Chamber and committees

The Scottish Executive does not maintain a centrally held record of electronics businesses that have closed in Scotland. However, my department monitors Scottish Press stories of closures and the following information is derived from that source:

Year	Company	Location
1998 (from April)	Bourns Electronics	Dalgety Bay
	Mitsubishi	Haddington
	Shiva Corporation	Edinburgh
	Tarka Controls Ltd	Inverness
	Viasystems	Galashiels
1999	Simple Technology	East Kilbride
	Seagate Technology	Livingston
	Viasystems	Selkirk
	AMP	Port Glasgow
	Lite-On	Motherwell
	GEC Marconi	Dunfermline
	APW Enclosure Systems	Beith
	Mitsubishi	Livingston
	PCI UK	East Kilbride
2000	Seiko Instruments	Livingston
	Canon	Glenrothes
	Scotland Electronics	Forres
	Seagate Technology	Irvine
2001 (to March)	Alps Electric	Arbroath

The estimate referred to was prepared by a Scottish Office Health Department working group which reported in May 1999. Copies of the report, Hospital Acquired Infection - A Framework for a National System of Surveillance for the NHS in Scotland are available in the Parliament's Reference Centre. The group assumed a prevalence rate of 9% in estimating the incidence of HAI among in-patients in Scottish hospitals, which it calculated to be approximately 69,000 case annually.

The Scottish Executive does not maintain comprehensive records on the number of electronics businesses opened in Scotland. However, the Executive is aware of the following:1998-99 - four opened and are located in Livingston, Irvine and Bathgate;1999-2000 - four opened and are located in Glasgow, Port Glasgow, Glenrothes and Clydebank.

This is a matter for the Trust. I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-15463.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-15107 on 8 May 2001.

Infection control teams are in place in every NHS Trust in Scotland, including some in which teams are organised on a health board-wide basis to cover both acute and primary care settings in the area.

All ATBs have been provided with funding from visitscotland specifically to reduce the subscription burden on their members. It is for individual ATBs to decide exactly how this is to be implemented, for example, by cash refund or future credit.

I am of course aware that the National Audit Office's report The Management and Control of Hospital Acquired Infection in Acute NHS Trusts in England gave an estimate of the numbers of deaths which it believed were attributable to hospital-acquired infections in England.There are considerable difficulties about estimating the number of deaths caused by HAI: hospital-acquired infection is not recognised as a certifiable cause of death; there can be considerable clinical uncertainties about the degree to which any one infection contributes to death, and there can also be uncertainty about the source of infections which cause or contribute to death, especially where prior to death very ill patients have suffered from a number of concurrent conditions.A number of actions are already being taken across NHSScotland, and more are planned, to increase surveillance of HAI, to establish further standards on infection control and to review compliance with these standards. These measures will help improve the ability of the NHS to counter infection, and thus to reduce the health impact of HAI.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-15386.

The estimates referred to were prepared by a Scottish Office Health Department working group which reported in May 1999. Copies of the report, Hospital Acquired Infection - A Framework for a National System of Surveillance for the NHS in Scotland are available in the Parliament's Reference Centre. Information about cost estimates is provided in paragraphs 30-41.