Chamber and committees

Glasgow City Council's grant allocation was calculated by formula based on long-established methods of establishing each council's need to spend on services. A floor mechanism was also introduced to ensure that all councils would benefit from increases of at least 5%, 4% and 3.4% over the three years. Glasgow continues to receive substantially more grant per person than any other mainland council and has benefited by £16 million from the floor.

The Scottish Executive is committed to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Making it Work Together - a Programme for Government emphasised our commitment to improving the lives of our nation's children and set out a range of targets to that end. The UK Government submitted its second report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child - which included a Scottish chapter - in August 1999. We will consider carefully the UN Committee's observations on that report once received.

The scheme that will be taken forward in partnership with Glasgow, South Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, will have four key junctions. It will create significant investment and regeneration opportunities for the whole of west central Scotland and in addition, more locally assist in making contaminated land safe.

I expect construction works for the new motorway to start in 2005 subject to completion of all of the statutory and procurement procedures.

We have no plans at present to introduce such a right of appeal into the planning system.

Where a tenant has exercised his or her right to buy their council property, they should be allowed the full enjoyment and use of the house as owner. However, if ownership of the building is shared between the local authority and RTB owners, specific conditions may be put in place to cover arrangements for carrying out factoring services and repair and maintenance work. In general terms, such conditions may be required to ensure that all parties will pay their share of the costs towards any communal work carried out. The precise conditions of sale are a matter for agreement between the landlord and purchaser and it is for each party to satisfy themselves, in consultation with their legal advisors prior to completing the transaction, that all terms are reasonable. Any dispute over the conditions would normally be resolved by the Lands Tribunal for Scotland.

The Scottish Executive keeps the financial needs of small business under continued review. I am very pleased that the change of status afforded to Scottish Equity Partners - formerly Scottish Development Finance, Scottish Enterprise's investment arm - has allowed the company to raise £80 million for a new Venture Capital Fund aimed at early stage and growth technology companies. This will provide access to equity funding for an increasing number of Scottish small businesses.

In 1997 a Planning Audit Unit was set up within Planning Services Division of the Scottish Executive. Its initial purpose was to work with authorities to assist in securing improvements in the delivery of their development control service. As well as continuing to do this, it is now also working with authorities to improve their development planning functions.We also seek to keep national planning policy up to date. In November 2000 we published a revision of National Planning Policy Guideline 1: The Planning System. We will shortly be publishing a revision of Planning Advice Note 40: Development Control which will provide, inter alia, best practice advice on development control services.

Officials in the Executive's Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Department hosted a seminar on 7 December at which the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) gave a presentation on the report. This allowed the FSB representatives to discuss the findings with officials working on most of the subjects covered by the report. My officials will continue to meet regularly with the FSB.

If a public inquiry is necessary then that is part of the statutory process and is not a delay. It is not possible to estimate the cost of an inquiry until the scope of any objections to the scheme are known.