Chamber and committees

The first few months of visitscotland.com operations have been very successful. Since its new National Contact Centre was opened in August, it has received over 100,000 phone and email enquiries, and has made over 4,000 bookings with tourism businesses across Scotland, many of them small establishments which are now using visitscotland.com to reach a new market. An entirely new website will be implemented within the next three months which will further extend the service available through visitscotland.com to all Scottish tourism businesses.

Based on experience in other parts of Europe where bat rabies is widespread and cross-infection of other mammals, including rats and mice, is considered to be at negligible levels, no preventative action here is felt to be necessary.

The proposed development at Robin Rigg would, subject to obtaining all necessary planning consents, be eligible for funding from the UK capital grants scheme for offshore wind farms. Any decision to bid for such funding is for developers to take. The continuing operation of a wind farm once commissioned is a commercial matter for the operator.

The information requested can be found in the following two tables:Table 1: Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department Count of Permanent Staff as at 1 April (Headcount) 1999-2002

Year	No of Permanent Staff	No of Casual Staff
1999	964	67*
2000	988	82
2001	1,043	67
2002	1,101	102

Note:*Numbers of agency casual staff were not recorded centrally until November 1999.Table 2: Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs DepartmentTotal Salary Costs by Financial Year 1999-2000 to 2001-02

Financial Year	Salary Costs
1999-2000	£22,621,882.00
2000-01	£24,441,919.00
2001-02	£28,995,000.00

The figure for 2001-02 includes expenditure of £2,187,283 which was reimbursed from Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to meet the Scottish Executive costs of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.

Local authorities are responsible for the funding of museums in their areas and independent museums are the responsibility of individual groups of trustees. The Executive welcomes the diversity and range of museums and funding sources in the sector. Following the publication in July of the National Audit of Scotland's Museums and Galleries,l the Executive is seeking views on the creation of an action plan to provide a framework for the continuing development of the museums and galleries sector in Scotland.

During the EAGGF year (16 October 2001 - 30 September 2002) the split of expenditure on agri-environment schemes through modulated funds and matched funding by area office was as follows:

Area Office	Receipts Raised(£000)	Modulation Spent(£000)	Match Funding(£000)	Total Spent(£000)
Ayr	662	134	96	230
Benbecula	16	80	56	136
Dumfries	621	107	77	184
Dundee	710	33	24	57
Galashiels	1,104	134	98	232
Grampian	1,915	145	102	247
Hamilton	223	77	57	134
Inverness	360	104	74	178
Kirkwall	227	48	33	81
Lairg	28	5	3	8
Lerwick	27	162	110	272
Oban	156	91	63	154
Perth	458	69	51	120
Portree	20	13	8	21
Stirling	453	50	36	86
Stornoway	9	16	11	27
Thurso	163	49	35	84
Total	7,152	1,317	934	2,251

Modulation funding has only been used for forestry schemes since April 2002 and a breakdown of this is given in the following table by Conservancies as this information is not available by area offices:

Conservancy Area	Modulation Spent(£000)	Match Funding(£000)	Total Spent(£000)
Grampian	133	133	266
Strathclyde	222	222	444
Perth	124	124	248
South West Scotland	59	59	118
Lothian and Borders	163	163	326
Total	701	701	1,402

Accordingly the total amount spent on schemes funded through modulation during the period is £3,653,000. The balance of the receipts still available from 2001-02 will be spent over the coming years and already the value of modulation supported agri-environment agreements that have been committed over the next three years of their duration amounts to nearly £18 million. In addition new commitments will be entered into in forthcoming application rounds. I have already announced changes to the agri-environment schemes that, subject to agreement by the European Commission, will enable the Executive to use these modulated funds to support a higher number of entrants to such schemes in the future.

There have been six such closures during that period. Details are:

Year	No. of Closures	Local Authority Area
1997	2	Dumfries and GallowayArgyll and Bute
1998	2	City of EdinburghSouth Lanarkshire
1999	0
2000	0
2001	0
2002 to end September	2	Dundee CityShetland Islands

The Scottish Agricultural Science Agency do not claim any money back from the European Union for work carried out under the Honey Programme. However, the Scottish Executive claims back under Council Regulation (EC) 1221/97, 50% of all monies spent on varroa work by the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency, the Scottish Agricultural College and the department's Agricultural Staff Bee Officers. In each of the last five years we have spent:

1998 - year 1	£42, 618
1999 - year 2	£44, 812
2000 - year 3	£46, 552
2001 - year 4	£24, 840
2002 - year 5	£38, 132

The Executive has no current plans to change the qualifications structure for nursery nurses.We are commissioning research into the content of early years qualifications, to be completed in 2003. The results of this research will help to inform future consideration of the early years qualifications structure.

The trunk road programme will be maintained at a level which allows continuing improvements to long-distance, single carriageway strategic routes, such as the A75. This will include delivering on our current commitment to complete six major improvement schemes on the route.