- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 09 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Margaret Curran on 1 February 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-5062 by Patricia Ferguson on 19 January 2004, what subsequent discussions it has had with Her Majesty’s Government on any modifications of the Schedule of reserved matters under section 29(2) of the Scotland Act 1998 and what any such modifications were.
Answer
The Scottish Executive is inregular contact with the UK Government on a wide range of issues, includingissues relating to legislative competence where appropriate.
Schedules 4 and 5 to theScotland Act 1998 have been amended by a series of Orders made under section30(2) of the Scotland Act 1998. The Orders are available in the public domainand may be viewed on the Office of Public Sector Information website:
www.opsi.gov.uk.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Elish Angiolini on 31 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-30458 by Elish Angiolini QC on 21 December 2006, whether the Crown could not raise criminal proceedings against any of the officers concerned even if new evidence came to light.
Answer
In Scots Law, when a decisionto take no proceedings has been intimated by the Crown to a person against whoma criminal allegation is made, the Crown are held to it, and such intimation isregarded by the court as constituting a bar to any proceedings thereafter. Thisrule applies even where new evidence comes to light at a later date.
Accordingly, the decision notto take proceedings against the four Scottish Criminal Record Office officers againstwhom criminal allegations were made is final.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Elish Angiolini on 31 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-30458 by Elish Angiolini QC on 21 December 2006, on what basis and on whose authority the decision was made that no proceedings were to be taken against officers of the Scottish Criminal Record Office.
Answer
The decision not to raise proceedingsagainst the four Scottish Criminal Record Office officers against whom criminalallegations were made was taken by the former Lord Advocate, Lord Boyd, in 2001.A public announcement of this decision was made in September 2001.
The decision was taken on thebasis that there was insufficient reliable evidence upon which to found a prosecution.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 18 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Patricia Ferguson on 31 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will list all those who have served as policy advisers to the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) or to the Chair of the SAC since 1999, also indicating for each (a) how long they served, (b) how much they were paid and (c) what their outputs were.
Answer
Scottish Arts Council policyis decided and developed corporately by the Council taking advice from staff, committeesand specialist advisers. The Scottish Arts Council occasionally appoints expertspecialists to advise on implementation of specific policy decisions to ensure ithas full understanding of specific fields. However, the firms or individualsappointed do not serve as “policy advisers” in general but are contractedspecifically for a single purpose.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 30 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the written evidence dated 3 May 2006 by John McLean, former Director of the Scottish Criminal Record Office (SCRO), to the Justice 1 Committee’s inquiry, (paper J1/S2/06/17/2), whether it will provide full information in respect of the misidentification of fingerprint evidence in the Scottish Fingerprint Service in June 2000; whether any of the experts concerned in this misidentification were involved in the misidentification of mark Y7 in the Marion Ross murder case; whether there was an independent inquiry into this misidentification and, if so, who carried it out and what the result was; whether the work of the experts concerned with this misidentification was checked for other misidentifications and, if so, over what period of time; whether the experts accepted that they had made mistakes and what remedial action was taken, and whether any of these experts are involved in providing expert evidence in Scottish courts at present.
Answer
There was no misidentification confirmedin the written evidence dated 3 May 2006 by John McLean. That written evidence isavailable at:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/committees/justice1/papers-06/j1p06-17.pdf.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether any of the refinancing gain arising from the refinancing of the Wishaw General Hospital PFI project has been retained by the private sector to compensate for a lower rate of return than that expected at bidding stage.
Answer
I refer the member to the answerto question S2W-31057 on 29 January 2007. 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.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive who the equity providers were for the Hairmyres Hospital PFI project.
Answer
The original equity providerswere Innisfree Partners Limited as general partner of the Innisfree PFI Fund (50%)and Kier Limited (50%).
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how refinancing has changed the base internal rate of return to the Hairmyres Hospital PFI consortium.
Answer
The information is ascontained in the following tables:
| Original Financing | |
| Nominal | 19.55% |
| Real | 16.05% |
| Refinancing Model | |
| Nominal | 18.61% |
| Real | 16.13% |
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what the (a) percentage capital growth and (b) total capital gain has been on investors’ investment in the Hairmyres Hospital PFI project.
Answer
This information is not heldcentrally.
- Asked by: Alex Neil, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 16 January 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 29 January 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what percentage of NHS Lanarkshire’s income the annual charge arising from the Hairmyres Hospital PFI project represents and how that has changed as a result of the refinancing.
Answer
The current annual charge forHairmyres is £16.4 million after accounting for re-financing gain of £440,000 andthe annual inflation uplifts since the hospital opened. NHS Lanarkshire’s currentyear income is £860 million and therefore the Hairmyres costs represent 1.9% ofthis. The impact of re-financing is a reduction of 0.05%.
