Chamber and committees

The Scottish Executive’s visionis that children and young people should be safe, healthy, nurtured, achieving,included, active and respected and responsible to achieve the best outcomes inlife. The role of parents in achieving these positive outcomes for children isfundamental and the Scottish Executiveaims to support parents in achieving this goal through a range of policies andprogrammes.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA). The figuresprovided below by SCRA represent the children who were referred to the Children’sReporter under section 52(2)(c) of the Children’s (Scotland) Act1995 because they were “likely (i) to suffer unnecessarily, or (ii) to be impairedseriously in [their] health or development, due to a lack of parental care.” Itis only possible to provide this breakdown for 2003-04 and 2004-05 since the introductionof the SCRA Referral Administration Database (RAD).

There is no standard definitionof what is meant by an “economically inactive community”. The Annual Scottish LabourForce Survey (now know as the Annual Population Survey) is the main source for providingup-to-date information on economic inactivity (people who are not in employmentbut do not satisfy all the criteria for unemployment - this group comprises (1)those who want a job but who have not been seeking work in the last four weeks (2)those who want a job and are seeking work but are not available to start and (3)those who do not want a job).

Results from the Annual LabourForce Survey are available by a range of geographical areas (subject to the reliabilityof the results together with maintaining the confidentiality of individuals). SCRAdata is only reliably available at local authority area. Therefore, the followingtable shows data at local authority level. The top 10 most economically inactivelocal authorities are highlighted in bold in the following table. The percentageof children from those 10 areas referred to the Children’s Reporter under section52(2)(c), represented as a percentage of the total number referred under section52(2)(c), was 37.6% in 2003-04 and 32.1% in  2004-05.

Table: Children Referred to theReporter and Economic Inactivity Rates by Local Authority Area in 2003-04 and 2004-05.

Local Authority	2003-04		2004-05
	Children Referred (1a)	Economic Inactivity Rates (Per Cent) (2a)	Children Referred (1b)	Economic Inactivity Rates (Per Cent) (2b)
Aberdeenshire	330	17.1	452	16.2
Angus	132	21.2	121	19.5
Argyll and Bute	252	19.8	345	19.1
City of Aberdeen	646	20.3	1005	17.8
Clackmannanshire	314	23.1	510	22.9
Dumfries and Galloway	783	18.6	830	18.3
Dundee	618	24.3	383	24.2
East Ayrshire	158	24.0	199	24.4
East Dunbartonshire	67	18.4	114	16.9
East Lothian	371	21.4	325	18.5
East Renfrewshire	154	17.7	74	16.6
Edinburgh	2376	20.6	2507	19.7
Falkirk	661	21.0	718	19.6
Fife	615	20.3	765	18.7
Glasgow	2047	30.1	1629	29.7
Highland	854	15.5	947	14.4
Inverclyde	442	27.0	531	24.5
Midlothian	534	19.7	501	15.9
Moray	288	16.9	280	20.1
North Ayrshire	503	26.6	328	23.7
North Lanarkshire	551	26.5	440	24.8
Orkney	40	14.9	28	15.0
Perth and Kinross	213	19.8	210	18.8
Renfrewshire	644	21.9	493	21.7
Shetland	48	13.2	57	13.6
South Ayrshire	58	21.1	98	20.6
South Lanarkshire	279	21.8	334	20.9
Stirling	514	20.7	520	19.0
Scottish Borders	418	17.2	469	17.9
West Dunbartonshire	561	25.2	567	23.9
Western Isles	93	15.0	115	18.9
West Lothian	704	20.0	923	18.1
Total*	16,268		16,818

Notes:

(1a) (1b) Source:SCRA Referrals Administration Database (RAD).

(2a) (2b) Source:Annual Scottish Labour Force Survey 2004-05.

*A child maybe referred in more than one local authority in the year. The total number of childrenreferred for Scotland is a count of each child once, and does not therefore reflectthe sum of the local authorities.

This information is not heldcentrally.

The following table shows thenumber of staff in Scottish Executive core departments that resigned, were maderedundant, or were dismissed as a result of disciplinary action in each year since1999.

Reason for Leaving

Year	Resigned	Redundant	Dismissed
1999	189	4	7
2000	187	6	5
2001	200	29	5
2002	175	0	3
2003	134	0	2
2004	99	5	4
2005	113	0	4
2006 (up to end June)	54	0	0

 

The table does not include anumber of other ways staff leave the Scottish Executive, such as transferring toanother government department and leaving at normal retirement age.

None. The release of materialby Northern Constabulary is a matter for the Chief Constable of that police force.

There is no consideration beinggiven to preventing people with alcohol addiction from having children. Instead,action by NHSScotland is being focused on ensuring that accessible maternity servicesare available to ensure service users with drug and alcohol problems feel comfortableabout presenting for treatment, and these same services place the children’s bestinterests at the centre of any decisions or assessments that are made.

Scottish-registeredcharities can fundraise outside Scotland provided they comply with any relevant legislationin the jurisdiction in which they plan to fundraise. The Scottish Executive isliaising with officials in Whitehall over the development of a UK widescheme of self regulation of fundraising which is being developed by thefundraising sector.

The Scottish Executive doesnot hold this information. However, under the Charities and TrusteeInvestment (Scotland) Act 2005if the body is not registered as a charity in Scotland, but recognised as a charityunder another jurisdiction, such as the Charity Commission for England and Wales, it isrequired to state that it is a charity registered elsewhere under section 14 of the Act. Therefore an English based charity which fundraises in Scotland isrequired to state that it is a charity registered in England and Wales and isunable to refer to itself as a Scottish charity.

Data on the number of uniquevisits to www.scotlandistheplace.com each month since its launch in May 2004 isset out in the following table.

2004	Number
May	5,087
June	4,694
July	7,624
August	6,487
September	5,635
October	5,725
November	5,622
December	8,902

 

2005	Number
January	14,346
February	14,578
March	24,493
April	18,462
May	16,313
June	16,889
July	13,003
August	13,495
September	13,528
October	16,681
November	14,220
December	16,170

 

2006	Number
January	17,657
February	16,016
March	19,365
April	19,049
May	18,641
June	43,432

 

I shall reply to the member as soon as possible.