Chamber and committees

Trust Medical Directors are currently employed on Trust terms and conditions of service. Discussions have been held with the Scottish Association of Medical Directors to bring Trust Medical Directors under ministerial direction similar to other executive directors and a letter about that issued on 4 May.

The Executive is committed to increasing the number of doctors in Scotland. We are examining the most effective way to achieve this, and increasing the student intake in Scotland is one of several options.

Any increased costs associated with the new junior doctors' contract reflect not just the numbers of junior doctors exceeding New Deal hours limits but also payments made in recognition of work intensity. It is not possible to calculate the cost of junior doctors working beyond hours limits alone.The new contract is intended to provide a strong financial incentive for NHS Trusts to reduce the hours worked by their doctors. Costs will reduce as trusts take action to achieve greater compliance with New Deal targets. Health boards were recently given their revenue allocations for 2001-02. The average increase in unified budgets is 6.5%. This is on top of significant increases in funding during 2000-01. It is the responsibility of health boards to determine local priorities for the use of funds including meeting the targets and standards of the New Deal for Junior Doctors.

NHSScotland has a rightly deserved reputation for the quality of its clinical care exemplified by the World Health Organisation promoting SIGN Guidelines to other countries as of "global quality". Inevitably errors occur in any process and local Clinical Governance arrangements exist to ensure that these are investigated and lessons implemented to ensure no re-occurrence. In addition, as part of our modernisation programme we are seeking to establish a more open culture in which errors or service failures wherever they occur are reported, analysed and lessons identified and action to prevent any repetition taken across Scotland.

We have been anxious to avoid disruption to supplies of timber for the processing industry, and so we have made provision for the fast-tracking of felling permissions where necessary.In addition, if forest businesses can show adverse effects of foot-and-mouth disease, they can apply to the relevant authorities for any of the means of hardship relief put in place by the Scottish Executive and complemented by the UK Government. These include rates relief, advice from the LECs and sympathetic treatment for deferment of income tax, VAT and National Insurance Contributions by Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise.The Scottish Executive has established a Foot-and-Mouth Disease Impact Assessment Group to assess the nature and scale of the outbreak's impact across all areas and sectors. The Forestry Commission and the industry are feeding information into this group which is informing the work of the Ministerial Group on foot-and-mouth disease, set up to co-ordinate the Executive's response. The group is currently considering ways of assisting long-term recovery.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-15147.

The information requested cannot be predicted with accuracy, because it is affected by individual decisions to retire. I also refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-15147.The General Practitioner sub-committee of the Scottish Advisory Committee on the Medical Workforce are, however, currently working with ISD Scotland to develop a statistical model to project the overall supply and demand of the GP workforce in Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-15147.

Robust information on the number of general practitioners who retire is not available. Information is collected on the number of GPs who cease to practise as principals in Scotland. However, a significant percentage do not supply a reason for leaving, and the number of those who have retired cannot be estimated with any accuracy.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-15147.