Chamber and committees

College regionalisation and reform is about delivering education more efficiently and effectively while maintaining student numbers. Thousands of students with learning disabilities are benefitting, and will continue to benefit, from the improved services that our colleges offer. We expect colleges to treat all applicants fairly and to adhere fully to their legal obligations.

We also maintain regular dialogue with the Scottish Consortium for Learning Disability to ensure that we are doing all we can to support this group of learners. I have asked the Scottish Funding Council to work with the Consortium, and with ENABLE Scotland, to help colleges deliver programmes in a way that best supports into work students with a learning disability. This will include developing good practice guidance based on lessons learnt from Project Search and on extending the Transitions to Employment project, and will be funded as part of the additional £61 million announced on 6 February 2013.

The regulations on class sizes, which relate to P1, P2 and P3 classes only, include “excepted pupils”’ provisions. The effect of these provisions is that in certain circumstances a child may be admitted to a class but not be counted within the total number of pupils in the class. Details of these provisions are set out in the Schedule to the Education (Lower Primary Class Sizes) (Scotland) Regulations 1999 which can be viewed at:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/1080/schedule/made.

Monitoring and Evaluating Scotland’s Alcohol Strategy: Second Annual Report, published by NHS Health Scotland in December 2012, includes detailed information on the average price and price distribution of alcohol sold in Scotland. The report is available at:

http://www.healthscotland.com/uploads/documents/20107-MESASCombinedReportNov2012.pdf.

A bulletin presenting statistics on crimes and offences, including offences associated with alcohol use, recorded in Scotland from 2002-3 to 2011-12 can be accessed at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/06/1698.

Alcohol-related hospital discharge statistics are published annually by Information Services Division (ISD) of NHS National Services Scotland. The latest figures can be found at:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Drugs-and-Alcohol-Misuse/Publications/2012-05-29/2012-05-29-AlcoholHospitalStats2012-Report.pdf and include data covering the last five years (data covering earlier years is also available on the ISD website). It should be noted that ISD do not hold separate admission and discharge datasets. As further diagnostic information may become available during the course of a hospital stay, the use of discharge data provides a more complete and accurate picture of a patient’s condition.

<>Publications showing the number of liquor licence applications granted can be found at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/PubLiquor.

Applications for 2010-11 and 2011-12 are granted under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005, which came fully into force in September 2009. No data were collected in 2008 and 2009 during the transition to the new legislation.

Prior to this, licences were issued under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976. Due to differences in how licences are administered under the current arrangements compared with the previous, the figures from 2011-12 and 2010-11 cannot be compared directly with those from earlier years.

Information on the number of gun licences withdrawn on review is not available. Information on the number of firearm and shotgun certificates both refused and revoked is available from the Firearm Certificates Statistics, Scotland statistical bulletin series, which can be found at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/PubFirearmCertificates.

Alcohol sales data is generally accepted, including by the World Health Organisation, to be a more robust measure of total population consumption than self-report survey. The most recent alcohol sales data (2011) for Scotland and England and Wales was published by NHS Health Scotland in August 2012 and can be found at:

http://www.healthscotland.com/uploads/documents/20287-MESAS%202012%20Update.pdf. These data suggest that in 2011 Scots drank around a fifth more alcohol per adult than our counterparts England and Wales.

Details of individual courses offered at any particular moment in time by Forth Valley College, or any other college, are not collected centrally. In constructing their prospectus, colleges are expected to use their judgment and expertise in identifying courses which best equip the learner for a job, either directly or through progression to a higher level of study. The Government is continuing to support the college sector by maintaining the number of full-time equivalent student places it funds.

<>Monitoring and Evaluating Scotland’s Alcohol Strategy: Second Annual Report includes trends in self-report consumption, alcohol sales (generally accepted to be a more robust measure of total population consumption than self-report survey data) and the average price of alcohol for the longest time series currently available. The report was published by NHS Health Scotland in December 2012 and is available at: http://www.healthscotland.com/uploads/documents/20107-MESASCombinedReportNov2012.pdf.

Self-reported consumption data for 2011 is available from the Scottish Health Survey http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0040/00402630.pdf.

<>The most recent update of the University of Sheffield alcohol pricing model was published in January 2012 and can be accessed at: http://www.shef.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.156503!/file/scotlandjan.pdf. This estimated that a total ban on off-trade discounting would result in a decrease in overall consumption of 3%. A total ban is assumed to prohibit all forms of price-based promotion, including straight discounting from list price in addition to quantity discounts.

The ban implemented in the Alcohol etc. (Scotland) Act 2010, which came into force in October 2011, relates to a quantity discount ban only (for example, buy 3 for the price of 2, 3 bottles of wine for £10 etc.). Due to unavailability of data, it is not possible for the University of Sheffield to estimate the impact on consumption of the quantity discount ban alone.

NHS Health Scotland is due to publish a detailed analysis of the impact of the quantity discount ban on consumption in Scotland in the coming months.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-13810 on 16 April 2013. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.