The Scottish Further Education Funding Council is responsible for funding Scotland's further education colleges. The council has been monitoring closely the progress of the financial recovery plan implemented by the Board of Management of Inverness College to address the college's financial deficit.

The Scottish Executive cannot provide explanations for decisions taken by previous administrations, and the responsibility of providing funding to individual further education colleges is now entirely a matter for the Scottish Further Education Funding Council. Last year the Scottish Executive announced substantially increased public funding for the FE sector, on top of the additional £214 million announced as part of the three-year Comprehensive Spending Review by the Secretary of State for Scotland in 1998.

The Executive is working with Area Drug and Therapeutic Committees and with the Health Technology Board for Scotland to reduce variations in prescribing practice 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.

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.

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

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

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.