Chamber and committees

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency's report is an important contribution to the debate on what needs to be done to address the question of protection for Scotland's soil resource. The report will be considered along with a scoping study on the requirement for a soil protection strategy which we have commissioned from the University of Stirling. The results from this study are expected in early summer.

The movement of healthy sheep and other foot-and-mouth disease susceptible animals to slaughter through Infected Areas by trunk road or motorway is permitted on the grounds that the risk of infection is considered to be low. Some consignments of sheep, I understand have gone to Wales.

The Scottish Executive is committed to tackling problems of digital inclusion and to achieving universal access to the web by 2005. A new Digital Inclusion Unit has been created within the Executive to take this work forward. A meeting between Executive officials and representatives of the e-Learning Foundation will take place shortly.

We received 69 responses to the consultation paper. I have today provided the Scottish Parliament Information Centre with copies of an analysis of the views and opinions expressed by the organisations who responded to the paper by the extended deadline of 20 October 2000.

Best Value is a large subject and the consultation paper was wide ranging. On issues relating to the existing range of statutory restrictions on the commercial activities of local authorities, the responses prompted further consultation via the paper A power of Community initiative: Community Planning: Political Restrictions on council employees published on 22 November 2000. We do not intend to reach any conclusions on these issues until the responses to that paper have been considered.But I am happy to confirm that we intend to publish proposals for legislation on Best Value in autumn 2001.

Local authority plans indicated that, by September 2000, 66% of Scottish secondary school pupils would have e-mail accounts at school. Conclusive statistics will be available when the results from the September 2000 School Census are published in the next few months.The information requested is not available on a constituency basis. Stirling Council reported that, in their local authority area, 21% of secondary school pupils would have an e-mail address at school by September 2000.

The definition of rural used in appendix 1 of Rural Scotland: A New Approach is based on the population density of local authority areas. It was used for the purposes of analytical simplicity and as a consequence of the way in which many socio-economic statistics are currently presented.Assistance to convert vehicles to run on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) through the Powershift vehicle conversion scheme is available to applicants throughout Scotland. However, in rural areas priority was given to applicants living over 30 minutes drive-time from settlements with a population of 10,000. In the light of the substantially increased resources available to Powershift between 2001 and 2004 the Scottish Executive is considering how to promote Powershift most effectively in rural areas.

The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the Conservation (Natural Habitats & c.) Regulations 1994, the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, together with a range of related nature conservation and anti-cruelty legislation, regulate the taking of animals, birds and plants from the wild. Enforcement of these measures is undertaken primarily by the police. Wildlife Inspectors appointed jointly by the Scottish Executive and DETR have a statutory role in certain types of cases.A strict licensing regime operated by the Executive and Scottish Natural Heritage controls those limited circumstances where certain species may legitimately be removed from their natural habitat. The circumstances under which such licences may be issued are defined in statute.On 7 March the Executive set out in a policy statement, "The Nature of Scotland", its intention to reform a range of conservation provisions, which include new measures to deter, detect and punish those who take protected species from the wild.

Visitscotland announced on 4 April its proposals for immediate assistance for the industry. These take the form of marketing and information campaigns at both the Scotland and local levels, together with help for individual businesses that are members of Area Tourist Boards and the visitscotland Quality Assurance schemes.

The Scottish Executive has executively devolved powers to promote renewable energy in Scotland under the Electricity Act 1989, as amended by the Utilities Act 2000.The Scottish Renewables Obligation (SRO) has run since 1994, and the £12.9 million allocated to it in the Scottish Executive budget for the current year is a notional sum to cover the additional costs of renewable energy produced from SRO contracted projects. It represents the best estimate of the industry regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), of the amount required to be raised in the current year under the Fossil Fuel Levy to recompense the two Scottish public electricity suppliers for the contracts they were statutorily obliged to enter into under the SRO. The information on how the Fossil Fuel Levy was disbursed to pay for individual contracts is not held by the Scottish Executive, but can be obtained from Ofgem Scotland.

I announced a package of additional grant assistance for local authorities on 7 March, in response to question S1W-23475 on 7 March 2002.