Chamber and committees

The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Bill will, if enacted, facilitate implementation of the United Nations Aarhus Convention. This will be achieved through the power in the bill to introduce regulations compliant with the convention.

Implementation of Article 5 of the United Nations Aarhus Convention is already being delivered through existing administrative and legislative means. The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Bill is therefore not needed to enable implementation of Article 5.

The Executive fully supports the United Nations Aarhus Convention, and it is in close contact with Her Majesty's Government over the UK's ratification of the Convention, including the timing of ratification.

The future of the Scottish Science Library is a matter for the Board of Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

The overview of responses is now on the Scottish Executive's website at www.scotland.gov.uk/planning.

All member states of the European Union are currently the subject of investigations by the European Commission regarding breaches of European environmental law. The United Kingdom has a good record on such matters.There is one breach of European environmental law concerning Scotland where the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has issued a formal judgement against the UK's implementation of the EC Nitrates Directive (91/676/EEC).In this case, which is a result of the UK's implementation of the directive in the early 1990s, the UK had taken the view that the directive applied to surface freshwaters and groundwaters only where necessary to protect drinking water sources. In the course of proceedings culminating in the ECJ judgement, the UK admitted this was incorrect and that the Directive applied to the protection of all freshwaters on the surface and underground.The Scottish Executive now plans to consult on new Nitrate Vulnerable Zones later this year, working closely with stakeholders at all stages of the process. This will lead to designations where appropriate.In addition there are two environmental infraction cases concerning Scotland where a notice has been published in the Official Journal of the European Communities that the cases have been referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) by the European Commission. The first concerns an alleged breach of the Bathing Water Directive (76/160/EEC); and the second concerns three Waste Management Directives (the Waste Framework (75/442/EEC), Hazardous Waste (91/689/EEC), and Packaging Waste (91/62/EEC) Directives).Regarding the Bathing Water case, the Scottish Executive is committed to bringing Scotland's 60 designated bathing beaches up to European standards. This commitment was made in the knowledge that it would involve an enormous programme of work to redress years of underinvestment in our water infrastructure. The Executive is in the middle of a programme of investment of around £3.5 billion over seven years, about half of which will be spent on waste water issues. This will bring substantial improvement to the Scottish coastline.As this investment programme progresses it is bringing into focus other causes of bathing water failure. These point to the need to tackle diffuse pollution. The Scottish Executive is working with farmers and others to identify and combat non-sewage causes of pollution of bathing waters.The Waste Management case relates to the requirement to prepare waste plans. The Executive has accepted that the plans relevant to this case - prepared by the former District and Islands Councils - were not adequate. Nevertheless, the Executive believes that the National Waste Strategy for Scotland, supplemented with further detailed data on waste in Scotland which are to be published shortly by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, will meet the directives' requirements.The Executive is committed to the promotion of sustainable development and the protection and improvement of Scotland's environment, and it is determined to implement its European environmental obligations properly.The Executive believes its involvement with Europe needs to be about more than just legislation, and it is committed to putting Scotland at the heart of the European movement for sustainable development. As part of this it is organising two seminars on the environment as part of Scotland Week in Brussels on 11 and 12 October.

There are currently no provisions in Scots or UK law expressly covering liability for damage caused specifically from fields of genetically modified crops. Under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, there are powers to prosecute a consent holder where the conditions attached to a consent are breached. Liability in relation to negligence or nuisance would be a matter for the civil courts to determine.

The European Commission is currently drafting an EU-wide environmental liability directive which will cover possible damage caused by the use of genetically modified organisms.

Spending Review 2000 provided an additional £500 million to the overall transport programme. The reference to public transport in the Press Release of 18 June was incorrect.

The additional funding overall was incorporated in the Executive's spending proposals for transport, set out in the Annual Expenditure Report which was published on 30 March 2001. The report detailed our planned expenditure on public transport over the three years to March 2004 and included £150 million for the Public Transport Fund and some £540 million to support rail services across Scotland.

The £1.9 million pounds awarded to the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI) will fund the following eight new projects:Ecological management and biotechnology;Computational Biology, andFunctional analysis of novel genes from potato and barley.Development and application of metabolic profiling technologies to enhance the understanding of metabolic and developmental processes in plants.Enhancing food quality and nutritional value through multidisciplinary approaches which exploit genetic and molecular diversity.Sequence diversity and horizontal genomics (targeted gene discovery).Molecular plant diversity and germplasm resources.Parallel gene expression technologies supporting the discovery of plant and pathogen genes important to agriculture and biotechnology.

The Ministerial Group on Sustainable Scotland last met on 31 July. Summaries of its discussions are placed on the Sustainable Scotland website: http://www.sustainable.scotland.gov.uk/. The group will meet again on 12 September to discuss its work programme for the coming year.