Chamber and committees

The task force has produced an Interim Report which I published on 30 June together with details of the Executive's response. I have asked for a copy of the Interim Report to be put in the Scottish Parliament Reference Centre.

There are two unfilled posts at present - Lanarkshire and the Western Isles. The process of identifying suitable successors is well advanced.

The latest data available refers to consultant and staff grades at the annual notification of vacancies at 30 September 1999, which is collected by ISD Scotland. At 30 September 1999 there were no unfilled consultant or staff grade posts in clinical and medical oncology. Only consultant and staff grade vacancies are recorded. Information on vacancies for junior doctors is collected on a regional level and are not held centrally.

We are committed to increasing the number of doctors in the NHS in Scotland, particularly in the area of cancer treatment. That is why I have recently announced a package of additional investment in the workforce which includes provision for new consultant doctors in cancer services.

The 210 new specialist nursing posts will be filled mostly by nurses already in the NHS in Scotland. The resulting vacant posts will be filled by newly recruited nurses. The start of the specialist training programmes and the recruitment of the new nurses are both scheduled to take place in September 2000.

The 110 new posts for doctors will be filled as soon as possible. The Scottish Council for Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education has already taken the necessary steps to start the recruitment process for training grade doctors. For some grades the timing of this process is constrained by the structure of training rotations and by graduation dates. I expect the posts to be filled within the current financial year.

"Nurse practitioner" is a term often used to describe nurses, specialist or generalist, who practise autonomously and who may undertake duties which are normally the province of a medical practitioner. They work in many settings, particularly in general practice and in accident & emergency.

The term is not precisely defined and no data are collected centrally.

The only information held centrally shows that, as at February 2000, some 1,563 nurses and midwives had been awarded discretionary points. The estimated cost of these awards is just over £1 million.

I refer to my answer given in question S1W-7500.

Expenditure financed from European Structural Funds is not allocated to Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen. Nor is it possible to identify actual expenditure in those cities, partly because individual projects financed from European Structural Funds may be designed to benefit wider geographical areas than the cities. Glasgow and Dundee were included in Objective 2 Programmes for the period from 1997 to 1999 whereas Aberdeen was not an eligible area for geographically targeted Structural Fund Programmes during that period. Information systems are being put in place for the new structural fund programmes which will enable a greater degree of geographical analysis of programme expenditure but, due to the nature of the expenditure, it will remain difficult to generate consistent and meaningful analyses.

In the table below, data is provided for the period since the present structure of 32 unitary local authorities came into being. Data for the predecessor regional and district authorities is not directly comparable.

Number of full-time equivalent staff¹ for Scottish local authorities, December 1996 to September 1999.

Council	December 19962	December 1997	December 1998	September 19993
Aberdeen City	8,472	8,462	8,589	8,798
Aberdeenshire	8,547	7,647	7,743	7,812
Angus	3,934	3,979	4,059	4,165
Argyll & Bute	3,834	3,811	3,931	3,889
Clackmannanshire	2,082	1,946	1,983	1,931
Dumfries & Galloway	5,480	5,458	5,402	5,303
Dundee City	7,683	7,619	7,627	7,280
East Ayrshire	5,149	4,952	4,868	4,978
East Dunbartonshire	3,937	3,830	3,915	4,027
East Lothian	3,082	3,329	3,281	3,386
East Renfrewshire	2,750	2,896	2,919	3,135
Edinburgh, City of	16,202	15,568	15,095	15,070
Eilean Siar	1,556	1,541	1,586	1,591
Falkirk	5,611	5,549	5,291	5,301
Fife	15,263	14,813	15,048	15,127
Glasgow City	33,201	31,839	30,611	30,874
Highland	8,378	8,251	8,120	8,438
Inverclyde	3,933	3,848	3,782	3,855
Midlothian	3,020	3,070	2,957	3,166
Moray	3,300	2,990	3,203	3,170
North Ayrshire	5,539	5,426	5,400	5,233
North Lanarkshire	13,645	13,813	13,449	13,378
Orkney Islands	1,206	1,249	1,297	1,333
Perth & Kinross	4,552	4,448	4,475	4,447
Renfrewshire	7,642	7,088	7,047	7,101
Scottish Borders	3,791	3,764	3,925	3,977
Shetland Islands	2,030	2,020	2,063	2,073
South Ayrshire	4,622	4,464	4,588	4,791
South Lanarkshire	12,262	11,895	11,918	12,142
Stirling	3,667	3,552	3,365	3,283
West Dunbartonshire	4,831	4,646	4,701	4,800
West Lothian	5,636	5,746	5,685	5,689

Source: Drawn from local authority staffing surveys compiled jointly by the Scottish Executive and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

Notes:

1. Figures for full-time equivalent staff exclude staff in fire services, police services, Bridge Joint Boards and Valuation Joint Boards. Where authorities provide services through joint arrangements, the staff delivering the service may be grouped with the staff of a lead authority.

2. Following local government reorganisation some councils encountered problems in producing reliable data.

3. The latest quarter for which information is available.

Separate LEADER+ programmes will be developed for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Approaches will be broadly similar. Programmes will, however, be developed to reflect responses to consultation and the particular circumstances of the areas concerned.