Chamber and committees

As recommended in last year's organisational review of sportscotland and following the development of a remit with the Executive, sportscotland has appointed PMP Consultancy to carry out a property review and facilities strategy study. A key part of that review will consider further the options for the future location of sportscotland's headquarters taking account of the Executive's policy on location and re-location of public sector jobs. A report on this is due at the end of July.

The Executive has allocated £1 million for the microcredit programme to Scottish Enterprise over a three-year period. In year 2001-02 Scottish Enterprise spent £70,000. The balance of funding is expected to be utilised in years 2002-03 and 2003-04, and into 2004-05.

The microcredit programme is not exclusively targeted at women as sex discrimination legislation generally prohibits restricting funding schemes in this way. It is expected, however, that the majority of recipients of microcredit will be women as proposed in the original announcement. Details of the programme are available through Small Business Gateway outlets.

The first tranche of funding - £70,000 - was spent in financial year 2001-02 during February-March 2002. Disbursement of funding is a matter for Scottish Enterprise.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-24408.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-24408.

The Scottish Executive is in regular contact with the Ministry of Defence on a wide range of issues including the Faslane and Coulport naval bases. The scale of any job reductions and consequently the deployment of resources to mitigate the effect of job reductions cannot be confirmed until Babcock Naval Services has reviewed its requirements. Officials at Scottish Enterprise Dunbartonshire (SED) are seeking to assess the potential impact of any redundancies and SED's Chief Executive will meet the naval director of the Clyde complex later this month. Once the Scottish Executive has received a report of the outcome of this meeting, it will consider convening a meeting with interested parties to decide upon appropriate action.

The debtline pilot in Fife is part of a joint pilot led by the Department of Trade and Industry. The Fife pilot was launched by myself in Kirkcaldy on 22 March 2002.

There are currently 38 members of staff in the Directorate of Personnel and Pay who are members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. This represents some 25% of the 155 staff currently employed.

We are currently discussing with advice organisations how to increase central support for money advice, including training, information and quality assurance and expect to be able to make an announcement within the next few months.