Chamber and committees

It will be for the Chief Medical Officer in England to announce arrangements for publication of the report. The Executive will then decide whether to adopt or adapt its good practice guidelines.

I am currently considering the outcome of the consultation exercise and options for the way forward. I will be discussing the issues with my ministerial colleagues, and intend to make an announcement around the end of the year.An analysis of the responses to the consultation exercise will be published on the Executive website shortly.

The information contained in the reply to question S1W-18237 on 8 October 2001 cannot be shown on a constituency basis.

The Scottish Executive have no specific plans to target 12-year-olds with health promotion programmes beyond those already offered in health services throughout Scotland. 76% of children in this age group in Glasgow are registered with a general dental practitioner. Through targeting younger children from six years of age onwards and making payments to dentists for preventive treatments will reduce dental disease in 12-year-olds considerably. Research would suggest that programmes such as the enhanced capitation and preventive scheme recently introduced into NHS dental services this year, could reduce dental disease in 12-year-olds by up to 50%.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-19708.

The current approach to the monitoring of the RSI target is detailed in my reply to question S1W-18044 on 11 September 2001. Full details of the methodology being employed are contained in the report referred to in that reply, which is available in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 15838).The gender and age breakdown of the people found to be sleeping rough is also provided in that report at an all Scotland level. The second set of quantitative data was collected in October and the next report will include a breakdown by gender and age at local authority level for both the May and October exercises.

I understand from the Scottish Ambulance Service that the board is scheduled to consider the full business case for priority-based dispatch at the beginning of 2002. The Executive expects to receive the full business case following that meeting, and will reach a final decision as soon as possible thereafter.

Allocations to individual colleges, for the current and future financial years, will be made by the Scottish Further Education Funding Council.The additional resources are intended to cover the cost of waiving course fees, providing essential books and assisting asylum seekers with the costs of travelling to college.

Hardship funds, formerly known as access funds, are an integral part of the new support arrangements for further and higher education students. These funds are administered by individual colleges and universities under guidance provided by the Student Awards Agency for Scotland.

The advertisement for the chair and lay members of the Judicial Appointments Board was placed in The Scotsman, The Herald and on the Scottish Executive website.The Scottish Executive is committed to ensuring that the membership of public bodies reflects all of Scottish society. The Executive has the following targets for appointing more people from under represented sections of society to public office:- to increase by 2002 the proportion of women appointees from the 1998 level of 47% to 50%- to increase by 2002 the proportion of bodies chaired by women from the 1998 level of 22% to 35%- to increase by 2002 the proportion of appointments held by people from an ethnic minority background from the 1998 level of 0.4% to 1.3%.The current targets were inherited from the Scottish Office ministers.