Chamber and committees

The Office for National Statistics reclassification applies to college entities as a whole. All activity within a college is therefore subject to the same budgeting and accounting regime.

This information is not held centrally.

Heriot-Watt University provides interactive online learning resources for Scottish Qualifications Authority courses to Scottish secondary schools through the SCHOLAR programme. Currently, SCHOLAR offer provision at higher and advanced higher level covering science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, business subjects and languages, with Intermediate 2 resources for maths and mandarin. Each of the 32 local authorities in Scotland have now signed three year contracts with SCHOLAR from August 2013.

As announced by the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning on 25 September 2013, the Scottish Government is funding the enhancement of SCHOLAR materials, in line with Curriculum for Excellence.

I have asked Colin McConnell, chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. His response is as follows:

‘The Scottish Prison Service is considering the provision of a secure payments service across the SPS as part of a wider prisoner technology project.

There are a number of options available that require detailed analysis and this is underway.

Any future system procurement approach will be taken forward within the Scottish Government's procurement guidelines. Our expectation is that the review, analysis and any subsequent system adoption may take in the region of 18 months to complete.’

The information you have requested is not held centrally. I will ask the chief executive of Skills Development Scotland to write to you on this matter.

The information you have requested is not held centrally. I will ask the chief executive of Skills Development Scotland to write to you on this matter.

With the exception of the construction and engineering frameworks, modern apprenticeship frameworks in Scotland have no fixed duration. Rather, apprenticeships are undertaken at the pace of the learner. Employers and industry bodies in the construction and engineering sectors take the view that apprenticeships in these industries should take three and four years respectively to achieve competence.

Responsibility for providing primary health care services in prisons, including those mental health services that would normally be delivered by a GP in the community, transferred to the NHS in November 2011. Specialist mental health services have always been provided by the NHS.

NHS chief executives established the National Prisoner Healthcare Network (NPHN) to support delivery of a high quality, safe, effective and consistent service to prisoners, hosted by Healthcare Improvement Scotland. Mental health is a priority for the network. A sub-group focusing on mental health produced a draft report of its recommendations and consulted on it in August 2013. The final report will be considered by the National Prisoner Healthcare Network board.

As part of our work to support NHS boards to deliver improvements to mental health services, Scottish Government officials meet each NHS board every six months to discuss progress on mental health priorities. In the latest round of meetings criminal justice issues were discussed, including how they are developing mental health services in prisons.

The information requested is not held centrally as this is a matter for individual GP contractors as employers. GP practices are mostly all independent contractors who are free to decide (within the context of the services they must provide under contract with boards) exactly how they set up their operations in terms of employing staff whilst how NHS boards organise the provision of GP services is an operational matter for the board to determine, based on an assessment of local needs.

The Primary Care Workforce Survey 2013, a survey of Scottish general practices and GP Out of Hours Services was published on 24 September 2013 and provides a “snapshot” of vacancies. The report is available on the Information Services Division (ISD) of National Services Scotland website at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/General-Practice/Publications/2013-09-24/2013-09-24-PCWS-Report.pdf.

The Scottish Government continues to promote a range of initiatives to support GPs working in remote and rural areas. These include the Remote and Rural Fellowship Scheme for newly qualified GPs and the Remote and Rural Healthcare Educational Alliance.

The Scottish Government is also supporting NHS Highland to develop and test a range of innovative ways of delivering healthcare in rural areas of Scotland. This will involve exploring approaches to building sustainable health and care services with all key stakeholders including local communities.

On 22 November 2013 Transport Scotland hosted a workshop with local authorities to discuss the future delivery of parking enforcement. This set out a number of actions which included how best to compress the timescale for local authorities seeking to move towards decriminalised parking enforcement.