Chamber and committees

A contract with agreed levels of funding and an agreed Passenger Service Requirement is in place with ScotRail until April 2004 when the current franchise expires. Payment of the subsidy cost of the franchise is divided between the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) and Strathclyde Passenger Transport (SPT). The Executive has always funded SPT's share of this and has funded SRA's share since 2001-02 through transfer of funds from the Department for Transport. Under the terms of the devolution settlement the Executive will acquire full funding responsibility, via SPT and the SRA, for the next Scottish passenger rail franchise.

The Scottish Executive is in regular contact with the UK Government on a wide range of issues, including franchise issues.

First Engineering is a private sector company. As such this information is commercial-in-confidence and is not held centrally.

This information is not held centrally at present, but action is currently being taken to improve how this type of information is recorded. It is hoped that it should be possible to complete the improvements to our record keeping systems within the next few months.

I am not aware of the Regulation of Railways Act 1924. However, there have been no reports to procurators fiscal under section 23 of the Regulation of Railways Act 1868.

This information is not held centrally at present, but action is currently being taken to improve how this type of information is recorded. It is hoped that it should be possible to complete the improvements to our record keeping systems within the next few months.

This information is not held centrally at present, but action is currently being taken to improve how this type of information is recorded. It is hoped that it should be possible to complete the improvements to our record keeping systems within the next few months.

The Scottish Executive monitors the progress of projects awarded grant under the Public Transport Fund, the Integrated Transport Fund and the Rural Public Passenger Grant element of the Rural Transport Fund by scrutiny of the various management returns and invoices required from the recipient of grant.Different monitoring procedures by the Executive are involved for each award, since different funding mechanisms are used. Awards given under the Public Transport Fund form part of the local authority non-housing capital allocation provision with local authorities issued with consent under section 94 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, and awards from the Integrated Transport Fund are given under section 70 of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001 on an individual project basis. Awards in respect of the Rural Public Passenger Grant are given in the form of allocations under section 70 of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001 to local authorities for the improvement of rural public passenger transport services in their area, without the need for detailed monitoring reports to the Executive. The internal audit procedures of local authorities ensure that funds ring-fenced for specific projects cannot be used elsewhere, unless with the prior approval of the Executive.

An independent market and economic appraisal of Project ATLAS, carried out for Scottish Enterprise, showed that Project ATLAS should benefit the communications industry in Scotland by stimulating it to supply new and inventive services using the new business park infrastructure.

Scottish Enterprise have analysed the Scottish telecoms market and identified a complex set of issues constraining market growth. Project ATLAS was developed to address this problem on the basis of Scottish Enterprise's economic development remit which is a devolved matter. However, both DTI and the telecoms regulator Oftel are aware of the project.