Chamber and committees

Copies of the main Resourcing Policy which covers recruitment to Scottish Government posts (other than those in the Senior Civil Service) are available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 51565). Senior Civil Service recruitment is carried out in line with guidance from the Cabinet Office and the Civil Service Commissioners Recruitment Principles. Further information is available at www.work-for-scotland.org.

Scottish Government officials have had a number of telephone discussions and a teleconference with officials in the Department of Work and Pensions regarding changes to the Independent Living Fund.

The Minister for Housing and Communities raised this issue when he met with the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Disabled Peple, Maria Miller on 29 July 2010.

I have also written to Maria Miller, explaining the Scottish Government''s concerns and we are due to discuss this matter on 16 September 2010.

Community Planning Partnerships choose indicators they deem appropriate for their local priority outcomes. These are established within the context of the National Performance Framework that sets out the Scottish Government''s approach to tackling poverty.

The following table provides a breakdown of the disclosed nationalities of the civil servants employed by the Scottish Government.

Nationality	Percentage of Employees
British	26%
English	4%
Irish	1%
Not Known/Refused to Say	11%
Other Commonwealth Nationals	0%
Other EU Nationals	1%
Other Nationalities	0%
Scottish	57%
Welsh	0%
All	100%

 

This covers all permanent and fixed-term appointment staff. Rounding means that three categories show 0%; all three categories contain between 0.2% and 0.3% of staff.

Data on the number of Core Scottish Government employees is available within the National Statistics publication Public Sector Employment in Scotland. This can be accessed via the Scottish Government website at the following address (table 8a and 8b):

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Labour-Market/PublicSectorEmployment/PSEwebtables/Q/forceupdate/on.

Six civil servants who work in Scottish Government directorates are employed by the UK Government. One is on a secondment and the remaining five are on loan.

The Scottish Government Health Directorate''s Improvement Support Team are working with NHS boards across Scotland to redesign and transform services, including urology, as part of delivery of the 18 weeks referral to treatment target which is due to be delivered by end December 2011. The Scottish Governments has also made substantial resources of £230 million over the three years to 2010-11 to increase NHS capacity and ensure sustainable improvements in waiting times for the benefit of patients across Scotland including those requiring access to urology.

This has seen waiting times for first outpatient consultation reduce from 26 weeks at 31 March 2007 to 12 weeks at 31 March 2009. The 12 weeks waiting time for first outpatient consultation, including the speciality of urology, has effectively been delivered throughout 2009-10.

The estimated direct cost to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body for the 2010 Festival of Politics, once estimated income from ticket sales and sponsorship has been taken into account is between £40,000 and £45,000. Once approved by auditors, the total direct costs to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body will be published.

Under the Affordable Housing Investment Programme (AHIP) seven private developers received grant funding monies in 2008-09.

The median wait for a first outpatient consultation at a consultant-led urology clinic in NHS Lanarkshire was 27 days for the year ending 31 March 2010.