Chamber and committees

My officials have had discussions with Advanta by telephone and participated in a meeting with Advanta and the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on 1 June.

Before a genetically modified crop may be grown commercially in the UK it must meet the rigorous requirements of European and UK legislation. A number of GM crops have passed all the regulatory hurdles and could be grown commercially in the UK today. However, the Scottish Executive and the UK Government have reached agreement with the biotechnology industry that there will be no commercial growing of any crops until the results of the farm scale evaluations have been fully assessed. This will be 2003 at the earliest. At that stage we will have the sound scientific information to enable decisions to be taken on whether additional measures are necessary.

Compensation is being addressed directly between Advanta and farmers' representatives, who will work out the precise details.

The Executive is committed to developing a stable funding environment for the voluntary sector. Matched funding, which can be in cash or in kind, can strengthen the impact of the work of a voluntary organisation in a number of ways in addition to the financial benefit. It can, for example, ensure a local stake in a group or project, or promote partnerships. Central Rape Crisis has been granted £12,800 from the Domestic Abuse Service Development Fund with matched funding coming from Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland.

While the timescale for initial deployment of the network infrastructure is a commercial matter for the third generation operators, Scottish Executive officials met with representatives of the industry on Thursday 25 May to gather information about the likely scale, nature and timescale of their future development programmes.

The Safer Routes to School guidelines were issued to all schools and local authorities in December 1999. They are intended as a toolkit of measures for use by all those involved in the journey to school to help them to set up safe and environmentally friendly routes that will encourage children to walk, cycle or take public transport to school instead of being driven.

The Executive will be issuing letters shortly to local authorities allocating additional capital consents, totalling £5.2 million, to take forward work on the implementation of safer routes to school in the current financial year.

Section 14 of the Transport (Scotland) Act 1989 allows for any surplus remaining in the Scottish Transport Group Pension schemes to be paid in accordance with a specific Dissolution Order to wind-up the Scottish Transport Group. The Order would prescribe to whom the group should pay the surplus. The Scottish Executive will bring forward such an Order for the Parliament's approval in due course.

The Spending Strategy Group will propose an allocation of resources between programmes that Cabinet will subsequently ratify. This process will take account of the Executive's commitments to all areas of Scotland as set out in the Programme for Government. It will be for individual Ministers to announce final decisions on the allocation of resources within their programmes, following consultation with CoSLA and other appropriate deliberations.

Local authorities are able to use money from the NGfL programme of the Excellence Fund to provide technical support for ICT developments. This can include training and staff development for school technicians.

Under our Strategy for Carers in Scotland we are supporting carers through a wide-ranging set of measures. £10 million has been earmarked under the Strategy in 2000-01 for carers services, including respite. We expect this to lead to increased services for carers. At least a similar amount will be earmarked in 2001-02. From 1 April the NHS Helpline has been extended to provide advice to carers. A leaflet and associated media campaign was launched on 28 April to inform carers of the strategy and the helpline as sources of advice and assistance. A legislation working group has been set up involving carers' organisations to consider what legislative changes are required to help carers. In 2001-02 we will continue to ensure the strategy is being implemented and will build on it, if necessary. I recognise that the strategy has implications for voluntary sector organisations representing carers and I am considering the issue of support for this sector.