Chamber and committees

The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) within the Scottish Executive Health Department has responsibility for encouraging and supporting research into health and health care needs in Scotland. The CSO has previously contributed £201,000 to research projects on causation and treatment options for endometriosis but is not currently funding any research into endometriosis. The CSO responds to research applications rather than invites applications on particular topics, and this role is well advertised throughout the health care and academic community. The CSO would consider any submitted research applications, which would be subject to the usual peer and committee review. Details of how to apply to the CSO for a research grant are available on the internet at www.show.scot.nhs.uk/cso.

The number of patients discharged from acute general NHS hospitals, where a diagnosis of endometriosis was recorded, in each of the last three calendar years recorded by NHS board is as follows: Year Ended 31 December

NHS Board (Residence)	2000	2001	2002(provisional)
Total	2,567	2,350	2,166
Argyll and Clyde	293	218	184
Ayrshire and Arran	215	214	218
Borders	24	9	30
Dumfries and Galloway	75	49	46
Western Isles	4	3	1
Fife	276	248	260
Forth Valley	107	127	101
Grampian	275	286	245
Greater Glasgow	446	419	406
Highland	134	122	131
Lanarkshire	222	245	170
Lothian	354	296	261
Orkney	9	13	10
Shetland	8	5	15
Tayside	117	92	76
Outside Scotland/Not Known/Other	8	4	12

The Blue Badge review recommended that further research should be carried out into the independent mobility needs of certain groups of people, to determine whether there is a need for extending the eligibility criteria for a badge. The groups to be covered by the research include: people with mental health problems, partially sighted people, people with severe learning difficulties or severe behavioural difficulties and people with severe autism. The research will look at the mobility needs for these groups and will be carried out on a UK-wide basis.This research needs to be comprehensive and will take some time to complete. Meantime we are working with the Department for Transport and the Welsh and Northern Irish administrations to clarify and refine existing guidance for the Blue Badge Scheme, which is being led by the Department for Transport.

Good progress is being made to implement the recommendations of the Scottish Diabetes Framework published in April 2002. Work in hand includes the establishment of diabetes managed clinical networks in each NHS board area, the introduction of effective clinical data systems to support diabetes services and the development of a comprehensive diabetic retinopathy screening programme.

Research into the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC) is on-going and the Scottish Executive is working closely with the Department of Transport to define and take forward these areas of research. Meanwhile, the Scottish Executive has already introduced legislation under section 73 of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001 to give power to police, traffic wardens and parking attendants to inspect blue badges. This will be brought into force early in 2004 following the issue of guidance to local authorities and blue badge holders.

We introduced a rate relief scheme for small businesses with effect from 1 April 2003. All businesses, including rural businesses, with a rateable value of £10,000 or less are eligible for a discount of between 5% and 50% on the rate poundage. In addition, we introduced a rate relief scheme for qualifying new farm diversification enterprises and an extension to the agricultural exemption from rates to certain buildings used in connection with agricultural operations. In areas designated as rural by the Scottish ministers, we have extended the scope of the existing rural (village shop) rate relief scheme to qualifying hotels/public houses, petrol filling stations and small food shops and we have exempted cashline machines from paying rates.

The Scottish Executive has a number of recruitment and retention measures in place aimed at improving access to dentists in rural areas and across the north east of Scotland. These include:grants under the Scottish Dental Access Initiative for dentists willing to set up or expand NHS practices in areas of poor access or high oral health need; the approval of salaried dentists, where an NHS board or Primary Care NHS Trust considers that the existing provision is insufficient to meet the demands of the local population and no independent general dental practitioner is available to fill the gap; a £1 million "golden hello" package, which includes payments to vocational trainees taking up vocational training in designated areas and payments to dentists who enter substantive general dental service practice within three months of completion of training; a £3 million package of recruitment and retention measures, which includes the introduction of commitment payments for assistants and the raising of the earnings ceiling for seniority payments, both of which reward dentists for undertaking more NHS treatment, anda rural practice allowance unique to Scotland is available to the remotest practices and was increased on 1 April 2003 to £3,000 per practice.In addition, the Scottish Executive has made a commitment through A Partnership for a Better a Scotland to expand the capability of dental training facilities in Scotland by increasing the student outreach capacity in the north-east.

Over the next 10 years we will be steadily increasing our investment in transport and transport infrastructure in order that the proposals outlined in the Transport Delivery Plan and our Partnership Agreement can be delivered.

As the "golden hello" scheme was introduced from 1 August 2002, it will be at least a further year from that date until its full effect becomes evident.

Our workforce estimates of 120 graduates per year would be sufficient for Scotland, if we retained all our graduates in Scotland. Given the current recruitment and retention difficulties in some parts of Scotland, highlighted by a number of MSPs, we introduced incentives for graduates to stay in Scotland and we will continue to review workforce estimates for dental graduates.