Chamber and committees

The Executive is currently developing a national Plan for Action on Alcohol Misuse. The needs of children and young people affected by alcohol misuse will be addressed in the plan.

From this year, lone parents in full-time higher education will be able to claim a grant of £1,000 per year to help them meet their formal child care costs. This is the first ever child care grant for students in higher education in Scotland and is expected to benefit 3,500 lone parent students each year. These students will continue to be eligible to receive the existing Dependants' Grant and the new School Meals Grant, also being introduced this year.In addition, as part of the new package of student support introduced for full-time higher education students this year, new mature students will be able to access a discretionary grant of up to £2,000 from the Mature Students' Bursary Fund through their college or university. Priority for payments from the fund will be given to students who have formal child care needs, particularly those who are lone parents.£7.5 million has also been allocated over the next three years to widen child care provision in Scottish further education colleges to meet locally-identified needs, particularly those of lone parents. This is expected to help between 3,000 and 5,000 full- and part-time students annually and to ensure that further education is genuinely accessible to all. This funding is in addition to the existing £3 million per annum support for the study-related child care costs of FE students.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. His response is as follows:SPS developed a new prisoner education policy which was implemented on 1 April 2000 through commercial contracts with a number of providers of education services to all SPS prisons. SPS aims this year to provide at least 250,000 prisoner learning hours.A new SPS Director of Rehabilitation and Care, who took up post on 1 May is reviewing the range of programmes currently available. This year the SPS aims to deliver 700 programmes to address offending behaviour of which 50% are accredited. These include cognitive skills, problem-solving skills training, anger management, drug relapse prevention and sex offender programmes.

Work on school buildings is funded mainly by the local authorities themselves and the Scottish Executive does not generally make money available directly to authorities for that purpose. The level of capital expenditure by local authorities is subject to broad annual limits which is expressed as an annual allocation of consent to incur capital expenditure on their non-housing capital programmes, including education. The consent is distributed amongst authorities on the basis of a formula agreed with CoSLA, and is neither programme nor project specific. Within that framework, it is for Renfrewshire and Inverclyde Councils to determine their detailed expenditure priorities for school building.For the years 1999-2000 and 2000-01, the net formula allocations of capital consent were £7.075 million and £8.086 million for Renfrewshire and £5.565 million and £6.216 million for Inverclyde, and both will have allocated, and spent, sums from that consent on schools.Authorities are given some resources by direct capital grant through a separate arrangement under the New Deal for Schools. These resources are intended to assist authorities to tackle the backlog of repairs to school buildings and improve facilities for ICT. Grant of £0.923 million was paid to Renfrewshire and of £0.529 million to Inverclyde in each of the years 1999-2000 and 2000-01.Following an announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his pre-budget statement in November 2000, further grant of £536,745 was paid to Renfrewshire and £288,805 to Inverclyde in 2000-01 to deal with immediate repairs, maintenance and equipment problems in schools.

The Executive takes the advice of the National Screening Committee (NSC), an expert advisory body to all the UK Health Departments, on screening matters. The NSC has advised that the present means of testing are not sufficiently sensitive to justify a screening programme for osteoporosis at present. They will, however, review the situation regularly to take account of any improvements in testing procedures.

A New Strategy for Scottish Tourism, published in February 2000, contains a range of actions designed to improve the tourism product in Scotland. A review of the strategy actions will be undertaken over the next few months.

visitscotland has recently launched its biggest ever spring campaign and will be able to provide the detailed information requested.

Information from Strathclyde Police for 2000 shows that CCTV systems covering Paisley, Johnstone and Renfrew Town Centres recorded 672 incidents, resulting in 801 arrests or detections. Figures for the period January to March 2001 already show 154 incidents recorded and 197 arrests or detections.

The legal basis under which employers must notify the Government of significant redundancies is the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. The Act states that employers must notify the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in writing, if they intend to make significant redundancies. The Department of Trade and Industry, under Concordat arrangements between that department and the Scottish Executive, will in turn notify the Executive of those in Scotland.

In the event of a redundancy situation, support will be provided to those affected in accordance with the principles set out in our PACE (Partnership Action for Continuing Employment) document. Local response teams, involving key local and national agencies, have been established across Scotland and stand ready to offer the necessary support and advice to those affected.