Chamber and committees

The association has made noformal representations to the Executive. However, Justice ministers andofficials have responded to enquiries from MSPs, members of Neighbourhood Watchschemes and the police about a national Neighbourhood Watch Association for Scotland.

The funding allocated to NHSDumfries and Galloway, including the former NHS trusts, in each year since 1999is as follows:

Year	£000
1999-2000	145,930
2000-01	152,671
2001-02	164,303
2002-03	180,738
2003-04	201,368

 

Funding was allocated on a cashbasis from 1999 to 2002 and on a resource basis from 2002 onwards. Resource allocationsinclude funding to cover expenditure that does not require payment of cash suchas depreciation, cost of capital, impairment and accruals.

We intend to introduce a HumanTissue (Scotland) Bill to update the legislation on organ donation andtransplantation. As I indicated in my letter of 28 February which issued with thereports of the analyses of the responses, the responses to the consultation supportedour approach that the new legislation should follow the recommendation of the ScottishTransplant Group and strengthen the existing system of opting in by giving greaterweight to the wishes about donation which people express during life. The bill willbe introduced once the Smoking, Health and Social Care Bill completes its parliamentarystages.

A great deal of work has beenundertaken to implement the recommendations of the Scottish Transplant Group’s OrganDonation Strategy for Scotland since it was published in July 2002. The OrganDonation Teaching Resource Pack was launched in November 2003; two non-heartbeatingdonor programmes began at the start of this year, one in Glasgow and the other inEdinburgh; a Scottish Organ Retrieval Team has been established on a pilot basis;the Executive has run several successful national advertising campaigns to raisepublic awareness of the issues surrounding organ donation and transplantation; therehas been a greater emphasis on the role of living donation, particularly in thecontext of developments, in common with the rest of the UK, relating to paired andnon-directed donation, and discussions are under way on the most effective way ofincreasing retrieval of tissue for transplantation.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) is currently reviewing the clinical and economic evidence on the use of four drugs used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease – donepezil (Aricept), galantamine (Reminyl), rivastigmine (Exelon) and memantine (Ebixa).

In Scotland, NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (NHS QIS) will consider any specific implications arising from the NICE guidance which will affect its use in Scotland.

Until new guidance is issued to the NHS, not expected until October 2005, the existing guidance dating from 2001 on donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine continues to apply. That guidance can be accessed at www.nhshealthquality.org.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) has assessed memantine in August and again in December 2003. The SMC advice can be accessed at www.scottishmedicines.org.

Broadband is currently available to more than 93% of Scottish households. The Executive is in the final negotiation stages of its procurement which aims to deliver broadband access to every Scottish community by the end of this year.

The civil service nationality rules are a reserved matter. There are restrictions on the nationalities of persons who are eligible to apply for posts in the civil service, and the Civil Service Management Code states what these restrictions are. The Scottish Executive has no authority to deviate from these nationality rules, including reasons for restrictions. The Civil Service Management Code can be accessed on the Cabinet Office website www.cabinet-office.gov.uk.

There is no statutory requirementto collect information on the number of complaints about weeds specified in theWeeds Act 1959, but the Environment and Rural Affairs Department does this on anannual basis, and passes complaints about specified weeds on non-agricultural landto the relevant authority. This includes local authorities, the companies operatingroad maintenance contracts and railway authorities. These complaints are includedin the annual statistics kept by the Environment and Rural Affairs Department.

The Scottish Executive does not receive information from local authorities about the annual numberof complaints received directly by them regarding the injurious weeds listed inthe Weeds Act 1959.

The Scottish Executive has produced guidance, available from its area offices, on control of ragwort,and the procedure for making a complaint.

Funding may be availablethrough the Local Capital Grant Scheme, which is a component of the ScottishRural Partnership Fund, and is designed to support local voluntary, youth andcommunity organisations to provide new or upgrade existing community premises. Whilefunding is not provided solely to meet statutory requirements, it may bepossible to incorporate these if they are part of a wider proposal to refurbishthe premises. It may also be possible to obtain revenue funding from the localauthority in which the community hall is situated, albeit this would be at thediscretion of individual local authorities.

The Executive is unaware of any specific legislation that requires community groups, in using local authority-owned premises, to provide their own insurance. Consequently, it would be for individual local authorities, as owners of the property, to determine what, if any, insurance cover was required for any organisations, including community groups, wishing to do so.