Chamber and committees

I refer Mr Gibson to the answer that the Minister for Finance gave to question S1W-7229.

Details of the Executive's expenditure plans to 31 March 2002 are in the Annual Expenditure Report entitled Investing in You. A copy is available in SPICe. Bodies other than the Executive have responsibilities for road infrastructure, rail and land reclamation in Glasgow. The Executive does not have details of their investment plans. The Executive plans to spend around £31 million on motorways and trunk roads in Glasgow in the period to 31 March 2002.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is responsible for the protection of the quality of the River Clyde. It routinely monitors chemical, biological and hydrological parameters to gauge the health of various sectors of the river. Water authorities and industry require consents from SEPA, which are regularly reviewed, under the Control of Pollution Act 1974, to discharge effluent to the water environment. SEPA uses the information gained through its monitoring programme to set appropriate conditions for these consents. Enforcement action is taken where discharges breach these consents.

SEPA may also take enforcement action through various regulations to ensure that storage facilities, farming practices and waste disposal are properly controlled.

Services such as a 24-hour hotline to report pollution incidents and the production of guidance leaflets and other publicly available materials are used to encourage better practice to protect the environment. In particular, SEPA West Region has recently produced an information pack, which includes a CD ROM, to provide information about the West of Scotland's water environment. A copy of this pack has been placed in the SPICe (Bib number 6765).

SEPA published a report, Improving Scotland's Water Environment outlining measures undertaken to minimise water pollution, and the targets towards which it is working. A copy is available in SPICe (Bib number 2964).

The West of Scotland Water Authority also plays an important role in maintaining and improving the quality of the water in the river. The Authority discharges effluent into the river and its tributaries from several water supply and wastewater treatment works along its banks and from storm-water overflows from the sewerage network. The existing treatment works are operated so as to optimise the quality of the effluent discharged and minimise their impact on the river. The Authority has invested, and will continue to invest, very significant sums in the modernisation and replacement of works along the river-bank.

On the freshwater section of the Clyde notable works are:

• The provision of tertiary treatment to the wastewater treatment works at Daldowie to ensure that the quality of effluent discharged into the river is improved, and

• The improvement of storm-water overflows known to operate in an unsatisfactory manner so as to reduce the number and duration of discharges of storm-water into the adjacent watercourse so that impact of these water courses on the river will be minimised.

Information about the estuarial and coastal sections of the Clyde may be found in the information pack referred to above.

The Scottish Executive is committed to seeing a marked improvement in non-smoking facilities in leisure and hospitality amenities. The Scottish Voluntary Charter on Smoking in Public Places which was recently launched by the Scottish Licensed Trade Association, the Scottish Tourism Forum, the British Hospitality Association and the Brewers & Licensed Retailers Association of Scotland should help ensure this improvement. I will be looking for clear evidence that the Charter is working.

The Scottish Executive is currently working with CoSLA and Scottish Trading Standards representatives to improve the enforcement of underage sales. However, there are presently no plans to introduce a system of negative licensing in Scotland.

There is no action planned at present.

The particular aspect of the guidance which applies, i.e. in relation to the use of children for test purchasing, is based on policy set by the Crown Office. The Lord Advocate has clearly stated that children should not be used to test purchase tobacco products as part of the local enforcement activity. This is also the view of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS). Scottish Executive officials are working with local government representatives on measures to improve enforcement of laws relating to underage sales.

The health risks from passive smoking are clear. The Executive will be working closely with Charter signatories to agree realistic and clear targets against which to measure its success.

The Glasgow CrossRail scheme is a Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive initiative. The Scottish Executive has not been approached by SPTE for public funding or any other support.

Scottish Executive support for local authorities' capital expenditure on roads and transport is included within the single allocation under section 94 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 which covers all non-housing capital programmes. It is for local authorities to prioritise upgrading of bridges to meet the 40-tonne EC standard and allocate the necessary funding from the resources available to them.

The information requested cannot be provided at local authority level.

Information currently available on household income is drawn from the Households Below Average Income dataset and the Family Resources Survey which do not have sufficient sample size for Scotland to produce the required level of detail.

The Scottish Household Survey will provide information on household income by local authority area after the first full sweep of the survey (i.e. after two years) - the results of which are not likely to be made available until summer 2001.

Work is also underway to investigate new methodologies and to consider boosting existing samples to give better coverage for Scotland.

At the Scotland level, the proportion of children in households with below 60% GB median income in 1997-98 was 30% (340,000 children). This represents a drop from a figure of 34% in 1996-97.