Chamber and committees

The information requested is in table 1 below. As the information is only available at local authority level for 1999-2000 and 2001-02, additional information is contained in table 2.

Table 1: Percentage of Children in Scotland who live in Households with no Adults in Paid Employment, by Local Authority

	1999 and 2000		2001 and 2002
	%	Base	%	Base
Aberdeen City	20	477	17	454
Aberdeenshire	9	741	7	704
Angus	13	325	15	310
Argyll and Bute	13	280	16	269
Clackmannanshire	23	317	23	266
Dumfries and Galloway	11	417	17	406
Dundee City	24	295	31	355
East Ayrshire	25	325	23	350
East Dunbartonshire	7	315	10	322
East Lothian	14	292	13	313
East Renfrewshire	10	302	7	285
Edinburgh City	16	992	23	906
Eilean Siar	8	295	20	267
Falkirk	16	433	13	395
Fife	21	940	19	930
Glasgow City	38	1,415	37	1,336
Highland	20	568	18	593
Inverclyde	21	268	24	241
Midlothian	20	349	10	362
Moray	15	310	11	329
North Ayrshire	26	406	24	356
North Lanarkshire	22	933	19	945
Orkney	5	261	11	269
Perth and Kinross	12	345	8	325
Renfrewshire	21	445	19	409
Scottish Borders	8	296	10	278
Shetland	5	380	10	372
South Ayrshire	15	331	24	309
South Lanarkshire	14	792	18	821
Stirling	20	295	9	275
West Dunbartonshire	26	252	24	207
West Lothian	16	470	17	478
Scotland	20	14,862	19	14,437

 

Table 2: Percentage of Children in Scotland who Live in Households with no Adults in Paid Employment, by Local Authority Grouping

	1999		2000		2001		2002		2003
	%	Base	%	Base	%	Base	%	Base	%	Base
Edinburgh	18	521	15	471	22	481	25	425	17	477
Glasgow	43	617	34	798	37	712	38	624	35	604
Fife	22	472	19	468	20	401	18	529	21	478
North Lanarkshire	24	481	21	452	22	487	17	458	23	409
South Lanarkshire	15	380	12	412	17	411	18	410	22	406
Highlands and Islands	16	1,051	14	1,043	15	1,050	16	1,049	11	986
Grampian	18	616	9	602	11	594	11	564	12	540
Tayside	13	486	20	479	20	473	17	517	16	378
Central	20	456	17	589	15	511	12	425	16	471
Dunbartonshire	19	284	13	283	20	298	12	231	15	273
Renfrewshire and Inverclyde	18	502	19	513	18	484	16	451	16	501
Ayrshire	23	532	22	530	22	532	25	483	22	408
Lothians	19	623	13	488	10	612	19	541	12	506
Southern Scotland	8	378	11	335	16	348	13	336	14	314
Scotland	21	7,399	18	7,463	19	7,394	20	7,043	18	6,751

Notes:

1. Source: The Scottish HouseholdSurvey (SHS), 1999-2003.

2. Figures for 2004 have notyet been published.

3. Comparisons between years and areas should be treated with caution as the statistics may differ due to, for example, sampling variability.

4. For the purposes of this parliamentary question, “adults in paid employment” are defined as being people aged 16 or over who are in full- or part-time employment, or who are self-employed.

5. Children are defined here as being people aged less than 16 years.

6. The results are given for calendar years as the survey is not designed to be representative for any council area for a financial year.

7. Table 1 gives figures for two-year periods, as the SHS is not designed to be representative for all councils over a one-year period.

8. Table 2 gives figures for each calendar year for local authority groupings. For further information on these groups, please refer to the SHS publications (www.scotland.gov.uk/shs).  

9. The base numbers show the size of the population sub-group questioned in the survey (i.e. children examined in each area) but cannot be used to calculate how many respondents gave a certain answer.

I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-13609, on 31 January 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament/webapp/wa.search.

The Scottish Executive is committed to building nursing capacity within NHSScotland and is on track to achieve the Partnership Agreement target of attracting 12,000 nurses and midwives to NHS Scotland by 2007.

