Chamber and committees

We are committed to improvingattainment and achievement for all pupils through the National Priorities in Educationand are supporting education authorities and schools so that they can make theseimprovements in ways that best meet the needs of all their pupils.

This includes support for thedevelopment of specialist curricula, through programmes such as Centres of Excellence,Schools of Ambition, the Future Learning and Teaching programme and Gaelic MediumEducation.

The next three-year spendingreview will take place in 2007 in line with the UK Spending Review. We are undertakingpreparatory work to take a fresh look at the policy framework and its implicationsfor resources in the years ahead.

Thiswork will help us to:

Identifythe key trends to 2011 and beyond, and how best to respond;

Considerpolicy priorities in the light of these trends;

Assessthe effectiveness of existing policies and what has been achieved so far, and

Ensurefuture spending is clearly based on these priorities.

This will provide a robust basisfor our spending review in 2007.

Apart from the normal range of support measures, our agencies are also working with local authorities on a number of large scale projects. For example, in Lanarkshire, we are seeing the redevelopment of Ravenscraig and in Glasgow, the transformation of the Clyde Waterfront. In Ayrshire, the local enterprise company is working alongside local authorities to develop proposals for the redevelopment of Kilmarnock Town Centre and Irvine Bay.

This is a matter for NHS boards.The information requested is not held centrally.

Our aims is that NHS boardsshould meet the wishes of patients and their families, as far as ispracticable. We support the developmentof specialist palliative care, including at home, where appropriate.Substantial resources have been invested in palliative care by NHS boards andthrough the Cancer in Scotland strategy.

In the early part of each year NHS boards receive an allocation for the following financial year and, after each spending review, indicative allocations for the next two years. This gives boards a reasonable degree of certainty over the resources available to them for the next three years.

Officials meet with NHS directors of finance on a regular basis to discuss financial issues both current and future, to consider how these should be dealt with within financial plans and to share ideas and best practice across NHS boards.

 A review of Scottish Health and Care statistics is currently underway. This project will pave the way for the production of more consistent, relevant information on activity and costs within the NHS which will assist the NHS in forecasting.

The Executive is committed to tackling all forms of sectarianism, religious intolerance and racism throughout Scottish society and is addressing this by taking forward work in a range of different areas.

The Executive is investing in road improvements targeted on accident cluster sites. We are also funding road safety programmes such as the Foolsspeed and Festive drink driving campaigns, and safer road projects such as safer routes to school and home zones. We are supporting tougher enforcement by the police, for example to stop drivers using hand-held mobile telephones.

Guidelines were issued to the police on 21 June setting out the arrangements for a national system of restorative police warnings. These guidelines have been backed up with the investment of £727,000 over two years to ensure that senior police officer warnings are replaced by restorative warnings across Scotland byApril 2006.

The refreshed version of ASmart, Successful Scotland (SSS)is being published today. During the refresh, the Executive has considered the viewsof Parliament and a wide range of stakeholder organisations. The new A Smart,Successful Scotland develops the key themes of our Framework for EconomicDevelopment in Scotland – namely economicgrowth; regional development; closing the opportunity gap and sustainable development.SSS will maintain its purpose as strategic direction to the Enterprise Networks,but is also presented as a broader enterprise strategy for Scotland.

As a medium-term strategy, thebroad priorities of SSS remain the same but they have been updated to reflectboth progress and continuing challenges. For example, more emphasis is placed onthe need for effective partnership to ensure delivery of priorities, growing businessesof scale and the need for integrated approaches to regeneration. The refreshed SSSmakes clear that all enterprise network activity should have a primary economicrationale and should seek to close the opportunity gap as part of that activity.

Copies of the document have beenplaced at the Parliament’s Reference Centre (Bib. number 34354).