Chamber and committees

The purpose of section 71(2) of the bill is not to qualify the meaning of "the public interest" as used in article 1 of Protocol 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights, but to elucidate its meaning as used in the bill.

The first occasion when responses to a consultation proposed that crofters should have a right to buy salmon fishings was in responses to the paper on the crofting community right to buy circulated to members of the Crofting Consultative Panel. Four of those responses suggested this. The bill does not provide for the purchase of adjacent salmon fishings but only for the purchase of salmon fishings that are exercisable from and on croft land.

The proposals in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill were the outcome of extensive public consultation, dating back to 1997, to which salmon fishing owners were free to respond. The Scottish Landowners Federation (SLF) has responded at every stage of consultation and made representations to ministers on several occasions about the land reform proposals. It is our understanding that the SLF represents the interests of many people who own salmon fishings. The Scottish Executive undertook a full public consultation on the draft bill which contained these proposals. Salmon fishing interests including owners responded to that consultation and commented on the proposals. In addition, parliamentary committees took evidence from a group representing the interests of owners of salmon fishings and from the SLF during stage 1 consideration of the bill.

Since the provisions of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill would not enable crofting communities to buy salmon fishings that cannot be exploited from croft land there is no need to amend the bill in the manner suggested.

Summary findings and a full research report on Business Finance and Security over Moveable Property were published on Monday 23 September 2002. The research can be accessed on the Scottish Executive's website and copies have been lodged with the Parliament's Reference Centre.

The reasons given in answer to question S1W-28916 relate to an absolute right to buy and because of that are not relevant to the crofting community right to buy salmon fishings. The crofting community right to buy is not an absolute right to buy. It is conditional on a range of criteria being met and can be exercised by a crofting community body only when ministers consider that the acquisition of the property would be in the public interest. There are also very tight constraints on when the right to buy salmon fishings can be exercised. So the existence of the right should have no impact on the value of salmon fishings. 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/webapp/search_wa.

The Executive's Plan for Action on alcohol problems, which was published in January, sets out that alcohol problems services should be sensitive to the needs of particular groups including women. The Executive published an Alcohol Problems Support and Treatment Services Framework on 5 September, which identifies women as one of the groups who might need support to access services.The Health Education Board for Scotland, Alcohol Focus Scotland and the Scottish Association of Alcohol Action Teams are currently establishing a women and alcohol network. The network will provide a vehicle for the development and dissemination of good practice in working with women.

We are providing specific grants towards the costs of Gaelic-medium education, supporting 1,860 pupils in 59 primary schools across the length and breadth of Scotland.

The A9 between Perth and Inverness is a high speed long distance road with limited access. There is a strong presumption against providing new junctions.

As part of on-going strategic planning, NHSScotland bodies have been requested to produce individual outline changeover plans for any possible changeover, similar to that produced by the Scottish Executive during 1999. This was a limited management pre-planning exercise carried out from within agreed running costs. Resources have not been diverted from patient care.As part of the pre-planning exercise, NHSScotland bodies were required to produce resource profiles that might be required for different activities during various phases in the event of a possible changeover to the euro.This exercise did not constitute an estimate of the costs of a possible future changeover. It is not possible at this stage to produce estimates of the cost of a changeover to the NHSScotland. The cost of a changeover would be dependent on the timing, the approach taken and individual management decisions. Details of preparations in the public sector for a possible UK entry into EMU may be found in the Treasury's Sixth Report on Euro Preparations published in July.