This information is not held centrally and we seek to avoid ad hoc information gathering exercises. However, we are aware that some individual police forces do collate this information.

This is a matter for the Care Commission. The commission investigates complaints about regulated care services and publishes the outcome of its investigation. The Chief Executive can be contacted at:

Ms Jacquie Roberts

Chief Executive

Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care

Compass House

11 Riverside Drive

DUNDEE

DD1 4NY

E: [email protected]

T: 01382 207100.

Scottish Health Service Costs information is published annually by Information Services, part of NHS NSS. This information is mainly derived from financial and statistical data compiled by Scottish health boards. Each board submits overall hospital running costs split across all specialties and facilities.

For financial year 2006-07, the cost of running intensive care units varies from £12,626 per patient episode in NHS Fife to £4,205 in NHS Borders. Individual specialty and facility costs among boards can vary for a number of reasons, for example, differences in the case complexity of patients, differences in the way the patient journey is managed or some difference in the method of apportioning financial overheads.

Local authorities are free to make their own decisions about how much to borrow or spend but in doing so, are under a statutory duty to determine how much they can afford and to keep that under review. They are obliged to have regard to a code of practice developed under the auspices of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), called the Prudential Code for Capital Finance in councils. They are also under a duty to have regard to statutory guidance on Best Value, which stresses the importance of good financial and project management control and of linking expenditure plans to effective asset management.

Therefore, we are not contemplating that single outcome agreements will include a commitment to reduce local authority debt.

The total additional value of the offer is £19 million. We estimate that this is worth £19,000 per annum to the average practice.

The extended hours enhanced service will be supported by £16 million of funding (£2.95 per registered patient), of which £9.5 million is new money.

The offer currently being considered by GPs will pay for additional services over and above what is already provided.

Better access to GP practices remains a significant issue for people.

In producing the Better Health, Better Care Action Plan, we saw over 2,000 people face to face and received nearly 600 submissions. This exercise revealed that improving access to GP practices ranked highly amongst peoples'' priorities for the future pattern and provision of health care services.

We are starting to collate information on requests for reviews but NHS boards are not yet in a position to provide any statistics detailed by staff group. For many boards, the review process is only just beginning as they continue to concentrate on concluding the assimilation process and payment of arrears. This information is therefore not available at the moment

We expect the result of the GP poll early in March. Depending on the outcome of the poll we will be seeking thereafter to finalise the detailed arrangements for extended hours in Scotland with Scottish General Practitioners Committee.

Every board in Scotland has recently been contacted and asked to submit a revised implementation plan to inform the Scottish Government when they expect to conclude the process. Once received, these plans will be analysed and a national implementation plan developed and supported. It is the responsibility of each NHS boards to ensure that they have sufficient capacity to complete the whole process, including reviews, as quickly as possible.