launched by the Scottish Executive. The deadline for receipt of completed applications is 17 June 2005. These applications will then be considered by the Scottish Executive and the recently appointed expert group before any funding commitments are made.

The Scottish Executive has committed the following costs to tsunami reconstruction work:

Renfrewshire Council sending environmental health officer to Sri Lanka - one off payment of £6,000

Education Coordinator for Edinburgh Council – one post at £33,000 for 18 months

Match funding for house building project with Fife Council (to backfill posts) - £60,000 over three years.

There are a number of other proposals being considered, and some provisional decisions to fund activities have been made. We have committed £360,000 over three years to improve maternal health in Malawi. We have also agreed to fund an administrative resource within NIDOS for the benefit of all NGOs and we have agreed to work with VSO to help meet the costs of an extra 10 volunteers in Malawi. Costs for these have not been finalised.

Details of expenditure will be available on the Scottish Executive website in due course.

Since its launch in March 2002, the globalscot initiative has grown to an active network of over 800 international business people who have links to Scotland and want to contribute to its economic development. Approaching half of the members are based in the USA with around 40% in Europe and 10% in Asia.

In the last year globalscot recorded over 500 contributions by members, 300 of which involved direct assistance to Scottish organisations and individuals. Examples of support include meeting and advising Scottish businesses when they visit new markets; taking up appointments as directors with start-up companies, and participating in Enterprise in Education programmes as role models for school pupils and students.

The following tables confirm the destinations of graduates from each medical school in Scotland in 2003 and 2004. The tables show where the first appointments as a pre-registration house officer (PRHO) occurred. The destinations of St Andrews students are not shown on this table as they do not graduate in medicine in Scotland. Each year, after a three-year pre-clinical course leading to a BSc, around 100 of these students move to complete a three year clinical course at Manchester University. As graduates of Manchester University their destinations are ordinarily within the NHS in England.

Table 1 - Destination of 2003 Graduates as at 30 September 2003

Destination of PRHO* Post	Aberdeen School	Dundee School	Edinburgh School	Glasgow School	All Schools
Scotland	173	136	164	248	721
England and Wales	7	23	9	9	48
Northern Ireland	1	2	0	3	6
HM Forces	1	0	0	0	1
Abroad	2	1	0	0	3
Not known	1	1	1	3	6
Other (i.e. posts not taken up)	0	0	3	0	3
Total	185	163	177	263	788

 

Table 2 – Destination of 2004 Graduates as at 30 September 2004

Destination of PRHO* Post	Aberdeen School	Dundee School	Edinburgh School	Glasgow School	All Schools
Scotland	142	112	198	192	644
England and Wales	13	21	17	6	57
Northern Ireland	3	1	2	3	9
HM Forces	0	0	0	1	1
Abroad	2	2	3	2	9
Not known	0	1	0	3	4
Other (i.e. posts not taken up)	1 (taking Master’s degree)	1 (not applying for registration)	1 (taking 6 months leave)	0	3
Total	161	138	221	207	727

Note:*Pre- Registration House Officer.

The Scottish Executive hasnot issued central guidance to the police covering the classes of persons authorisedto apply restraint to persons in a public place. The operational guidance andinstruction given to police officers is a matter for Chief Constables.

No audit and inspectionbodies have a statutory responsibility to assess compliance with the duty topromote race equality under race relations legislation; the statutoryresponsibility falls to the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). However,audit and inspection bodies do have a key role to play and therefore we arelooking at ways of ensuring that compliance with the statutory duty to promote raceequality is built into audit and inspection processes. A meeting between officialsin the Executive, the CRE, and the following bodies is due to take place inearly July to discuss this further:

HM Inspectorate of FireServices

Audit Scotland

Communities Scotland

HMI Education

HMI Constabulary

NHS Education

NHS Quality Improvement

HMI Prisons

Care Commission

Scottish Social ServicesCouncil

Scottish Public ServicesOmbudsman

Social Work ScotlandInspectorate

Crown Office and ProcuratorFiscal Service.

I have asked Angiolina Foster,Chief Executive of Communities Scotland, to respond. Her response is as follows:

Ministers have given a commitmentto approve 21,500 new and improved homes for social rent and low-cost home ownershipin the three years up to 2008. The principal mechanism for funding this new affordablehousing is the Scottish Executive Housing Investment Programme. The number of new and improvedhomes for affordable rent and low-cost home ownership approved with funding fromCommunities Scotland which were completed in the financial years 2002-03, 2003-04and 2004-05 and projected for 2005-06 areas follows:

	Affordable Rent	Low-Cost Home Ownership
2002-03	4,345	1,075
2003-04	3,753	489
2004-05	4,397	990
2005-06 Planned	4,562	948

 

The number of completions inan individual year is determined by the number of units approved for constructionin previous years. Large or complex housing projects, especially when linked toa wider regeneration initiative, can often take some time to be formally completed.In addition, in some instances, there is a time-lag in the recording of this dataand these figures are therefore be subject to revision.

The specific information requestedis not available centrally.

I have asked Angiolina Foster, Chief Executive of Communities Scotland, to respond. Her response isas follows:

Two hundred and twentynew-build starts for affordable rent and 22 new-build starts for low-cost homeownership for 2005-06 have received firm funding approval from CommunitiesScotland, which is in line with what would be expected at this early stage inthe new financial year.