Chamber and committees

I announced on 10 April my decision to accept the expert advice from the National Screening Committee that the NHS in Scotland should not offer a population-wide screening programme for this condition. I wrote to the member that day with a copy of the News Release and the text of the letter which the Department had sent to Scottish Heart at Risk Testing, a voluntary body concerned with promoting awareness of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

The National Screening Committee took the view that on the basis of our present knowledge, screening should not be undertaken because a significant number of those diagnosed by the current tests will go on to live a normal life span and will have been excluded unnecessarily from sporting and other activities. As there would also be employment and insurance consequences following such a diagnosis, the disadvantages outweigh the possible benefits of screening.

There is no precise screening test at present, as there are variable definitions of the degree of enlargement of the heart muscle which constitutes a positive diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Testing by echocardiography (ECG) may miss some young people at risk of sudden death and cause potentially unnecessary distress to those whose life spans will not be affected.

For every death, a doctor has to complete a medical certificate of cause-of-death. The "informant" (the person, generally a relative of the deceased, who has the duty of giving information to the local registrar of births, deaths and marriages to enable the death to be formally registered) hands over this medical certificate to the registrar who transcribes the cause-of-death details on to the register entry. Local registrars generally capture register-entry information electronically (now 96%) and send it to the Registrar General in Edinburgh, who compiles Scotland's cause-of-death statistics. Cause-of-death figures for 1998 and earlier years are available on the website of the General Register Office for Scotland, http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk. The Registrar General makes an annual report each summer to the Parliament for the preceding calendar year, including cause-of-death information. The Registrar General sent a paper copy of his most recent (1998) Annual Report to each MSP last summer, after it was published on 27 July 1999.

Once the Scottish Social Services Council is set up following the White Paper Aiming for Excellence, priority groups of care staff will be registered on a consistent national basis. This process will involve police checks. We hope to introduce the necessary legislation to set up the Council when parliamentary time permits.

In addition, a contract has just been placed for the £3.7 million Hawick Traffic Relief Scheme on the A7 trunk road. Funding for this will be shared by the Scottish Executive (61%) and Scottish Borders Council (39%). This scheme is scheduled for completion by the end of this year.The Scottish Executive (and previously The Scottish Office) also provides support for local authority capital investment by way of capital allocations. This is a single allocation covering all services (except housing for which there are separate arrangements) and it is entirely a matter for individual local authorities to allocate the overall amount reflecting local priorities for services. Under the Transport Challenge Fund, a competition administered by the Scottish Office, Scottish Borders Council was awarded additional capital allocations totalling £6.5 million in financial years 1997-98 and 1998-99 for the Kelso Bridge and Bypass project. Since 1998-99 grant of £158,000 per annum has been paid to the Council to aid rural public passenger transport services. This grant is principally to be used for revenue purposes. However, in 1998-99 up to 20% and in 1999-2000 up to 10% of the grant could be used for capital purposes. During 1998-99 a grant of £8,000 was made from the Cycle Challenge Fund to the Forestry Commission (Forest Enterprise South Borders Forest District) for the purpose of creating a historical cycle route from Peebles passing through Glentress Woodland Park.