In addition, the Facing the Future initiative for recruitment and retention of nurses is supporting and promoting a range of measures to boost the number of qualified nurses in NHSScotland, which is now at an all time high of 39,000 whole-time equivalents (WTE).

Information on clinical nurse specialists employed in NHSScotland was collected for the first time at 30 September 2003. Across Scotland nurse specialists who treat and care for patients with hepatitis C can beidentified under the following titles: gastro-intestinal specialist nurses, hepatology specialist nurses and substance misuse specialist nurses. Information on staff in post by NHS board and clinical area of work is published in the report Clinical Nurse Specialists – Results from the Pilot Data Collection. This report is published on the Scottish Health Statistics website under Workforce Statistics, at www.isdscotland.org/workforce.

Information on Clinical Nurse Specialists is now collected annually at 30 September each year and compliments other intelligence and data for workforce planning purposes.

The amount of Grant Aided Expenditure allocated to Lothian and Borders Police for 2005-06 is £179 million, an increase of £10 million on 2004-05. Lothian and Borders Joint Police Board has set the budget for Lothian and Borders Police for 2005-06 equal to this amount.

The number of police officers in Lothian and Borders Police at December 2004 was 2,785 (whole-time equivalents), up from 2,717 a year previously.

I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-13828, on 7 February 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament/webapp/wa.search.

The hepatitis C action plan will serve as a broad framework for further implementation of the SNAP recommendations and the key messages in the Consensus Statement which emerged from the Conference in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in April 2004. It will also draw upon the evidence from the research studies published by the Effective Interventions Unit. The plan is currently being developed in consultation with stakeholders, for issue in spring 2005. It will set out the action in train and proposed to tackle hepatitis C.

The main objectives of the plan are to set out the actions that will reduce the transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and manage the burden of disease among those individuals who know they are infected and those who do not. Key areas of the plan will cover prevention, early detection and testing, treatment and care, and monitoring and surveillance. A key element of the plan will also be to raise awareness at all levels including professional and targeted groups of the general public.

The financial implications of the action plan will be addressed as its various components are developed. However, the Executive already gives over £8 millioneach year to NHS boards in earmarked resources for work to prevent bloodborne viruses, including hepatitis C. In addition to this specific allocation, NHS boards are given a unified budget to meet the health care needs of their resident population. It is for NHS boards to decide how best to utilise this funding to meet local and national priorities, including the treatment and prevention of hepatitis C.

The Scottish Executive has commissioned Health Protection Scotland to estimate the current and future burden of HCV-related disease in Scotland over the next two decades. Further work is also being commissioned to identify how much it will cost NHSScotland to care for individuals infected with hepatitis C and how cost-effective different approaches to hepatitis C case finding and treatment would be.

I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-13828, on 7 February 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament/webapp/wa.search.

In addition to their unified budgets, the Executive already gives over £8 million per year to NHS boards in earmarked resources for work to prevent bloodborne viruses, including hepatitis C. NHS boards use these resources in a variety of ways taking account of local need, including awareness-raising initiatives and needle exchange schemes.

In October 2004, linked to SR2004, it was announced that an additional £6 million per annum would be provided for drug treatment and rehabilitation services in 2005-06. This brings the total to £32.5 million per annum, an increase of 23% on 2004-05.

Since 2002, the Executive has made available resources for the establishment and ongoing activities of the UK Hepatitis C Resource Centre in Scotland, which is based in Glasgow and offers advice on testing and treatment to those affected by hepatitis C. The services provided by the centre are in addition to those made available through individual NHS boards.

Current processes include:

- monitoring by Health Protection Scotland of the prevalence of hepatitis C among injecting drug users. This surveillance activity is designed to monitor trends so that the effectiveness of interventions can be evaluated.

- a study, funded by the Effective Interventions Unit, to evaluate the effectiveness of the raising of the limits on the numbers of needles and syringes made available to injecting drug users; a report on the findings of this study will be published in 2005.

- a study, funded by the Chief Scientist Office, to evaluate the impact of methadone maintenance on high risk behaviours among injecting drug users, which was completed last year. A final report has been submitted to the Chief Scientist Office and a scientific publication is likely in 2005.