Chamber and committees

The Tenth Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Getting the Balance Right: Implementing Standards of Conduct in Public Life, was submitted to the Prime Minister on 19 January 2005 and the UK Government will respond in due course. The Scottish Executive provided the committee with evidence on the Scottish situation with regards to certain areas of ethical standards and public appointments which are devolved areas. We intend to monitor the developments and will consider what, if any, action need be taken by the Scottish Executive. It should be noted that there were no recommendationsmade to the Scottish Executive.

The RSA scheme is not evaluated on an annual basis as the nature of the scheme involves support for projects that create or safeguard jobs over a number of years. The employment benefits secured therefore are generated over the full duration of the project and not attributable to any one particular year. However, the effectiveness of the scheme is subject to periodic evaluation. Past evaluations have considered the employment impact of RSA over a number of years, allowing the effectiveness and economic benefit of the scheme to be assessed. The last formal UK wide evaluation, covering the period 1991-95, conducted by Arup, was published in September 2000. A full copy of this report can be found at www.dti.gov.uk/regional/evaluationRSA91-95.pdf. In addition, the Executive commissioned an external review of the RSA scheme in Scotland, whose report was published in February 2002, to examine the usefulness of the scheme at a Scottish level. A full copy of the report and a ministerial response to the findings is available in the Parliament’s Reference Centre, (Bib. number 19180).

Individual RSA projects are monitored against specific employment targets and other outcomes. Grant is released in instalments against the achievement of specific targets over the life of the project and information on jobs created or safeguarded is recorded as grant instalments are claimed.

All letters from MSPs on devolved matters are seen and replied to by ministers, except those about operational issues. Letters relating to operational issues are replied to by the Scottish Executive Agency concerned. Where appropriate, a copy of the response is forwarded to the relevant minister for information. Letters on reserved matters are sent to the relevant Whitehall Department for reply.

Letters from MSPs, like all correspondence,are received and opened in the private office of the Minister to whom they are addressed.They are then sent to the Ministerial Correspondence Unit where they are scannedand recorded on an electronic tracking system. Where the letter is for a responsefrom a Scottish minister, a draft response is then prepared for consideration bythe minister concerned. 

If the letter is about an operationalmatter it is sent to the Scottish Executive Agency concerned for reply. If the issueis a reserved matter the letter is transferred to the relevant Whitehall departmentto reply.

Since 1 January 2005 the Executive’starget for replying to all ministerial correspondence is 20 working days from thedate of receipt.

For the month of January 2005,73% of replies to ministerial correspondence were issued in 20 working days.  Separateinformation on performance in relation to correspondence from MSPs is not available.

The relationship between Scottishministers and the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) is set out in the Scottish PrisonService Framework Document, the text for which can be found on the SPS website atwww.sps.gov.uk/keydocs/framework/default.asp.

The total cost of producing anddistributing the Scotland Backs the Bid brochure was £15,340 plus VAT. Thesecosts were met jointly by sportscotland and EventScotland.

Direct expenditure incurred bythe Scottish Executive is £653.71 with no further commitments planned.

Sportscotland and EventScotland have jointly spent £25,853and committed, but not yet incurred, a further £9,405. EventScotland contributed£10,000 towards these costs. Further activityby the partner organisations will be discussed at a meeting on 23 March and we estimatethat costs totalling £50,000-60,000 will have been incurred by July.

These costs do not include VATor general staff costs.

This information is not available.The proposed arrangementsfor the future supply of appliances (such as stoma and ostomy) were provided inthe answer to S2W-13447 on 28 January 2005. All answers to written parliamentaryquestions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility forwhich can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

At present my officials arestarting preliminary work with NHS boards to identify models of servicedelivery currently in use across Scotland. When that initial work has been completed, wepropose to involve other stakeholders, such as patient groups and otherrepresentative bodies. This will cover such issues as service and deliverystandards.

The latest Gross Value Addedfigures (GVA or GDP at basic prices), available for Scotland arepresented in the Office for National Statistics Regional Accounts. These showthat in 2003, the latest year available, Scottish GVA was estimated to be £78billion at current basic prices, resulting in an average GVA per economicallyactive person (2003 June-Aug Labour Force Survey) of £30,536. The UKequivalent (excluding extra-regio activity) was £32,083.

This implies that, for thesame population and workforce in Scotland in 2003, the average GVA per economically activeperson would need to have been £1,547 higher in order to reach the same levelas the UK average. GDP would therefore have had to have been £3.9 billion or 5.1%higher. (Note that this would, in turn, result in an increase in the actualaverage UK GVA/economically active person).