Chamber and committees

A steering group, which includes representatives from the Scottish Executive, Strategic Rail Authority, Railtrack and City of Edinburgh Council, has been established to take the re-development of Waverley Station forward. This will provide increased train capacity. It is too early to be certain about the timetable, but the steering group aims to begin construction after preparatory work and site investigations are completed in 2004, with a target date for full redevelopment of the station by 2008.

The Scottish Executive will present to the Transport and Environment Committee of the Scottish Parliament its draft Directions and Guidance to the Strategic Rail Authority in June 2002.The Executive launched an extensive public consultation in November 2000 with its paper Strategic Priorities for Scotland's Passenger Railway. The Executive published a summary of responses received in June 2001.

We have no such targets.

European and international railway services are a reserved matter under the devolution settlement. Under the UK Transport Act 2000, the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) is required to prepare a strategy relating to services in various parts of Great Britain for facilitating the carriage of passengers or goods by rail via the Channel Tunnel. Publication of this strategy is scheduled for later this year.The SRA has also indicated that it will be carrying out consultation as part of this work. This will allow further consideration of the issues concerning regional access to Channel Tunnel passenger services.

The timetable for the renewal of the Scottish rail passenger franchise is as follows:

• the Scottish Executive's Directions and Guidance to the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) will be issued this summer;
• the SRA will subsequently invite bids later in 2002;
• initial bids will then be evaluated and short-listed;
• short listed bidders will be invited to submit a Best and Final Offer before a preferred bidder is selected, with whom to negotiate a new franchise agreement, and

the new franchise will begin on 1 April 2004.

Data provided by Scottish Water concerning the drinking water quality results for the water supply zones covering postcode area EH9 during 2001 indicated that there were no breaches of the drinking water regulations for that postcode in 2001.

I understand that no decision has been taken on this matter by Consignia, and there is no indication of whether redundancies of rail workers might result. In the event of such redundancies, the local enterprise network and other relevant organisations would be able to assist those made redundant with appropriate training.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-24621.

The Executive does not currently expect to incur any direct or indirect costs as a result of the recent announcement by Consignia plc to reduce the number of jobs from its operations in Scotland.

The Scottish Executive administers the Freight Facilities Grant scheme in Scotland which aims to encourage the transfer of freight from road to rail and waterborne modes of transport, by helping companies invest in the facilities needed to compete in financial terms with road transport. The opportunities to take advantage of this grant scheme are available to manufacturers and logistics companies throughout Scotland. The decision about whether to carry freight by road or rail is a commercial matter for individual companies to make.