Chamber and committees

Two officials from Area Regeneration Division are directly involved in the monitoring of each Social Inclusion Partnership each year. In addition, they are supported by financial staff, administrative staff, senior managers and other professional staff.

The Scottish Executive is hosting a campaign called Make it in Scotland, which will challenge young people's perceptions of the manufacturing industry and better inform career choices. At the core of the campaign is a series of local roadshows for S2 pupils.Roadshows will involve young people from local and national companies running hands-on activities that will challenge perceptions of manufacturing. A website aimed at the pupils themselves, a teaching pack for schools and a branding initiative are also supporting the campaign.We are building on the successful pilot work undertaken in East Ayrshire in January-March 2001. In the 2001-02 session there will be an opportunity for S2 pupils in Ayrshire, Glasgow and Angus to attend a local roadshow. We plan to rollout the campaign nationwide for all S2 pupils in Scotland in the 2002-03 academic year.

I understand that no employees at Fort William have been made redundant as a result of the Arjo Wiggins decision. However, two ground staff and three drivers have been relocated.

The Scottish Executive's Freight Facilities and Track Access Grant schemes are both targeted at encouraging manufacturers to transfer freight from road to rail which is a central plank of our freight transport policy.In the Spending Review 2000 we announced that the Freight Facilities Grant budget would double to £36 million over the next three years. The opportunities to take advantage of these grant schemes are available to industry throughout Scotland, including the Highlands where roads are often particularly unsuited to heavy road freight traffic.

Switching the transportation of aluminium to road was a commercial decision made by Freightliner.

Under section 5 of the Scotland Act 1998, the provision and regulation of railway services, which includes railway safety, are reserved matters and as such are the responsibility of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. ScotRail is required to meet all relevant GB safety standards, which are monitored by the Health and Safety Executive.The Scottish Executive of course recognises that customers have increasing expectations about the quality and comfort of their rail journey. Our consultation paper, Strategic Priorities for Scotland's Passenger Railway, emphasised that we will look to train operators to consider a range of service quality improvements as an integral part of any new franchise.

Under the terms of the school improvement framework established in the Standards in Scotland's Schools Act 2000, local authorities must publish their improvement plans by December 2001.

The Scottish Executive is pursuing a wide-ranging programme of action to help meet the diverse needs of women travellers across Scotland. The Executive in particular plans to publish later this year a checklist to identify and address these needs for the use of central government, local authorities and transport operators in designing and implementing policies, programmes and services.

Operational issues such as service cancellations are a matter for ScotRail to address within a stringent performance regime operated by the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA). The Scottish Executive has no direct locus or powers to intervene. The SRA deposits a copy of its annual report in the Parliament's Reference Centre. That includes information on train cancellations by each train operating company. The most recent report is for the year 1999-2000.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-15382.