Chamber and committees

The SPCB recently reaffirmed that the entire Parliamentary complex should be a smoke free environment. The SPCB will be looking to the Business Managers to assist in exhorting all Members to observe the ban. Any Member or their staff found smoking in the Parliamentary complex will be reported to the SPCB, who will consider appropriate action. Parliament staff found smoking will be dealt with under the disciplinary procedures.The Scottish Parliament Policy on Smoking in the Workplace, which reinforces this message will be issued to all Members, their staff and Parliament staff this week.

This financial year, over £208 million of public money will be spent to secure passenger train services in Scotland. An additional £6.1 million will be available for Scottish rail freight schemes.

The Scottish Executive is currently part-funding a study of fast ferry links on routes between Granton, Rosyth and Burntisland in the context of its involvement with the Forth Transport Infrastructure Partnership. The findings of this study will be available later this year. The ferry study is one element of a wide-ranging consideration by the Partnership of options for cross-Forth travel.The Executive has no plans to investigate the possibility of a direct ferry service between Anstruther and North Berwick.

Information on local authority car park trading accounts is not held centrally.

The Scottish Executive are proposing to fund a bid by Epilepsy Bereaved to extend the national sentinel audit they are undertaking into epilepsy deaths in England, to cover cases of epilepsy related deaths in Scotland.

As this is an operational matter for Scottish Enterprise, I will ask the Chairman of that organisation to write to you.

The Competition Act 1988 applies to all undertakings engaged in economic activities whatever their legal status. Local authorities which engage in commercial or economic activities relating to goods or services will be covered by the provisions of the Act as will those businesses which provide goods and services to local authorities and their activities will therefore equally be subject to the prohibitions in the Act. Competition being a reserved matter, the Act will be enforced throughout the UK by the Director General of Fair Trading who has made contact with all local authorities and is undertaking an education programme to ensure that their staff are equipped to detect cartels and anti-competitive practices which may operate in their areas of activity.

A Joint Central/Local Government Working Group has been established to ensure that any disruption that arises from a decision to join the Economic and Monetary Union is kept to a minimum as far as local authority services are concerned. The Scottish Executive and COSLA are members of the Group.

It is too early to estimate the potential costs to local authorities, if it were decided that the United Kingdom should join the Economic and Monetary Union. As I indicated in my previous response (to Question S1W-585 on 30 July 1999) both the Scottish Executive and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities are involved with other Departments in a Working Group to look at the potential implications for local authorities, but this work is at an early stage.

Any potential new burdens on local authorities arising from decisions taken by the Scottish Executive will be discussed fully with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities as part of the statutory consultations which take place each year on the local government finance settlement. The presumption is that where the introduction of a new policy will impose new costs on local authorities, then these should be reflected in the local government finance settlement.