Chamber and committees

As with previous summits, the meeting received progress reports and agreed a plan for future work on the other subjects currently being taken forward by council members. These are drugs misuse; demography; digital inclusion; the environment; energy, both grid infrastructure and marine renewables; collaborative spatial planning; early years; transport, and social inclusion.

The council recognised the valuable work that had been achieved by all the work streams and considered a report on the Knowledge Economy Workstream which has now concluded.

It was disappointing that the council did not reach unanimity on the location of a standing secretariat. The St Andrews Agreement of October 2006 noted that the UK and Irish governments would facilitate the establishment of a standing secretariat, and this has been discussed at each of the subsequent summits. At the summit in Cardiff earlier this year, the Chief Minister of Jersey was asked to take informal soundings from colleagues on the council with a view to reporting back a broad consensus on where the Standing Secretariat might be based. Many member administrations felt that, more than three years since the St Andrews Agreement, the time to decide on the secretariat was overdue.

Edinburgh is one of the candidates to host the secretariat, and we were delighted with the overwhelming support that Edinburgh received from the member administrations. However, unanimity was not achieved and the matter has been remitted to the Chief Minister of Guernsey to see if we can overcome the obstacles to agreement and we are hopeful of that before the next summit in Guernsey in June 2010.

I am placing a copy of the Official Communiqu© that was issued by the British-Irish Council after the meeting in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre. (Bib. number 49690)

NHS QIS will then work with these groups to identify priority areas for attention according to local need, agree key performance indicators to demonstrate continuous quality improvement and develop systems for data collection that will promote continuous quality improvement locally, the sharing of good practice and the facilitation of national audit.

This programme will also ensure that appropriate links are made to other national priorities, including the long-term conditions action plan and the wider approach to improving quality across healthcare services NHSScotland.

As the 2008 diabetes survey indicated, NHS Tayside data on numbers with each type of diabetes are considered to be the most accurate. These suggest that the proportion of those with type 1 diabetes is between 10% and 12% of the total number of those diagnosed with diabetes.

The Scottish Diabetes Research Network is also engaged in a project that seeks to establish with greater accuracy the national proportions of type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialReports/meetingsParliament/or-09/sor1001-01.htm

We discussed how best the four administrations can work together to tackle the challenges of stimulating and sustaining our economic recovery, and the Prime Minister provided an update on preparations for the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. We emphasised the effect that the economic situation has had on Scotland. With our Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts, we presented the case to the Prime Minister and his colleagues for further public sector capital acceleration, making it clear that the fragile economy recovery could be severely damaged by a sudden drop in capital spending. The First Minister argued that bringing capital spending forward would allow for a better exit strategy from the necessary fiscal stimulus. We also made the case for assistance in increasing bank lending, for tighter regulation of the banking sector and for contingency funding for the swine flu vaccine.

We also discussed the state of inter-administration relations, including the Calman Commission report, the Memorandum of Understanding and new dispute resolution procedures. We agreed that there should be more detailed discussions at official level on improvements to the memorandum and dispute resolution and to the functioning of the JMC, leading to ministerial agreement at a JMC Domestic in the near future. We also looked forward to the Finance Ministers'' Quadrilateral later this year. We noted that the Secretary of State for Scotland said the UK Government''s response to the Calman report''s recommendations will be published before the end of this year.

I am placing a copy of the communiqu© that was issued immediately following the committee meeting in the Scottish Parliament''s Information Centre (Bib. number 49312).

The Bill will take forward our commitment to implement the legislative recommendations of the Repossessions Group. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/06/08164837/0.

There are no plans for any wider review of the Conveyancing and Feudal Reform (Scotland) Act 1970.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialReports/meetingsParliament/or-09/sor0910-01.htm