Chamber and committees

The figure of £18.5 million for 2000-01 and 2001-02 represents the planned provision as agreed in the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in respect of Caledonian MacBrayne's External Finance Limit. The equivalent CSR provision for 1999-2000 was £23.6 million. This was subsequently increased to £24.4 million by supplementary estimates, which took account of a number of adjustments throughout the year.

The CSR provision for 2000-01 and 2001-02 drops due to a fall in planned capital investment. The expenditure implications flowing from my announcement on 27 April in relation to the future of ferry service delivery for the Highlands and Islands will be considered in the light of comments in response to the consultation paper published on that day.

£2.4 million of Freight Facilities Grant remains to be paid on awards made prior to 1 July 1999. All such payments will be made by the Scottish Executive.

The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 applies throughout the UK and is reserved to the UK Government at Westminster.

Procurators Fiscal are instructed that proceedings in respect of any offence must only be instituted where there is sufficient admissible evidence both that a crime was committed and that the accused committed it. They must also be satisfied that prosecution is in the public interest. Housing benefit fraud may be prosecuted both under statute and at common law. Guidance has been issued in respect of common law fraud and the relevant Social Security offences. Decision-making by Procurators Fiscal is monitored across the whole range of offences and alleged housing benefit fraud is part of that exercise.

There are no variations in practice among Procurators Fiscal in the prosecution of housing benefit fraud though variations in the content of reports made to Procurators Fiscal undoubtedly lead to variations as to outcome as Procurators Fiscal apply the usual criteria to all cases reported to them. These include whether there is sufficient evidence, including corroboration of the essential facts and whether there is evidence of sufficient quality and reliability to support a prosecution. The Procurator Fiscal will also have to decide whether a prosecution is in the public interest. Application of these criteria to cases involving similar charges can quite properly result in different outcomes.

We have advertised for consultants to begin the M80 and M8 corridor studies announced in the Roads Review.

All Departments of the Scottish Executive have systems in place to monitor performance against targets for all letters due for a ministerial reply. This includes letters from MSPs. Departments also report performance formally through a parliamentary answer.To help improve response times, the Executive is improving and standardising the recording, monitoring and workflow systems used to handle ministerial correspondence. The introduction of a new corporate system will enable central scanning, logging and allocation of all ministerial correspondence and will produce management information not readily available at present. This will include information on cases in progress and those overdue. Reports on the handling of MSPs' correspondence will be available. The introduction of the new system is due to be completed by the end of June 2000.

Under the provisions made in the UK Transport Bill, introduced on 1 December 1999, the Scottish Ministers will be able to issue directions and guidance to the Shadow Strategic Rail Authority for passenger rail services that begin and end in Scotland. Since the Bill has not completed its passage through Parliament at Westminister, the Scottish Ministers are not yet able to exercise these powers.

PQ's S1W-2963 and S1W-3946 were answered on 25 January and 2 May respectively. The delay in responding to the others is being investigated and answers will be issued as soon as possible.

Disclosure of information which would harm the frankness and candour of internal discussion is exempted from the commitment to provide information under the Code of Practice on Access to Scottish Executive information.