Chamber and committees

Guidance on Family Friendly Policies was prepared in partnership with the service, trade unions and the professions, and published in January 2000. It is intended to review the guidance later this year. The guidance underpins the Staff Governance Standard and all NHS Scotland Employers are required to meet or exceed it. Employers' progress towards meeting the guidance will be part of the annual Staff Governance Standard audit process.

The Arbuthnott formula uses information about unemployment rates, the proportion of older people on income support, households with multiple indicators of deprivation and mortality rates among people under 65 as indicators of relative deprivation. This information, together with information about the age structure of the population and remoteness is used to determine the allocation of resources between NHS boards. It is of course the responsibility of NHS boards to ensure that the resources made available to them through this formula are then used to address the health care needs of their populations, including people living in relatively deprived areas.

The Health Technology Board for Scotland (HTBS) helped to reduce inequalities in health services across Scotland by providing consistent, evidence-based advice to NHS boards in the form of three Health Technology Assessments, 30 HTBS Comments on NICE guidance and through its support of the Scottish Medicines Consortium. No organisation on its own can end "postcode prescribing". However, NHSScotland is expected to take account of advice and evidence from HTBS (now part of NHS Quality Improvement Scotland) and the Scottish Medicines Consortium and ensure that recommended drugs or treatments are made available to meet clinical need. Any evidence that suggests that NHSScotland is not taking account of this advice or evidence will be followed up proactively by the Scottish Executive Health Department.

External evaluation of the Healthy Living Centre (HLC) programme is being conducted at two levels. New Opportunities Fund (NOF) has commissioned the Bridge Consortium to undertake a UK-wide evaluation and the Scottish Executive Health Department has commissioned the Research Unit in Health and Behavioural Change (RUHBC) and the Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, both within Edinburgh University, to conduct an independent evaluation of the HLC programme in Scotland.It is also a condition of funding that HLCs themselves undertake self-evaluation to monitor progress towards the fulfilment of key pre-defined outcomes which relate both to the local community and to those who use the facilities and resources provided by the HLC.

The following table lists the average costs of a prescription item for each category in the financial year 2001-02.

Prescription Type	Cost Per Item
Homeopathic	£3.75
Generic	£10.07
Branded	£15.30

These data refer to NHS prescriptions dispensed in the community and do not take into account any items dispensed by hospitals or hospital based clinics.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-30723 on 18 November 2002. 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/search_wa.

GPs do not usually refer patients directly to a chiropractor, although there may be some local arrangements in place for NHS referral. GPs can advise patients about seeing a chiropractor, and provide information about registered practitioners, after discussion about the management options of their condition. It is for the patient to decide whether they wish to pay for chiropractic treatment or be referred, for example, to physiotherapy services. Information on chiropractors employed by the NHS is not held centrally.

As is made clear in Appendix 3 to Health Department Letter (2002) 69 Promoting the Development of Managed Clinical Networks in NHSScotland, lead clinicians of managed clinical networks are ultimately accountable to the chief executive of the organisation which employs them. Each network must have a protocol in place dealing with this and other clinical governance arrangements.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a complex condition that has been and continues to be the subject of a considerable body of research worldwide. While it is theorised that the condition may be linked to an imbalance of dopamine in the brain which may be due to a faulty gene or combination of genes, there is no definitive proof that these are the only causal factors. Environmental and other factors may also be involved.The Department of Health in England maintains a National Research Register with details of all on-going and recent research into a wide variety of medical conditions including ADHD. This is available on regularly updated CD-ROM in the Parliament's Reference Centre and online at:http://www.update-software.com/nrr/CLIBINET.EXE?A=1&U=1001&P=10001

NHSScotland is expected to take account of advice and evidence from bodies such as the Health Technology Board and the Scottish Medicines Consortium and ensure that recommended drugs or treatments are made available to meet clinical need. Such advice and evidence is also an integral part of the development of condition-specific standards by the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland. The board's assessment of compliance with these standards, and with its overall clinical governance standards, provides an independent check that procedures are in place locally to implement relevant evidence-based guidance and recommendations.Any evidence that suggests that NHSScotland was not taking account of this advice or evidence would be followed up proactively by the Scottish Executive Health Department.