Chamber and committees

The trunk road maintenance contracts require the Operating Companies to carry out safety inspections of the trunk road network to ensure, as far as is reasonable, that incidents similar to those recently experienced on the M8 motorway causing severe traffic delays are kept to a minimum.

We are examining the recommendations in this report, supported by two of our Social Inclusion Partnerships, which relate to services for pregnant women and infants.

Disclosure Scotland is being established within the Scottish Criminal Record Office for purposes of issuing criminal record certificates under Part V of the Police Act 1997. It had been intended that certificates would be available from January 2002 but we have deferred the start date until April 2002 so as to align it with the start date for England and Wales.

Since the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, there has been no centrally held register of disabled people. It is estimated that there are around 616,000 disabled people of working age in Scotland (19% of the working age population). Of these, 247,000 are in employment (7.6% of the working age population). (Source: Labour Force Survey summer 2000 estimate).The latest figure available for staff in the Scottish Executive who have a disability is 2.7% of the total staff. (Figure as at 1 October 2001). Staff are invited to self declare a disability in terms of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 but they are not required to do so.

The Scottish Executive made a bid to HM Treasury's Evidence Based Policy Fund to fund a research project to develop a database of Scottish household income and a modelling capacity to address the increased need for income and poverty related analysis.The bid was successful and following a tendering process, the research contract was awarded to Stirling University in July 2001. The contractors are currently investigating the feasibility of combining existing datasets such as the Scottish Household Survey and the Family Resources Survey to provide a comprehensive base of Scottish information. The project is due to be completed in February 2002.

As announced in the White Paper Smoking Kills, the Executive is providing £8 million over three years for smoking cessation and prevention activities. This supports a range of initiatives including health board cessation services. Other Executive initiatives prior to July 2001 included the launch of the Voluntary Charter on Smoking in Public Places, a review by the Lord Advocate of guidance on the use of children in test purchasing exercises, and support of pilot youth card schemes in Glasgow and Angus. Delivery of health education and promotion activities through Health Education Board for Scotland (HEBS) includes mass media advertising - for example the successful Blue sticks and Stinx campaigns and Smokeline.We have also made NRT and Zyban available on prescription and targeted a proportion of the Health Improvement Fund to enable a stepping up of smoking cessation and prevention activities.1 August 2001 onwardsThe Executive will continue to provide funding support for smoking cessation services and to HEBS for health education and promotion activities. Specific measures include the recently launched anti-smoking advertising campaign (Alien) targeted at young people, and further development of Smokeline to provide services to pregnant smokers and ethnic minority groups. A smoking cessation resource pack for health professionals, the development of health education and smoking cessation services for school-age children and a campaign to raise awareness of the risks of passive smoking are also in preparation. We will also continue to look at ways to improve enforcement of underage sales of tobacco. We will continue to support the activities of ASH Scotland. The Executive will continue to press the UK Government for the early reintroduction of a UK Bill to ban tobacco advertising and promotion.

The Scottish Executive Accounts will provide this information. Audit Scotland are currently auditing the accounts and they will be laid before Parliament by January 2002.

As explained in the answer to question S1W-17479, actuarial predictions suggest that the Scottish birth rate will remain fairly constant over the next 20 years. Any changes that take place will be small and gradual and are therefore unlikely to have significant effects on economic and social structures.

The table shows the percentage of 12-15 year olds who were regular smokers.

Year	Males	Females	Total
1992	10%	13%	11%
1994	11%	13%	12%
1996	14%	14%	14%
1998	11%	13%	12%
2000	8%	13%	10%

The table shows the percentage of adults aged between 16-64 years who were regular cigarette smokers in 1995 and 1998. These data are from the Scottish Health Survey, which is carried out periodically and is used as the source for monitoring progress against the smoking reduction target set in Towards a Healthier Scotland. The next Scottish Health Survey is scheduled for 2002 and should be published in 2004.

Year	Males	Females	Total
1995	34%	36%	35%
1998	36%	33%	34%