Chamber and committees

During the recent debate on sport, Sam Galbraith announced that we will develop further the School Sports Co-ordinator Scheme to put more focus on school/club links which will give schoolchildren more direct access to professional coaching. Through sportscotland we are also developing a Local Coaching Development Officer Network. The network will deliver volunteers and coaches at a local level who will be required to ensure that community clubs developed in the school environment function properly.

The Executive is committed to developing a policy on architecture for Scotland. We have published a framework for policy development that includes an aspiration for the public sector to act as an exemplar client with regard to design quality.

We also continue to emphasise that the prime objective of our public sector procurement policy is to deliver the best possible value for money. In the case of building projects, this means achieving an optimum combination of whole life cost and design quality.

Cancer is one of three clinical priorities for the NHS in Scotland and a specific research priority. The Executive's approach to cancer research in general is set out in the answer to question S1W-10110.

Prostate cancer presents particularly difficult challenges and is currently the subject of wide-ranging action and debate. In particular, the Department of Health (England) recently published a Prostate Cancer Action Plan which clearly sets out the issues surrounding the identification and management of cancer. £1 million has been allocated for this and each of the next three years, specifically for prostate cancer, which will be of benefit to men throughout the UK.

In Scotland we have established a Prostate Cancer Working Group to look at some of the issues in relation to prostate cancer, including patient treatment, specialist education and training and research.

The Scottish Executive allocated £5 million in each of the years 2000-01 and 2001-02 for the establishment of the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency (SDEA). This provided start-up costs for the agency, funding for 100 additional officers for forces to tackle drug misuse at local level and provision for up to 100 additional officers for the agency. On 27 September, the Deputy First Minister announced in Parliament that an established and increasing baseline had been put in place for the SDEA. Funding of £6.5 million in 2002-03 and £6.7 million in 2003-04 has been secured.

Learning and Teaching Scotland was formed on 1 July. Professor Tom Wilson has been appointed as Chair and Mike Baughan as Chief Executive along with a further eight board members. Appointments to the Advisory Council will be announced shortly. Officials are keeping me informed of organisational progress made since the merger.

To keep collection costs to a minimum the Scottish Executive has chosen to use the existing income contingent loan system, which operates on a UK basis, to collect the Graduate Endowment. As a consequence there is no flexibility for the Scottish Executive to raise the income threshold.

The number of miles of trunk road by local authority area is contained in Table 5.2 of the 2000 edition of the Scottish Transport Statistics, which is available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre.

There are 334 railway stations in Scotland. These are located in the following local authority areas:

Local Authority Area	Stations
City of Aberdeen	2
Aberdeenshire	6
Angus	7
Argyll & Bute	14
East Ayrshire	6
North Ayrshire	11
South Ayrshire	9
Scottish Borders	0
Clackmannanshire	0
Dumfries & Galloway	7
East Dunbartonshire	6
West Dunbartonshire	13
Dundee City	2
City of Edinburgh	8
Falkirk	5
Fife	19
City of Glasgow	59
Highland	57
Inverclyde	14
North Lanarkshire	23
South Lanarkshire	16
East Lothian	7
West Lothian	10
Midlothian	0
Moray	3
Orkney Islands	0
Perth & Kinross	7
Renfrewshire	9
East Renfrewshire	9
Shetland Isles	0
Stirling	5
Western Isles	0

This a matter for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and the information may be obtained from them.

We have no plans to amend the standard application form. The current form is considered adequate to establish a candidate's suitability for appointment and to ensure that any potential conflicts of interest are identified.

The Scottish Executive Health Department has not commissioned any studies into the use of private finance in the NHSiS since June 1999. However, Public/Private Partnerships within the NHS in Scotland are subject to robust guidance and rules which have been developed in the light of experience in Scotland and the rest of the UK.