Chamber and committees

VisitScotland, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise work extensively with whisky attractions and retailers to help promote whisky tourism in Perthshire and across Scotland.

Whisky features across a great range of VisitScotland''s promotion of Scotland, including Perthshire, in their marketing campaigns both domestically and abroad, across brochures, websites, PR activity and a variety of other communications to consumers. This is particularly so during our yearlong focus on Scotland''s Food and Drink in the lead up to the second Year of Homecoming in 2014.

VisitScotland and the enterprise agencies in partnership with The Scotch Whisky Association and The Scotch Whisky Experience supported the establishment of Scotlandwhisky.com, a dedicated site exploring where tourism and whisky can work together. It allows visitors and potential visitors to search for local distilleries, whisky tours, and promotes local whisky festivals and events across Scotland including Perthshire.

VisitScotland works with several Perthshire based distilleries to provide visitors with special promotions some of which also link to other tourism businesses and activities. These offers are promoted through VisitScotland Information Centre''s, websites and other dedicated marketing activities.

Whisky attractions such as Dewar''s world of whisky in Aberfeldy and Edradour in Pitlochry feature in VisitScotland guides and brochures, marketing campaigns such as Winter White. Several whisky and local distilleries also feature in VisitScotland''s What To See And Do guide for the area.

Most of the regulation impacting on Scotland''s farmers and land managers comes from Europe and to ensure they fully meet its obligations under the terms of the Scotland Act, Scottish ministers must implement relevant EU rules. Since 2007, a total of 105 SSI''s have been made in the broad area of agriculture replacing or revoking 63 previous SSI''s.

Since launching in June 2008, Scotland''s Environmental and Rural Services (SEARS) - a partnership of eight delivery-focused bodies within the Environment and Rural Affairs portfolio - has looked for opportunities to combine inspections where appropriate.

By end March 2010, SEARS reduced the number of service-generated, separate inspections and visits to rural land managers by 4,996. SEARS is on target to deliver a further reduction of around 3,000 by end March 2011.

Details of the schemes involved are described in the SEARS Annual Reviews 2008-09 and 2009-10.

http://www.sears.scotland.gov.uk/pdf/SEARS_Annual_Review_2008-09.pdf.

http://www.sears.scotland.gov.uk/Default.aspx.

At 30 September 2010, 79.8% of children and 66.6% of adults living in Tayside were registered with an NHS dentist.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3O-11876 on 11 November 2010. All answers to oral/written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting the growth of farmers markets in Scotland. We have funded the Scottish Farmers Market Partnership with around £200,000 over three years to help them support farmers markets throughout Scotland. Since the project began in January 2010, the partnership has provided advice and support to over 100 individuals and around 50 farmers markets. The partnership has also dealt with over 1,500 enquiries from consumers and prospective farmers'' market stall holders at information stands organised at the Royal Highland Show and the BBC Good Food Show Scotland. 

None. The Scottish Government works with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) on an ongoing basis on the development of legislation affecting the environment. A good number of environmental regulations are introduced to implement European legislation. We also have regular discussions with SEPA on its Better Environmental Regulation programme that focuses on options to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of environmental regulation and to reduce the regulatory impact on businesses. SEPA has recently issued a consultation paper on options for moving from separate environmental regulations for air, water, waste and radioactive substances to a simpler, integrated model.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-38225 on 16 December 2010. 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/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The word Sexmas was used in one image as part of last year''s digital public health information drive to reduce rates of sexually transmitted diseases in Scotland, and absolutely no offence was intended. The word is not used in any of this year''s material.

The Scottish Government remains committed to the phased dualling of the route from Perth to Inverness to further improve safety and reduce journey times on this key transport corridor. This ongoing commitment is reflected in the recent commencement of a £10.4 million scheme at Crubenmore which will see the construction of a 3.2 km extension to the existing dual carriageway.