Chamber and committees

The following table sets out actual expenditure by local authorities on improvement and repairs grants for private sector houses for 1999-2000. Figures are not available for expenditure in 2000-01 or for the local authorities estimated expenditure in 2001-02. Real terms figures can be calculated by applying the Treasury deflators (currently 2.5%) in the normal way.

Local authority	Expenditure (£000)
Aberdeen City	1,907
Aberdeenshire	388
Angus	506
Argyll and Bute	1,779
Clackmannanshire	267
Dumfries & Galloway	621
Dundee City	1,646
East Ayrshire	235
East Dunbartonshire	150
East Lothian	604
East Renfrewshire	151
Edinburgh, City of	2,848
Eilean Siar	3,461
Falkirk	495
Fife	419
Glasgow City	6,932
Highland	4,314
Inverclyde	489
Midlothian	53
Moray	557
North Ayrshire	767
North Lanarkshire	1,689
Orkney Islands	1,408
Perth and Kinross	1,083
Renfrewshire	1,879
Scottish Borders	947
Shetland Islands	320
South Ayrshire	310
South Lanarkshire	3,500
Stirling	776
West Dunbartonshire	247
West Lothian	429
Scotland	41,177

The cost of a changeover would depend on the timing, the overall approach and individual management decisions.

The Scottish Executive does not receive any money from local authorities as a result of the housing capital receipts set-aside rules.

The information is not available from the statistics prepared by the General Register Office for Scotland. However, the table gives the number of fatalities caused by fires where the source of ignition was known to be smokers' materials, excluding matches and cigarette lighters.

Year	Number of fatalities in Scotland
1997	32
1998	36
19991	33

Notes:1. 1999 figure is provisional.

Policy responsibility for the National Lottery is reserved. Responsibility for distributing proceeds from the lottery rests with the Distributing Bodies.

The relevant data on the recovery and recycling of packaging waste are incomplete as some businesses have yet to submit data or are in the process of reviewing their previous estimates. It is therefore too early to say whether the United Kingdom has achieved its' packaging targets under the EC Packaging Directive. The position should be clearer towards the end of the year when a review of the data which is currently being undertaken is complete.Implementation of the directive is an ongoing process. The National Waste Strategy: Scotland identifies packaging waste as a priority waste stream. The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997 transpose the directive into UK law and these are enforced in Scotland by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

As I announced on 20 June, Professor John Temple is to chair the fundamental review of medical workforce planning which was a commitment in Our National Health: A plan for action, a plan for change. The review will consider the many complex areas surrounding the supply of trained doctors to NHSScotland, including the provision for general practice.The Executive are also currently working with ISD Scotland, the Scottish General Practitioners Committee (SGPC) and the Scottish Council for Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education (SCPMDE), to develop a statistical model to project the overall supply and demand of the general practitioner (GP) workforce in Scotland. Information obtained from this study will be used to inform decisions on training posts for general practitioners.Earlier this year I also announced new arrangements to give GPs the option of becoming permanent salaried employees of NHSScotland and additional investment to fund up to an extra 50 GP posts in deprived and rural areas.

The Scottish Executive, through Scottish Trade International (STI), is committed to helping Scottish exporters. STI's activities have, over the past five years, been directed by the Export Development Strategy for Scotland.The continuing need to ensure that companies in Scotland are able to realise the full benefits of trading in international markets will be a key theme of the Global Connections Strategy, which we will be publishing shortly. This will provide a focus for future international economic development activity.Official Scottish Manufactured Exports statistics are compiled by the Scottish Executive from data collected by the Office for National Statistics. They measure actual performance, and provide an estimate of the volume and value of export sales. Figures for the first quarter of 2001 showed an increase of 1.9% in real terms, in the level of manufacturing export sales compared with the previous quarter.

The Scottish Executive has regular contact with HM Treasury on a range of economic issues.UK membership of the single European currency is a reserved issue. Convergence between the UK economy and the economies of the single currency area is one of the five economic tests set out by the Chancellor, which will be assessed as part of any decision to join. Any assessment will be based on the UK economy as a whole.

The Scottish Executive is investing £26 million in 2001-02, £30 million in 2002-03 and £40 million in 2003-04. Allocations for the years beyond 2003-04 will be announced at the appropriate time. The Executive's investment will be supplemented by private sector resources invested as part of the stock transfer process, but it is not possible to quantify the extent of this investment at this time. The investment by the energy companies under their Energy Efficiency Commitment will follow from regulations to be made under the Utilities Act.