Chamber and committees

The secretariat comprises two Scottish Executive secondees and two consultants. The Executive canvassed internally to fill the two secondment opportunities; none of the appointments was advertised externally. The Cultural Commission’s Chairman appointed consultants with the necessary mix of skills, who could rapidly take forward the requirements of the commission’s work plan.

Executive support for theatre, as for all art-forms, is largely channelled through the Scottish Arts Council (SAC). The total SAC drama budget for 2004-05 is £12,792,900. This includes initial funding of £3.5 million for the National Theatre of Scotland for which further funding of £4 million per year up to and including year 2008-09 has been identified.

Officials from the National Archives of Scotland (NAS) completed the cataloguing process in February 2004 in accordance with NAS business objectives. 

The relevant documents were transferred to Crown Office in March 2004 in order that they could be reviewed in detail by Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service officials to allow me to determine what of the material can be released in its entirety, what can be released in an edited format to “anonymise” data and what is unsuitable for release.

The review and editing process has been a lengthy, complex and detailed one, necessitating the removal from documents of the names of living individuals and replacing with individual designations, such as “Witness 1” or “Child A” to preserve anonymity but ensure that the edited documents would still makes sense to any reader. Removing an individual’s name may, in somedocuments, not preserve anonymity, so it is also necessary to consider whether redaction of names is sufficient in each case. It will not be possible for each and every document to be released, even in an edited manner.

The process is nearing completion and it is anticipated that material will be available to the public at NAS in early 2005.

The Executive is fully committed to the creation of a Scottish Human Rights Commission within the lifetime of this Parliament. We are making the necessary progress on detailed consideration of all aspects of policy, including follow up on the consultation responses, in accordance with this timescale.

The Lord Advocate’s Guidelines on the Operation of Police Conditional Offers of Fixed Penalty, that contain instructions on the relevant thresholds for speeding offences, are confidential. It would not be in the public interest for those who are intent on driving in excess of the speed limit to know at what levels and in what way the various speed limits are enforced. The guidelines do not set hard and fast rules, but allow for downward variation of thresholds for action by local agreement between Area Procurators Fiscal and Chief Constables where there are particular issues of road safety. It could therefore be misleading to motorists if normal thresholds were published, since these local agreements allow for enforcement at lower speeds.

I refer the member to the question S2W-11072 answered on 2 November 2004. 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/wa.search.

This information is not held centrally but some or all may be available from individual NHS boards.

The Rehabilitation Technology Information Service (ReTIS), which is being developed by NHS boards, should be able to provide this type of information when it is fully developed.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S2W-11654, answered on 8 November 2004. All answersto written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, thesearch facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S2W-11654, answered on 8 November 2004. 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/wa.search.

As at 31 March 2004, the number of Blue Badge Holders as per each local authority region is as follows,

Council	Total
Aberdeenshire	10,011
Angus	5,005
Argyll and Bute	3,701
Clackmannanshire	2,219
Dumfries and Galloway	8,041
Dundee City	6,327
East Ayrshire	6,892
East Dunbartonshire	4,330
East Lothian	3,751
East Renfrewshire	1,257
Edinburgh, City of	16,057
Eilean Siar	261
Falkirk	7,166
Fife	17,832
Glasgow, City of	23,243
Highland	10,143
Inverclyde	3,817
Midlothian	3,912
Moray	3,631
North Ayrshire	10,602
North Lanarkshire	15,524
Orkney Islands	848
Perth And Kinross	6,344
Renfrewshire	6,420
Scottish Borders	5,221
Shetland Islands	621
South Ayrshire	5,217
South Lanarkshire	13,694
Stirling	3,908
West Dunbartonshire	2,974
West Lothian	7,192
Total	223,995