- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 09 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Margaret Curran on 1 February 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-5062 by Patricia Ferguson on 19 January 2004, what subsequent discussions it has had with Her Majesty’s Government on any modifications of the Schedule of reserved matters under section 29(2) of the Scotland Act 1998 and what any such modifications were.
Answer
The Scottish Executive is inregular contact with the UK Government on a wide range of issues, includingissues relating to legislative competence where appropriate.
Schedules 4 and 5 to theScotland Act 1998 have been amended by a series of Orders made under section30(2) of the Scotland Act 1998. The Orders are available in the public domainand may be viewed on the Office of Public Sector Information website:
www.opsi.gov.uk.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 18 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Patricia Ferguson on 31 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will list all those who have served as policy advisers to the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) or to the Chair of the SAC since 1999, also indicating for each (a) how long they served, (b) how much they were paid and (c) what their outputs were.
Answer
Scottish Arts Council policyis decided and developed corporately by the Council taking advice from staff, committeesand specialist advisers. The Scottish Arts Council occasionally appoints expertspecialists to advise on implementation of specific policy decisions to ensure ithas full understanding of specific fields. However, the firms or individualsappointed do not serve as “policy advisers” in general but are contractedspecifically for a single purpose.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Elish Angiolini on 31 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-30458 by Elish Angiolini QC on 21 December 2006, whether the Crown could not raise criminal proceedings against any of the officers concerned even if new evidence came to light.
Answer
In Scots Law, when a decisionto take no proceedings has been intimated by the Crown to a person against whoma criminal allegation is made, the Crown are held to it, and such intimation isregarded by the court as constituting a bar to any proceedings thereafter. Thisrule applies even where new evidence comes to light at a later date.
Accordingly, the decision notto take proceedings against the four Scottish Criminal Record Office officers againstwhom criminal allegations were made is final.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Elish Angiolini on 31 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-30458 by Elish Angiolini QC on 21 December 2006, on what basis and on whose authority the decision was made that no proceedings were to be taken against officers of the Scottish Criminal Record Office.
Answer
The decision not to raise proceedingsagainst the four Scottish Criminal Record Office officers against whom criminalallegations were made was taken by the former Lord Advocate, Lord Boyd, in 2001.A public announcement of this decision was made in September 2001.
The decision was taken on thebasis that there was insufficient reliable evidence upon which to found a prosecution.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 30 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the written evidence dated 3 May 2006 by John McLean, former Director of the Scottish Criminal Record Office (SCRO), to the Justice 1 Committee’s inquiry, (paper J1/S2/06/17/2), whether it will provide full information in respect of the misidentification of fingerprint evidence in the Scottish Fingerprint Service in June 2000; whether any of the experts concerned in this misidentification were involved in the misidentification of mark Y7 in the Marion Ross murder case; whether there was an independent inquiry into this misidentification and, if so, who carried it out and what the result was; whether the work of the experts concerned with this misidentification was checked for other misidentifications and, if so, over what period of time; whether the experts accepted that they had made mistakes and what remedial action was taken, and whether any of these experts are involved in providing expert evidence in Scottish courts at present.
Answer
There was no misidentification confirmedin the written evidence dated 3 May 2006 by John McLean. That written evidence isavailable at:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/committees/justice1/papers-06/j1p06-17.pdf.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive who the equity providers were for the Hairmyres Hospital PFI project.
Answer
The original equity providerswere Innisfree Partners Limited as general partner of the Innisfree PFI Fund (50%)and Kier Limited (50%).
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how refinancing has changed the base internal rate of return to the Hairmyres Hospital PFI consortium.
Answer
The information is ascontained in the following tables:
| Original Financing | |
| Nominal | 19.55% |
| Real | 16.05% |
| Refinancing Model | |
| Nominal | 18.61% |
| Real | 16.13% |
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether any of the refinancing gain arising from the refinancing of the Wishaw General Hospital PFI project has been retained by the private sector to compensate for a lower rate of return than that expected at bidding stage.
Answer
I refer the member to the answerto question S2W-31057 on 29 January 2007. All answers to written parliamentaryquestions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility forwhich can be found at:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive who the equity providers were for the Wishaw General Hospital PFI project.
Answer
The equity providers for theWishaw General Hospital PFI project at financial close were as follows:
Sir Robert MacAlpine and,
Uberior Infrastructure InvestorsLimited.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether the refinancing of the Hairmyres Hospital PFI project resulted in any change in risk allocation and termination liabilities and, if so, how the additional risks have been priced.
Answer
The refinancing of Hairmyres Hospital inAugust 2004 provided an opportunity for both Prospect and NHS Lanarkshire towork in partnership and capture the considerable benefits from the reducedrisks inherent in the project following the successful completion ofconstruction and the experience gained of operating the hospital.
There are three distinctcategories of termination. These are client default/voluntary termination, forcemajeure; and contractor default.
Under each of these, thereare defined liabilities that the board is contracted to pay in the event theConcession Agreement terminates. The contractual definition of theseliabilities did not change post refinancing. The first of these is consideredto be within NHS Lanarkshire’s control. The second is essentially outwitheither NHS Lanarkshire’s or the contractor’s control. Based on Prospect’s (thecontractor), and their bankers’ commitment to the project and the due diligenceundertaken by the bankers in agreeing the refinancing, the probability ofdefault by the contractor was considered to be low.
The potential terminationliabilities under these scenarios were subjected to a detailed value for moneyanalysis and scenario modelling which focused on the trade off between a potentialincrease in liabilities and NHS Lanarkshire’s share of refinancing gain. Thisanalysis suggested that there needs to be a high probability of contractordefault before the VFM was eroded. Whilst there were some consequential changesto the termination sums under contractor default, the termination sum payableunder such a default scenario is expected to be lower than had the refinancingnot taken place.
The refinancing agreementincreased the amount of borrowing by £20.4 million and the total debt is repaidover a longer time period. However, the actual sum paid at termination would bedetermined by the actual date of termination.
he refinancing providedsubstantial financial gain for NHS Lanarkshire and was undertaken in line withthe Code of Conduct issued by the Office of Government Commerce in July 2002. PartnershipsUK (PUK) Refinancing Task Force confirmed the business case complied with theterms of the code.
