Chamber and committees

The Information and Statistics Division (ISD) compiles and publishes a large number of key health indicators for Scotland and these are presented on ISD Online, SKIPPER and in the Performance Assessment Framework, for example. These publications have developed through time to meet the needs of key stakeholders for health information. Many of the OECD indicators are reflected in these outputs.The ISD contributes to the OECD compendium of statistics through the submission of data to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) for publication by the OECD as country level comparisons. The ISD also contributes to the regional breakdowns of health indicators which are published by the ONS in Regional Trends and periodically in UK Geographic Variations in Health.Requests to resource the development of major new statistical outputs for the home countries, such as a more extensive regional comparison similar to the OECD, can be made through the user/provider consultation process for national statistics.

These response times concern the performance of the emergency ambulance service following the introduction of priority-based dispatch. This system was introduced into the south east of Scotland from 1 August 2002 and is scheduled to be rolled out across Scotland by 2004. The information requested is not yet available. Officials in the Scottish Executive Health Department are currently in discussion with the Scottish Ambulance Service about the frequency to which performance information should be published. In the past, such information has been published once a year by the service in its annual report.

The gross revenue expenditure figures for 2000-01 and 2001-02, together with the planned expenditure for 2001-02 is given in the following table:

Health Board	Gross Expenditure 2000-01 (£000)	Planned Expenditure 2001-02 (£000)	Gross Expenditure 2001-02 (£000)
Argyll and Clyde	438,561	468,244	468,318
Ayrshire and Arran	370,589	400,163	395,127
Borders	113,119	115,825	115,622
Dumfries and Galloway	156,728	169,189	167,607
Fife	323,611	346,575	344,385
Forth Valley	266,322	286,097	284,918
Grampian	487,347	521,630	519,793
Greater Glasgow	985,787	1,075,526	1,067,854
Highland	214,108	237,387	236,531
Lanarkshire	510,611	579,903	577,236
Lothian	732,214	814,168	803,875
Orkney	24,403	26,706	26,378
Shetland	28,807	30,798	30,505
Tayside	428,342	476,511	472,360
Western Isles	43,101	45,649	45,082
Scottish Totals	5,123,650	5,594,370	5,555,591

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-29329 on 27 September 2002. 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.uk/webapp/search_wa.Full results of the Audit Scotland/ISD survey will be available later this year. In addition, proposals are being developed for implementation by NHSScotland for the collection of information on nurse-led activity. It is too soon to say when the first results from this new information collection will become available.

The setting of fees within the maxima specified in the Fees Order is an operational matter for the Care Commission. In setting fees, the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act requires the commission to have regard to its reasonable expenses in carrying out its functions under the act.

NHS boards are given a unified budget to enable them to meet the health care needs of their resident populations. There is no specific prescribing element uplift in the unified budget. It is for each individual NHS board to decide how much money to allocate to their prescribing budget.The Arbuthnott formula, which has a prescribing element, has informed NHS board allocations for financial years 2001-02 and 2002-03. On average each NHS board received a 6.5% increase in 2001-02 and a 7.2% increase in 2002-03. This was made up of a minimum increase for each NHS board of 5.5% in 2001-02 and 6.8% in 2002-03 and additional money for those NHS boards where their Arbuthnott shares were greater than their actual shares.

No specific allocations are made for staff budgets. Staff costs are met from the overall sums allocated to NHS boards to enable them to meet the health care needs of their resident populations. Therefore, information on funding allocation by workforce group is not available centrally.

Separation distances are in place around the GM crops to minimise the dispersal of pollen to adjacent crops. The distances deployed in the farm-scale evaluations are based upon decades of experience in conventional agriculture where they have proved extremely effective at delivering high levels of seed purity.

No. Such tests do not form part of the protocols applicable to the farm-scale evaluations and would only serve to confirm what is already known about the behaviour of pollen from these crops. The possibility of tiny quantities of pollen from the GM crop travelling outwith the trial crop is recognised and the potential consequences are addressed as part of the risk assessment process which is undertaken prior to the granting of approval. Our expert advisers are clear that pollen from the GM crops that have approval for release poses no greater safety threat than pollen from the equivalent conventional crop. Experience of the operation of separation distances suggests that any GM presence beyond this distance will be extremely small.

In the farm scale evaluations, the same ecological research is conducted on the non-GM crops grown as a control crop as is conducted on the adjacent GM crop. Those tests involve the collection of information on the following indicators:soil seed bank; arable plant diversity, biomass and estimated seed return; field margin and boundary vegetation, noting species in flower and signs of spray drift; Gastropods (slugs and snails): abundance, activity and diversity measures; Arthropods on vegetation, concentrating on plant bugs (Heteroptera), spring tails (Collembola), and the caterpillars of butterflies, moths, (Lepidoptera) and sawflies: diversity and biomass measures; Carabid beetles and other ground dwelling arthropods: abundance and diversity measures; bees and butterflies: observational studies, andbirds and small mammals: observational studies. The purpose of these trials is to establish whether the agricultural practices required to grow herbicide-tolerant GM crops has a different environmental impact than the practices used on conventional crops. The evaluations are not attempting to study other aspects of GM cultivation such as gene flow which has been the subject of many other scientific studies.