Financial support for STB/Visitscotland in 2000-01 is £25.9 million, which is a £6.6 million increase on the previous financial year.

I cannot, at this stage, give any commitment to visiting schools in Lockerbie, but I am considering the possibility of including them in a future programme of visits.

I will ask the interim Chief Executive to write to you.

The additional funding for clinical psychology training secured eight posts so that the output from the training programmes in Scotland over the next three years will be 32 clinical psychologists per year. Without the additional funding the output would have fallen back to the previous figure of 24 per year. Supported by the clinical psychology committee of the Scottish Council for Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education (SCPMDE), work is under way to define the number and type of psychologists required to provide psychological services in NHSScotland in the most effective way.

I will ask the Interim Chief Executive to write to you.

On 18 December 2000 I announced £26 million of funding to support 36 projects. The funds have still to be drawn down and at the present time it is too early to say how the projects are progressing.All of the projects are being monitored by the Executive and the project plans, along with progress reports for each of the projects, will be published on the Executives 21st Century Government website.

Current evidence suggests that, on the basis of the progress measures defined by the Office of the e-Envoy for its Electronic Service Delivery Progress Report, more than 25% of services provided by the Scottish Executive and its agencies are available online, thus meeting the target of 25% to be online by 2002. However, we do not believe that "services" and "online" in this context have universally understood definitions within the public sector in Scotland. Since the announcement of the target of 100% of government services to be available electronically by 2005 in March 2000, we have been considering how to ensure that our 21st Century Government Agenda is about improving services to the public and about increasing choice in the way services are delivered. The option to access services electronically can and should include a variety of delivery channels, including digital tv, call centres and the Internet. We are revising the collection of statistics to reflect this and will be able to provide fuller information in due course.

The Scottish Executive does not have a mechanism in place that provides an overall measure of its intellectual capital. However, the Executive uses many of the measures of intellectual capital used by leading exponents of this discipline including employee satisfaction, qualifications and training undertaken by staff.

As stated in my answer to question S1W-10567 on 27 November, the Scottish Executive is in regular contact with the Government Offices in the North-East and North-West on issues of common interest. Local authorities in the south of Scotland are best placed to develop relationships with their counterpart authorities south of the Border on issues of common interest.

Scottish interests in devolved matters including those of particular interest to Dumfries and Galloway, are fed by the Scottish Executive into the formulation of the UK line which is taken forward by the UK delegation at meetings with EU institutions and Member States. Through these means for example, the whole of Dumfries and Galloway has secured eligibility for funding under Objective 2 and is able to participate in the Objective 3 programme of the European Structural Funds.