Chamber and committees

Prospectiveinternational adopters are required to be assessed by a registered adoptionservice prior to bringing a child into the United Kingdom for the purpose of adoption. As registered adoptionservices, local authorities can provide this service and can charge prospectiveadopters the costs associated with this assessment. The Scottish Governmentdoes not hold information on how much each local authority charges for thisservice as it is a matter for the local authorities themselves to decide.

The Security IndustryAuthority (SIA) is meeting its published timescale for processing correctly completedapplications of six weeks. The SIA has been working closely with the industry fornearly two years to ensure that the security businesses were ready for 1 November.We are in regular contact with the SIA about the progress of its operations in Scotland.

The fullprogramme of improvements proposed to rail travel between Edinburgh and Glasgowis anticipated to cost between £500 and £1,000 million in 2006 prices, as setout in the STAG report Strategic Transport Projects Review – Edinburgh toGlasgow Improvements, which can be found on the Transport Scotland websiteat www.transportscotland.gov.uk.Within this total, the cost of providing the Dalmeny chord and a new station atGogar linked to the tram network (as an alternative to the EARL project) isestimated at around £200 million.

Further designand development work will now be undertaken to define particular workstructures necessary for delivery of the programme.

This Scottish Governmentis fully committed to plan for dualling the A9. We made that commitment when wecame into government, and we stand by that commitment.

I have already askedTransport Scotland to take forward work to identify the nextpart of the A9 to be dualled.

Future investmentwill emerge from the Strategic Transport Projects Review which is examining thelonger term needs of Scotland’s national strategic transport network inorder to develop an investment plan. The A9 corridor is a key element in the Reviewwhich is due to report to ministers in summer 2008. I welcome the recent HITRANS/HIEreport which will be a useful contribution to this review.

Future levels of fundingfor police forces in Scotland will be determined by the outcome of the SpendingReview.

It is anticipatedthat direct connection with the tram link to the airport at Gogar and Edinburgh Park will be possible from more than 70stations across the Scottish heavy rail network.

At this point nospecific assessment of this has been made for the Gogar station scheme.

We expect any newpermissions may be secured through Orders under the Transport and Works(Scotland) Act 2007. We do not expect that it will be necessary to repeal theEARL Act to deliver our proposed rail link.

The fullprogramme of improvements proposed to rail between Edinburgh and Glasgow isanticipated to provide a benefit cost ratio of 1.1, as set out in the STAGreport. This is a conservative figure, as it assumes a wide range ofinfrastructure work is required, and we anticipate that further design anddevelopment work may be able to reduce the costs involved.The STAG report, StrategicTransport Projects Review – Edinburgh to Glasgow Improvements, can be foundon the Transport Scotland website at www.transportscotland.gov.uk.

It is anticipatedthat at least 12 trains per hour in each direction will stop at Gogar and Edinburgh Park stations to provide connection with thetram link to the airport.

The exacttimetable requires detailed planning before the optimum calling patterns can bedetermined.