Chamber and committees

The A8000 is a local road and is therefore the responsibility of the City of Edinburgh Council. The council, supported by the Forth Estuary Transport Authority, are taking forward plans for a major upgrade of the route, providing a new dual carriageway link between the M9 spur and the A90 south of the Forth Road Bridge. Draft orders were published in the autumn and representations on these are being considered by the Executive.On the A1, work was recently completed on the dualling of the road between Bowerhouse and Spott Road, six weeks ahead of schedule. We are also taking forward three further upgrades, including construction of the Haddington to Dunbar Expressway, at a total cost of over £50 million. When complete some two-thirds of the A1 in Scotland will have been improved by dualling or the provision of climbing lanes. There are no plans to dual further stretches of the route.

There is no such policy.

Figures for the number of criminal justice social workers and senior social workers are available for the last three years. The figures are as follows:

1999	627
2000	624
2001	612

Information on the number of all criminal justice social work staff from 1996-2001 is available in the statistical bulletin Staff of Scottish Local Authority Social Work Services, 2001 (available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00197-00.asp). A breakdown between social workers and other staff is not available prior to 1999.Information on salaries is not collected centrally.

As part of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service Victim Information and Assistance arrangements (VIA), victims are notified by first class post, usually on the same day that the court grants bail. Where special conditions have been applied to the bail order (for example, to stay away from the victim or from a particular place), the victim is telephoned with the information and that is followed up with a letter enclosing a copy of the bail order. If the victim cannot be contacted by telephone, there are arrangements under which the police try to find the victim and provide the information, reporting back to VIA on the action they have taken. VIA provides information up to the conclusion of the case, including any appeal. In areas in which VIA does not yet operate, procurators fiscal and police forces pass information to victims under local arrangements.

Apart from the five persons who are currently on interim liberation pending an appeal against their conviction for murder, the number of people currently on bail for selected offences cannot be readily identified within the statistics available centrally. Information is not collected on the cancellation or revocation of bail. It is not therefore generally possible to determine from the available statistics how many persons granted bail following initial charge or who were released on bail pending an appeal against a conviction are currently on bail at any given time.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The names of convicted adult offenders and the crimes of which they have been convicted are in the public domain. The information is available from the Depute Principal Clerk of Justiciary at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh.Trials of children for serious offences are held in public but the proceedings are subject to statutory reporting restrictions. The names of convicted children could not be disclosed by the media unless the reporting restrictions were dispensed with by the court during the trial or by the Scottish ministers after the trial.On the grant of interim liberation, the names of adult offenders are also in the public domain. All court proceedings involving children are covered by the statutory reporting restrictions. This would therefore include proceedings on the grant of interim liberation pending appeal.

On the issue of disclosure of the names of adult appellants given interim liberation, I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-30216 on 16 October 2002.I understand the Crown has a system in place for alerting victims and next of kin when a person convicted of a serious and violent crime is granted interim liberation pending appeal.So far as notification of the police is concerned, I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-28839 on 13 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.

Evidence based on fingerprint identification involves the application of well established forensic techniques which are in use throughout the world.Assessment of DNA profiles is grounded in established research in genetics and molecular biology and involves statistical analysis and interpretation. It may, therefore, be regarded as a science.

Fingerprint evidence is used successfully in a large number of criminal proceedings every year. Such evidence is rarely found by the court to be unreliable. There is no central record of any such cases. In every case, in which such evidence is used, the defence may seek independent verification of the evidence.