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As I made clear in my statement to the Parliament on 21 May 2008 when I launched the Smoking Prevention Action Plan Scotland''s Future is Smoke-free which is based on the recommendations of the Smoking Prevention Working Group, the Scottish Government proposes to establish a research and evaluation framework to assess the impact the measures proposed within the action plan. This will form part of the wider tobacco control research and evaluation programme which is being developed by the standing sub-group of the Scottish Ministerial Working Group on Tobacco Control, which is being set up under the chairmanship of Dr Laurence Gruer, Director of Public Health Science, NHS Health Scotland. The primary purposes of this sub-group will be to review and make full use of existing research, identify gaps in research knowledge and evaluation practice in Scotland, and to make recommendations for a programme of activity to fill these gaps. The need for further research relating to the extent of use by young people of smuggled or personally-imported tobacco will be considered as part of that process.

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The Scottish Government is taking a wide range of measures to support fishermen in the west of Scotland. Our current priority is to resist vigorously the EU Commission''s unjustified and disproportionate proposal to close fishing grounds which are of key importance to this fleet.

The information on balance sheet debt was not held centrally prior to the financial year 2007-08. The Scottish Government is currently in the process of collecting the data for 2007-08 but at this time it is not complete and has not been validated. The information on non-balance sheet debt is not held centrally.

Information Services Division (ISD) holds certain information on complaints made against Hospital & Community Health and Family Health Services. Summary information is also held on NHS24 and Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service complaints. A set of four tables, under the title of NHS Complaints Statistics and setting out the available data, can be obtained from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 46798).

It should be noted that:

The target for acknowledging NHS complaints is three days.

The target for responding to NHS complaints is 20 days.

Comprehensive information on the response times and outcomes for the Family Health Service complaints is not held centrally.

Specific information on whether complainants considered their complaint was dealt with satisfactorily is not held centrally.

NHS boards do not have a ring-fenced prescribing budget. Expenditure on Prescribing is met from within their overall budget allocations.

Information on expenditure for Prescribing is provided in following tables:

1. Drug Expenditure for Financial Years Ending 31 March 1997 to 31 March 2008

Provided in Cash Terms (Bib. number 46770).

2. Drug Expenditure for Financial Years Ending 31 March 1997 to 31 March 2008

Provided in Real Terms (Bib. number 46771).

Local authorities'' financial returns do not differentiate between expenditure on front line services and, for example, back office administration costs. Local authorities'' total expenditure by service for the period 1999-2007 is available on the Scottish Government''s website at:

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In advance of detailed discussions between the relevant NHS boards and their PFI providers, it is not possible to provide the likely cost of removing car park charges from those three car parks provided through PFI contracts. It is understood that this may be in the order of tens of millions of pounds.

The information requested in each year from 1997-98 to 2004-05 is provided in a document containing four tables, a copy of which is available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 46517).

Information for 2005-06 and 2006-07 will become available in the 2008 Drugs Misuse Report, which is due to be released later this year at:

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The figures below show the numbers of prescription items dispensed in Scotland for Levonorgestrel^® products licensed for use as emergency hormonal contraception (EHC). The following table gives figures by NHS board for 1997-98 to 2007-08, information by local authority is not held centrally.

These figures do not capture all emergency contraception treatments supplied under the NHS. Depending on the model of service delivery some data from Family Planning Clinics and Community Pharmacies is not held centrally.

	1997-98	1998-99	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02
NHS Scotland	0	0	864	19,134	29,706
NHS Argyll and Clyde 1	0	0	50	1,057	1,752
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	0	0	60	1,388	1,935
NHS Borders	0	0	*	692	963
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	0	0	15	605	1,008
NHS Fife	0	0	56	1,728	2,260
NHS Forth Valley	0	0	128	1,545	2,076
NHS Grampian	0	0	96	2,199	3,200
NHS Greater Glasgow	0	0	190	3,451	4,637
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde2	-	-	-	-	-
NHS Highland (pre April 2006)	0	0	68	1,243	1,629
NHS Highland (post April 2006)2	-	-	-	-	-
NHS Lanarkshire	0	0	85	1,884	3,158
NHS Lothian	0	0	51	1,684	4,354
NHS Orkney	0	0	*	125	176
NHS Shetland	0	0	*	161	196
NHS Tayside	0	0	47	1,275	2,198
NHS Western Isles	0	0	*	97	164

 

	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08
NHS Scotland	32,563	31,894	27,198	25,751	22,343	20,905
NHS Argyll and Clyde 1	2,033	2,060	1,831	1,714	Ìý-	Ìý-
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	1,606	1,302	1,009	968	783	714
NHS Borders	988	880	881	773	713	614
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	1,007	1,006	614	589	435	445
NHS Fife	1,812	1,617	1,150	1,054	808	709
NHS Forth Valley	2,215	2,284	1,967	1,471	1,282	1,037
NHS Grampian	3,154	3,038	2,761	2,594	2,176	2,190
NHS Greater Glasgow	5,139	5,123	4,634	4,946	-	-
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde2	-	-	-	-	5,613	5,035
NHS Highland (pre April 2006)	1,792	1,675	1,461	1,479	-	-
NHS Highland (post April 2006)2	-	-	-	-	1,623	1,541
NHS Lanarkshire	3,864	3,924	3,427	3,145	2,927	2,772
NHS Lothian	6,083	6,093	5,060	4,790	4,065	3,968
NHS Orkney	193	235	162	115	86	99
NHS Shetland	231	212	188	182	152	130
NHS Tayside	2,256	2,261	1,914	1,814	1,559	1,548
NHS Western Isles	190	184	139	117	121	103

Notes:

1. NHS Argyll and Clyde ceased to exist as a single entity from April 2006.

2. From April 2006, the Argyll and Bute part of old NHS Argyll and Clyde was absorbed into NHS Highland and the remainder into NHS Greater Glasgow to become NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

*These numbers have been suppressed in order to protect against the risk of disclosure for small numbers (<5).

Data in the table refer to prescriptions dispensed by community pharmacists and dispensing doctors in Scotland, but do not take into account medicines dispensed by hospitals or hospital based clinics.

Numbers of average available acute staffed beds for each NHS board and hospital in Scotland for years ending 31 March 1998 to 2008 are available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 46520).

NHS board level information is also available in published tables from the ISD website:

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