Chamber and committees

A wide range of initiatives is being undertaken both by the Scottish Executive, and by the universities and colleges themselves, to encourage and facilitate the participation of women in education and training generally. Women now comprise more than 50% of students in both higher and further education.There have also been significant increases in the number of women undertaking computing and ICT courses in Scotland over the last three years - a 40% increase in participation in higher education courses and a 46% increase in further education. This has been supported by recent initiatives as diverse as the additional £6 million for childcare provision mainly for part-time further education students and the Women in Science, Engineering and Technology scheme to which the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council has allocated approximately £100k per annum.

Monitoring of air quality in the context of industrial emissions is a matter for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, local authorities and the relevant industries; surveillance of the health of people in their areas is a matter in the first instance for health boards. Smoke emissions from flarestacks should be reduced to the least possible level consistent with the safe operation of the plant in order to minimise both their visual impact and any effect that they may have on ambient air quality.

In this context, although there was a higher level of "flaring" around Mossmorran from June to August 1999, the overall level for the year has not increased due to the lower level of "flaring" in the last six months.

Yes. Support for careers and other guidance for young people undertaking Higher Still programmes has been provided for schools, further education colleges and careers companies, through national training and the Progress and Planit databases.

A core component of the Skillseekers programme is that the young person works towards an SVQ up to Level 3. SVQs are competence-based qualifications which reflect the work-based nature of Skillseekers. SVQs are designed to assess the candidate's competencies against occupational standards and to test understanding of the theoretical part of the qualification. Modern Apprenticeships, which are delivered in Scotland through the Skillseekers programme, include aspects of other qualifications in addition to the SVQ, as part of the Modern Apprenticeship framework.

The Scottish Executive is considering the range of qualifications which are funded through Skillseekers as part of the "Opportunities and Choices" consultation exercise. An announcement will be made shortly.

Employment policy is reserved to the UK Government which takes the lead on the funding and delivery of the New Deal.In his budget the Chancellor announced a comprehensive set of measures aimed at helping all long term unemployed people aged over 25 coming into effect from April 2001.Throughout the UK as a whole it is envisaged that 145,000, 150,000 and 120,000 people will be helped over the three years 2001-02 - 2003-04 respectively. In Scotland, there are currently 17,500 adults aged 25 or over and unemployed for 18 months or longer.

The Scottish Executive intends to maximise the use of information and communications technology in the development of a seamless service for patients. We will exploit modern Internet technologies to replace over 20 million paper clinical messages and forms a year with faster, more reliable, electronic communications and make vital clinical information about our patients available appropriately to healthcare professionals under strict provisions to protect patient confidentiality.

The Executive has received no responses from further education colleges to the proposals. However, the Association of Scottish Colleges issued a statement welcoming the many and the substantial improvements contained in the Executive's Framework Document for full-time further education students. It acknowledged that the proposals represent a significant step forward

I received a letter from Bruce Millan on behalf of the Committee yesterday. I have made copies of that letter and my reply available in the Parliament’s Information Centre.