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Scottish ministers will be fully involved in procedures for implementation of the new regime and will be consulted prior to the UK Government deciding when to commence the new arrangements.
One of the reasons why the package that we hope to agree within the next few days will take time to phase in is that we need to recruit those new teachers. It will not be possible in the first year to do that, because many of the new teachers will still have to be trained.
Five hundred farms are now involved in the scheme, and 400,000 hectares of Scottish farmland are now being converted into organic production. That is meeting a genuinely new demand in the market and is good news for rural Scotland.
That is all that the public see, as the news media have decided that First Minister's question time is the most interesting item that should be shown on news bulletins.
We have also had a number of meetings with the Minister for Finance and Local Government to engage in a dialogue about how best to develop certain things. The consultative steering group's financial issues advisory group suggested that Government accounting should use simple language and community-understood terms.
Questions and Answers
Date answered:
12 December 2006