The Enterprise Networks are charged with pursuing the strategic priorities for economic development contained in A Smart, Successful Scotland. These priorities include exploiting opportunities that contribute to reducing disparities between different parts of Scotland. They also include competing based on offering high value products and services which require high level skills. Achieving this will contribute to greater prosperity and employment and increasing income levels in the areas listed in the question.

The distribution of National Lottery funds is a matter for the Lottery Distribution Bodies: Scottish Arts Council, Scottish Screen, sportscotland, Big Lottery Fund and Heritage Lottery Fund. The information requested is not held centrally by the Executive.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) maintains an electronic database of National Lottery awards. Details of the total awarded to each constituency area and each local authority area for each Lottery good cause can be obtained through the DCMS website at: http://www.lottery.culture.gov.uk/search.asp.

Over half a million households in Scotland currently receive council tax benefit, representing almost one quarter of all households in the country. Over half of all council tax benefit recipients are pensioners.

The Scottish Executive liaises regularly with officials in the Department for Work and Pensions regarding council tax benefit take-up which is a reserved matter.

The regulation of international trade is a reserved matter. However, the Scottish Executive continues to be in regular contact with DTI and other Government Departments on trade issues, including the EU Services Directive negotiations, to ensure that Scottish interests are fully taken account of.

The Services Directive aims to break down barriers to cross border trade in services between EU member states by making it easier for providers to establish themselves and offer services in other member states by removing unnecessary regulation and bureaucracy. It also seeks to enable operators to provide services temporarily and/ or at a distance into other member states based on the rules in their country of origin.

The Scottish Executive supports the UK position that while publicly-funded health and social care services should not be covered by the Directive it can (with appropriate derogations from the Country of Origin principle), besafely and constructively applied to health and social care services from the independent sector. Which operate outside the context of a publicly-funded system.

The Scottish Executive supports a ferry service between Caithness and the Orkney Islands as part of a grant awarded following a competitive tender process under European Union rules and guidelines. The current Invitation to Tender for the Northern Isles ferry service includes a requirement for freight, which encompasses livestock, on the route between Scrabster and Stromness, as part of the Executive’s policy of securing this lifeline ferry route for the benefit of the islands. The Executive has no plans to support any additional ferry services on the Orkney to Caithness route to meet a similar requirement.

The level of grant available for the next Northern Isles ferry service contract will be set following the outcome of the competitive tendering process currently in progress.

I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-18992 on 15 September 2005. All answers to 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/wa.search.

The framework for the provision of assisted conception treatments through the NHS is currently set out in the report of the Expert Advisory Group on Infertility Services in Scotland (EAGISS) 1999. Progress in adopting EAGISS has been made across Scotland, though I am aware of some remaining disparities in accessing these services. That is why I launched a consultation on the 8 September, seeking views on the future delivery of these services. A copy of this document can be found at www.scotland.gov.uk. Following this consultation the Executive will issue further guidance to NHS Scotland for planning the provision of infertility services by NHS boards.

It is too early to assess the impact of boundary changes on individual treatments following the dissolution of NHS Argyll and Clyde in March 2006. I expect that our revised guidance on infertility will improve access to these services across all NHS boards.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The Executive’s closing the opportunity gap approach to tackling poverty applies to all of working age. In particular, the forthcoming employability framework will support targets to reduce worklessness, increase the proportion of 16 to 19-year-olds who are not in education, training or employment, and tackle aspects of in-work poverty by providing employees with the opportunity to develop skills and make progress in their career. Executive programmes also address specific problems such as homelessness. The Executive is committed to implementing the recommendations of the Homelessness Task Force, which relate to all households which are homeless or threatened with homelessness.