Chamber and committees

The table shows the amount allocated to each local authority under the Civil Protection element of the Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) assessment.Civil Protection

Local Authority	GAE 2001-02 (£000)
Aberdeen City	161
Aberdeenshire	150
Angus	97
Argyll & Bute	86
Clackmannanshire	67
Dumfries & Galloway	96
Dundee City	140
East Ayrshire	104
East Dunbartonshire	82
East Lothian	76
East Renfrewshire	76
Edinburgh, City of	163
Eilean Siar	89
Falkirk	114
Fife	190
Glasgow City	249
Highland	144
Inverclyde	76
Midlothian	74
Moray	77
North Ayrshire	99
North Lanarkshire	133
Orkney Islands	71
Perth & Kinross	91
Renfrewshire	99
Scottish Borders	80
Shetland Islands	61
South Ayrshire	90
South Lanarkshire	143
Stirling	77
West Dunbartonshire	78
West Lothian	96
Scotland	3,429

The conduct of the exercise and the lessons learned are still under review by the various organisations which participated. It is, however, possible to reply now from the perspective of the Scottish Executive.(a) The exercise was seen to be of value in that a number of new as well as experienced staff from across the Executive were involved at the off-site centre and in the Scottish Executive's Emergency Room and that lessons were learned which will improve practice in future.(b) The exercise postulated a fire on a nuclear submarine which was contained within the hull and did not result in a release into the atmosphere.(c) Scottish Executive emergency planning staff from Justice, Health, Energy, Agriculture along with staff from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the Food Standards Agency took part.(d) Approximately 15-20 staff from the Scottish Executive participated at some time during the exercise.

The Scottish Executive has a good relationship with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the sharing of information between us is frequent. We received advice from the MoD on the answer given to the Scottish Executive question on 1 October. I am advised that the MoD considered the precise terms of the question that was answered by Her Majesty's Government on 12 November and decided that a more detailed answer could be given. There is no difference in policy between the Scottish Executive and the MoD on this matter.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:Additional functionality currently under consideration for the Prisoner Records system may contain data on individual prisoners progress in programmes and interventions, as well as information in terms of initial needs assessments but the details have still to be determined.

Any requirement to seek help from agencies outwith Scotland would not be solely based on the scale of the emergency or coincident emergencies. It might equally be for specific resources or expertise to augment limited resources in any aspect of an emergency. There are standing mutual aid arrangements in place across all the emergency agencies both within Scotland and the UK which have been utilised on several occasions in recent years.

The protective security of key installations in Scotland is a matter for the UK Government departments with lead policy responsibility for these. Contacts between the Scottish Executive and these departments on emergency planning policy relates to planning for the consequences of incidents not to security issues.

Argyll and Clyde NHS Board is responsible for ensuring that appropriate health care arrangements are made for people resident in the board's area. Any decision to use independent providers of health care services would be a matter for the board.

Information on waiting times for in-patient and day case treatment is compiled on a retrospective basis from patient discharge records and is published quarterly. The latest available information is for the year ending 30 June 2001, and figures for that period were provided in response to question S1W-19012. Information for the year ending 30 September 2001 should be available later this month.

Scotland's interests at the November Health Council were represented by the UK delegation led by my Whitehall colleague, the Minister of State for Health, who represented all parts of the United Kingdom.

The information available on the average age of (a) primary and (b) secondary school teachers can be obtained from Table 5 and Table 11 of the statistical bulletin Teachers in Scotland: September 1998, published in March 2000, which is in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 16320).