Chamber and committees

Implementation of the Directive is not expected to affect the competitiveness of shipyards in Scotland compared with the rest of the UK as arrangements in Scotland are essentially the same as in England and Wales.The Executive proposes to defer until 2007 the date when existing shipyards are required to apply for permits to carry out organotin coating activities. This is close to the final date for transferring existing installations allowed under the IPPC Directive. It is, therefore, very unlikely that any competitive disadvantage will result.

The Scottish Executive (and the former Scottish Office) received no responses from harbour authorities, shipyards or related industries to the consultation papers issued prior to implementing the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive (96/61/EC) through the Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations 2000 (PPC).The Executive consulted in June 2002 on proposals to amend the PPC Regulations to defer the period during which existing (but not new or substantially changed) installations are required to apply for a PPC permit to carry out organotin coating activities. The proposed amendment is supported by most parts of the shipbuilding and ship repair industry. The Executive received eight responses to this consultation from ports and harbour authorities, shipyard operators and associated trade organisations. Seven were supportive. One wanted the proposed delay to apply to substantially changed installations, an option which is not possible under the IPPC Directive.

The Executive (and the former Scottish Office) carried out five separate consultations on options to transpose the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive (96/61/EC). A wide range of industries, businesses, trade associations, statutory bodies, local authorities and environmental interest groups were consulted. The directive was implemented through the Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations 2000.

The costs of establishing and operating the new Do a Little, Change a Lot website, as set out in the answer given to question S1W-30632, exclude VAT. Including VAT, the equivalent costs would be £30,550 and £8,577 respectively. The cost of the previous version of the website set out in question S1W-30632 includes VAT.

The Scottish Local Government (Elections) Act 2002 allows ministers to extend successful pilots throughout Scotland by order. As only three pilots have been run to date, the Executive believes that it needs to secure more experience in order to determine best practice and decide whether all-postal voting should be extended to all local authorities. There are therefore no current plans to simplify procedures or give local authorities the right to decide whether council by-elections should be held by postal ballot only. The Executive has ensured that the process of applying to run a pilot is not arduous and that applications are dealt with quickly.

Your letter was passed to the Area Tourist Board review team who acknowledged it on 18 September 2002 as a response to the review. We have received well over 300 such responses and at this stage have simply acknowledged each one, although we plan to publish a summary of responses in due course. However, I will write to you soon to respond to the points raised in your letter.

Many of the issues raised by the work of Social Enterprise London are addressed in the Executive's review of the social economy, which we aim to publish shortly.

Research on the effectiveness of the Learn to Let Go campaign has been placed in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 25242).

We have only had one request from a member of staff to participate in local political activity. This was from a Grade 6, in 2001 and was turned down. Our conduct rules do not just restrict staff from working for a party or standing as a candidate in a local election. They also preclude staff from speaking in public on matters on local political controversy and this was the basis on which the Personnel Office ruled against agreeing the request.

The number of hits on the site since its introduction is 395,908. However, given the opinion of the National Audit Office, in their report on Government websites, that hits is not a reliable way to measure activity, we monitor the site using figures relating to page impressions. Page impressions measure the number of actual pages a user views on the site. Since its introduction in June 2001, there have been 76,989 page impressions viewed on the Learn to Let Go website - monthly figures are as follows. We had no firm projections of how many page impressions the site would attract, as there were no precedents to benchmark against. Page Impressions

June 2001	2,455
July 2001	3,413
August 2001	3,122
September 2001	5,493
October 2001	2,438
November 2001	2,679
December 2001	4,355
January 2002	5,154
February 2002	4,324
March 2002	4,034
April 2002	4,451
May 2002	4,957
June 2002	7,201
July 2002	7,213
August 2002	7,311
September 2002	6,113
October 2002	4,476