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The First Minister has not met with the Australian High Commissioner. The Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs met with the Australian Deputy High Commissioner on 20 November last year. A number of issues were discussed including:

The Scottish 10 digital scanning of the Sydney Opera House;

The forthcoming return of the clipper, the City of Adelaide, to the city of Adelaide and;

The 2014 year of homecoming.

The following table provides details of the make, model and overall procurement cost of the Government Car Service fleet.

Note: 1. Individual costs are not quoted due to commercial in confidence restrictions.

The Special Advisers Office subscribes to a range of newspapers and specialist periodicals for communication and research purposes. The office shares newspapers across private offices whenever possible to ensure value for money.

The Scottish Government operates a central contract for the purchase of newspapers and journals. The following tables list the current newspapers and journals that the Special Advisers Office subscribe to along with the cost:

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The introduction of free prescriptions for all in Scotland has been fully funded by the Scottish Government, and has been achieved at no cost to the NHS.

£57 million was added to the baseline budgets of territorial NHS boards in 2011-12 to meet the costs of abolishing this tax on ill-health, and is therefore subject to annual uplifts in line with the overall budget for the NHS in Scotland.

Prescription charges impose costs on people with chronic conditions for the medicines that keeps them well, or even alive, not to mention the additional costs if their illnesses flare-up. This was a key message in a report by the Prescription Charges Coalition in England (March 2013), Paying the Price, Prescription Charges and People with Long-Term Conditions.

In its survey of over 3,700 people with long-term conditions, the report highlights that over a third of respondents who pay for each prescription had not collected at least one item due to cost, with three quarters of this group reporting that their health got worse as a result, and 10% reporting that they ended up in hospital as a direct consequence of not taking their medication.

Information on how many NHSScotland staff are employed in nursing and midwifery positions, and at what cost, in (a) 2010-11, (b) 2011-12 and (c) 2012-13 is shown in the following table.

Source: ISD Scotland, Scottish Workforce Standard System, as at 31st March 2013

Notes:

1. Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) represents the average WTE worked over the financial year. This will not match the published ISD national statistic, as this is an average over the year and the National Statistic is taken as a snapshot at a particular time.

2. Gross charge is defined as all payments received by the employee plus the additional employer costs (NI and Pension Contributions).

The number of National Devolved Public Bodies has reduced from 162 in June 2010 to 113. Details of these changes and net savings can be found in Table 1. The SG remains committed to protecting and improving public services through improving performance, efficiency and simplifying the delivery landscape, for example through the recent consultation proposals concerning the merger of Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments in Scotland. More broadly the Public Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 places a duty on listed public bodies to publish an annual statement of the steps they have taken to improve efficiency. Ministers have made clear their expectation that public bodies will deliver annual efficiency savings of at least 3% during the course of the current Spending Review.

Table 1.

FOOTNOTE

Scottish Police and Scottish Fire and Rescue Services

The Scottish Police Services Authority ceased to exist as an Executive NDPB on 31 March 2013 and was subsumed into the new single Police Service of Scotland under the terms of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012.

The Scottish Police Authority (SPA) was established under the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 and became a new public body on 1 April 2013.

Police Scotland was formed from Scotland’s previous eight forces (not public bodies) and went live on 1 April 2013. It is outwith the scope of this question.

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Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was formed from Scotland’s previous eight fire and rescues services (not public bodies) and became a new public body on 1 April 2013. It is outwith the scope of this question.

The Scottish Government figures are set out in the following table

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The 2011-12 costs are slightly lower than usual because the volume of press cuttings reduced during the pre-election period.

The running costs by Director General charged to the Scottish Government’s Administration Budget for the financial years 2011-12 (April 2011 to March 2012) and 2012-13 (April 2012 to March 2013), and from April 2013 to July 2013 are set out in the following table.

Notes:

1. Structural changes that have taken place over the period affect any year on year comparison.

2. Expenditure up to end July 2013 reflects provisional outturn.

The Scottish Government operates a central contract for the purchase of newspapers and weekly magazines. The annual spending under this contract for the periods specified was as follows: