Chamber and committees

No. However, detailed guidance on the role and conduct of Scottish Executive civil servants during the 2003 Scottish parliamentary elections, will be issued to Scottish Executive staff when the Parliament is dissolved. That guidance will be published.

Government resources should never be used for party political purposes and detailed guidance on the role and conduct of Scottish Executive civil servants during the Scottish Parliament election campaign will be issued to Scottish Executive staff when the Parliament is dissolved. The guidance will be published.

Details of current consultation exercises can be found on the Scottish Executive website. Decisions about the publication of further consultations and policy documents are taken by ministers on an on-going basis.

As part of the Parliament's security vetting policy, checks are carried out with the relevant foreign authorities on all applicants who are foreign nationals or who have lived abroad for a period during the previous five years. Under normal circumstances, the clearance of such applicants takes on average five weeks: the average for UK resident applicants is two weeks. The terrorist attacks of 11 September resulted in increased demands on the resources of the USA authorities and low priority was given to vetting enquiries. Clearance times increased to an average of 16 weeks, which meant that the interns who commenced in September 2001 had finished their assignment before clearance had been received. As a result of measures set up with Edinburgh University, which arranges the internships, together with easing pressures on the USA authorities, the average clearance time for the most recent intake of interns is currently eight weeks, with the majority being cleared within six weeks.

In order to minimise the overall time taken, the vetting process normally starts before interns are assigned to party groups and a formal application for a security pass received. There are currently 12 USA interns working in the Parliament, of whom nine have been security cleared. The average time that those who have been cleared waited for a security pass, broken down by political party, is:

Party	No. of Interns	Average Time
Labour	4	5 weeks
Scottish National Party*	1	4 weeks
Liberal Democrat*	1	6 weeks
Conservative	3	5 weeks

*The Security Office continues to hasten the clearance of the remaining three interns. (SNP-2, Lib/Dem-1).

As indicated in the answer given to question S1W-23228 today, there is no accurate data on the number of properties that have internal lead pipes or lead pipes connecting the property to the public water supply. Consequently, there is no reliable estimate of the cost of eliminating all lead water pipes.The report Drinking Water Quality in Scotland 1994 did suggest that the cost of replacement of all domestic lead plumbing would, at that time, be around £480 million. However, if the replacement was restricted to pipes directly supplying drinking water, the report suggests a cost of £280 million. However, the 1994 report did stress that these costs must be treated with some caution.The number of properties with copper pipes with lead solder joints is not known and no cost estimate has been made regarding their replacement.

If a customer is concerned that they may be at risk from lead in their drinking water, as a result of lead plumbing, the water authority will test their supply on request and free of charge. A similar service is available from the local authority environmental health department.

There are no lead water mains in Scotland and lead plumbing has not been used since the 1960's. Internal lead plumbing is confined to properties constructed before 1964 although the use of lead supply pipes (the underground pipes connecting properties to the water main in the street) continued until as late as 1971 in some parts of Scotland.The Scottish Executive has instructed the Scottish water authorities to undertake a survey of water supply zones across Scotland, to determine areas where there is likely to be non-compliance with the tighter lead standard being set by the EC from December 2003. As lead does not normally occur naturally in water, any areas of non-compliance detected are likely to be as a result of lead plumbing or lead supply pipes.To ensure compliance with the lead standard, the water authorities will be installing water treatment in areas identified as likely to fail to meet the new standard. In addition, where the water authorities identify the presence of lead plumbing in a particular property, they will advise the owner and/or occupier of remedial action that they can take. As part of their water mains renewal programmes, the water authorities are also replacing any lengths of lead supply pipe that are found to be in their ownership.

The information requested is not held centrally.

There is no accurate data on the number of properties that have internal lead pipes or lead pipes connecting the property to the public water supply. Similarly, the number of properties with copper pipes with lead solder joints is not known.The use of lead plumbing within buildings ceased in 1964 and the use of lead pipes to connect buildings to the public supply largely stopped around this time, although it is known to have carried on in some areas of Scotland until 1971. Based on these facts, a broad estimate on the extent of lead plumbing in domestic properties was contained in the 1994 annual report on Drinking Water Quality in Scotland. The 1994 report estimated that, at that time, around 589,000 domestic properties in Scotland still had lead plumbing.Lead solder joints in copper plumbing were legal until 1987, but the illegal use of lead solder joints in copper plumbing was recently discovered on a number of new housing developments across Scotland.