- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Monday, 02 April 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 17 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will give a commitment to the long-term, sustained funding of the national tobacco control strategy once the three-year funding announced in conjunction with the publication of Smoking Kills ends.
Answer
The Scottish Executive is committed to tackling smoking and will make funding available for this purpose to the end of the current Spending Review period i.e. 2003-04. Funding beyond that date will be considered as part of the next Spending Review.
- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Monday, 02 April 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Peter Peacock on 17 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive what steps it will take to encourage local authorities to emulate West Lothian Council's multi-agency, one stop shop where visitors can deal with all main services at one location.
Answer
The Scottish Executive encourages all local authorities to consider innovative forms of service delivery such as the development of "one-stop-shops". It has provided practical encouragement to this kind of innovation through the Modernising Government Fund (MGF). This has awarded 拢2 million towards the "Wired West Lothian" project, which is one of a series of MGF supported initiatives that promote inter-agency working and the use information and communications technology (ICT) to provide more joined up services to the public.MGF projects are scheduled to run until March 2002. All of the projects will be monitored, with regular updates and results published on the Scottish Executive's 21st Century Government website. This way all local authorities will benefit from the good practice that results from the projects.The Executive has also established the Central Local 21st Century Government Forum, which includes representatives of West Lothian Council. This has been set up to endorse and promote new models of service delivery across local authorities.In addition the Executive has also agreed to consider whether there are unnecessary barriers to the development of service solutions such as one-stop shops within constraints on local authority trading and, if so, how best to deal with them.
- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 April 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Peter Peacock on 17 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive what it can learn from Portsmouth City Council's Best Value approach.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-14782.
- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Monday, 02 April 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Margaret Curran on 17 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive what data it uses to analyse (a) urban and (b) rural deprivation.
Answer
The Executive is committed to tackling poverty and deprivation wherever it exists across urban and rural Scotland. A range of data is used to assess deprivation, such as proportions of income support recipients, employment data, the deprivation index and indicators in the Social Inclusion Partnership monitoring framework. Our recent annual report on social justice sets out the indicators being used to track progress towards the milestones for delivering social justice in Scotland.The current Scottish Deprivation Index, revised in 1998, ranks postcode sectors by combining 1991 Census indicators with more recent non-Census indicators of deprivation. We intend to further revise this index as part of our Neighbourhood Statistics initiative and update it as data becomes available from Census 2001.In addition, for rural deprivation, part of the remit of the Rural Poverty and Inclusion Working Group is to ensure that existing indicators are appropriately developed for, and measurable in, rural areas. The group will make recommendations on general data availability for rural areas, including ways of improving monitoring of progress against the social justice milestones for rural areas. We expect the group's report soon.
- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Monday, 02 April 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Sarah Boyack on 17 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has made any representations to Her Majesty's Government regarding any impact on Scottish based exporters of cross-channel rail freight operators being fined #2,000 for each clandestine entrant to the UK on their services.
Answer
The Scottish Executive is in regular contact with the United Kingdom Government on a wide range of issues, including cross-channel rail freight services.
- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Friday, 30 March 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Susan Deacon on 17 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive how much of the #26 million allocated to the Health Improvement Fund for 2000-01 each health board received.
Answer
Details are as follows:
Health Board | 拢 million |
Argyll & Clyde | 1.636 |
Ayrshire & Arran | 1.631 |
Borders | 0.436 |
Dumfries & Galloway | 0.622 |
Fife | 1.318 |
Forth Valley | 0.973 |
Grampian | 1.819 |
Greater Glasgow | 4.052 |
Highland | 1.042 |
Lanarkshire | 2.006 |
Lothian | 2.871 |
Orkney | 0.082 |
Shetland | 0.096 |
Tayside | 1.608 |
Western Isles | 0.181 |
Health Education Board for Scotland | 0.950 |
Common Services Agency | 0.793 |
TOTAL | 22.116 |
The remainder of the 拢26 million has been used to meet the costs of centrally commissioned services, including the extra costs arising from the enhanced flu vaccination programme.
- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 April 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Jackie Baillie on 12 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive what it can learn from Manchester City Council's nuisance strategy group with regard to preventing anti-social behaviour on council estates.
Answer
We will ask the Sociable Neighbourhood Champion, supported by the Executive and CoSLA, to examine the lessons that can be learned from the specialist team in Manchester, as well as similar approaches elsewhere in Scotland and the UK.
- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 29 March 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Jackie Baillie on 12 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive what steps it is taking to promote the establishment of self-sustaining community food co-operatives.
Answer
The Scottish Executive supports and funds the Scottish Community Diet Project, which directly supports the establishment of community food co-operatives. In collaboration with other public and private sector partners, we are also setting up a new investment fund, Social Investment Scotland, to provide development advice and loan funding for social economy organisations. Food co-operatives are one of the types of social economy organisations which could benefit from the fund.
- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 22 March 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 12 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S1W-13289 by Malcolm Chisholm on 26 February 2001, why the number of beds in private nursing homes has fallen from 23,838 in 1998 to 22,950 in 2000.
Answer
As indicated in footnote 2 to the table provided in the answer given to question S1W-13289, part of the apparent change may be due to incomplete returns. It may also be due to a wide variety of factors including population structure, health condition of older people, availability of alternative forms of accommodation and other factors affecting demand for and availability of places.
- Asked by: Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 22 March 2001
-
Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 12 April 2001
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S1W-13289 by Malcolm Chisholm on 26 February 2001, why the number of places available in residential care homes have fallen from 16,677 in 1998 to 15,851 in 2000.
Answer
That is likely to have been the result of a wide variety of factors, including population structure, health condition of older people, availability of alternative forms of accommodation and other factors affecting demand for and availability of places.