Chamber and committees

There is no single solution for tackling bullying but the most important thing a school can do is have a clear policy to which the staff, pupils and parents are committed. A range of guidance on this issue has been issued to schools and advocates whole school policies to combat bullying.

We have already set up a national network to share good practice in tackling bullying across Scotland. The project is making a range of anti-bullying materials available to schools, pupils, teachers and parents as well as providing in-school training and a consultancy service to support individual schools in developing effective strategies, and enable teachers to recognise and deal with bullying problems.

I refer the member to the answer I gave to question S1W-6428.

This information is not collected centrally.

Sustainable development will be an important feature of the work of National Park authorities. The focus for this will be through the National Park Plan which each National Park authority will be required to prepare and submit to Scottish Ministers for approval. I envisage that statutory ministerial guidance to National Park authorities will emphasis the need for park plans to incorporate policies on sustainable development.

The Scottish Executive is committed to the principles of the National Waste Strategy: Scotland, which it adopted in December last year. The Strategy is a long-term plan to create a sustainable waste management system in Scotland and promotes minimisation, re-use and recycling as part of the waste hierarchy.

The Scottish Executive has supported several recycling programmes, including directly funding major materials reclamation facilities in Glasgow and East Ayrshire. The Executive is also a key player and co-funder of the REMADE project, which is investigating new uses for recycled materials. This will help to stabilise markets for recyclables and, therefore, make recycling a more economically viable activity.

The Executive is committed to ensuring that these victims have access to the support they need. We will continue to address their needs in initiatives such as the work being undertaken by the Scottish Partnership on Domestic Abuse and the action plan following the report Towards a Just Conclusion.

In Scotland, fuel poverty is being tackled through the Healthy Homes Initiative including the Warm Deal. The Executive's policies complement those of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretaries of State for Social Security, Education and Employment and Trade and Industry, all of whom are helping the fuel poor through their policies on taxation, Benefit levels, employment and training and the terms governing the supply of domestic energy respectively.

The most recent annual report of the Scottish Transport Group, of which the Scottish Bus Group is a wholly owned subsidiary, showed the value of the surplus at 31 March 1999 to be approximately £120 million (net of tax).

The Scottish Executive is committed to acting with caution based on sound scientific advice. Consent to plant GM crops for farm scale evaluations is only granted after stringent laboratory testing and the planting of small, controlled experimental sites have demonstrated that they are safe to human and animal health, and do not pose any direct environmental risk.

The Farm Scale evaluations are a three-year UK-wide research programme, designed to provide robust information on any environmental consequences of growing GM crops on an agricultural scale when compared with similar non-GM crops. The programme of farm scale evaluations is the precautionary principle in practice. No GM crops will be grown commercially in this country in advance of passing all the regulatory controls and not until the farm scale research programme is completed and independently evaluated.

Yes. The Waste Framework Directive requires member states to encourage the reduction, reuse and recycling of waste, or the use of waste as a source of energy, to ensure that waste is recovered or disposed of without endangering human health or harming the environment, and to establish an adequate network of disposal installations. Member states are also required to draw up waste management plans that show how they will attain these objectives. For Scotland, this duty was given to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency as laid out in the Environment Act 1995. Last year Scotland became the first UK country to launch its Waste Strategy. On the 9 December 1999 I announced to the Parliament the launch of the National Waste Strategy: Scotland and adopted it on behalf of the Executive.