Chamber and committees

In 1996-97, there were 332 paramedics working in the Scottish Ambulance Service. At 31 March 2002, this figure had increased to 750. This equates to an average of 83 technicians trained to paramedic level in each of the last five years.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-27866.

The Scottish Executive has provided the Scottish Ambulance Service with an allocation of £108.783 million for 2002-03, an increase of 7.4% on last year. The indicative allocations for 2003-04 and 2004-05 provide for further uplifts of 7.4% in each year. These represent unprecedented levels of investment and reflect our support for the service's modernisation agenda. Across Scotland these increased resources will support the improvement of the service's operations rooms functions, the roll-out of priority based dispatch, the conversion of a number of part-time ambulance stations to full-time and the introduction of dedicated non-emergency transport services for renal dialysis patients. The service plans to employ around 200 additional staff over the next two years to support these developments.How these improvements are rolled-out across Scotland and how these additional staff are deployed are operational matters for the Scottish Ambulance Service and its divisions. For Lanarkshire, this means an additional 10 accident and emergency staff this financial year to help alleviate the problems of uncovered shifts. They will be fully trained and operational by mid-September. Over the next two years, the service will also be providing an additional 24 front-line paramedic vehicle crew staff for priority based dispatch. These two initiatives represent a 23% increase in current staff establishment. Another step which has been taken in Lanarkshire is the introduction of revised shift rotas to provide more effective cover. These rotas are constantly reviewed to ensure that resources match demand. The merger of the Glasgow and Motherwell operations (control) rooms (at Glasgow) in October will also allow for better deployment of emergency ambulances in the Lanarkshire area, since the merger will enable the operations rooms staff to know immediately where the emergency resources are across the area.The Scottish Executive monitors the performance of the Scottish Ambulance Service and holds the service to account through the Accountability Review process supported by the Performance Assessment Framework. The issues surrounding performance within the West Central Division, including Lanarkshire, were discussed at the Accountability Review meeting on Monday 5 August 2002. Response times performance across the six divisions of the service shall continue to be monitored by the department.

The Disabled Students' Allowance is currently available to all full-time postgraduate students in receipt of support towards tuition fees and/or living costs from the Students Awards Agency for Scotland. While we have no current plans to extend these arrangements to other postgraduate students, we will consider this in the light of the forthcoming lifelong learning strategy.

The information requested is not held centrally. Schools and authorities decide how computers should be deployed within the school.

Information is only collected centrally about numbers of new public sector schools completed, rather than begun, in each financial year. For the period April 1999 to March 2001, 20 such new schools were completed, of which six were funded by public private partnership or private finance initiative. Information for the period from April 2001 is not yet available.

35,700.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-28019.

Details of audits and follow-up audits of recruitment systems in the Scottish Administration since May 1999 are given in the table.

Subject of Audit	Date of Audit	Date of Follow-Up Audit
Scottish Executive1	March 1999	April 2001
Scottish Prison Service	September 2001	February 2002
Scottish Courts Service	July 1999	January 2000
Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service	June 2000	-
Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency	September 2001	January 2002
Fisheries Research Service	March 2001	-
Historic Scotland	August 2001	April 2002
Scottish Agricultural Science Agency	July 2000	December 2000

Note:1. The Scottish Executive administers recruitment for Scottish Executive core departments, General Register Office for Scotland, National Archives of Scotland, Student Awards Agency for Scotland, and Scottish Public Pensions Agency. All of these areas of the Scottish Administration were included in this audit. Future audits of the Scottish Executive will include HM Inspectorate of Education and Communities Scotland, both of which have been established since the last audit took place.

The information is as follows:

	2001-02	2000-01	1999-2000	1998-99	1997-98
Number of Senior Civil Servants Recruited to the Scottish Office/Scottish Executive	28	10	12	5	9
Chaired by Civil Service Commissioners	1	4	3	1	4
Run by the Scottish Executive	27*	6	9	4	5

Note:*Including 19 people (both internal Scottish Executive and external candidates) recruited through one exercise.