Chamber and committees

I know from my contacts with the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland that Chief Constables are well aware of their responsibilities to promote and improve race equality within the Scottish Police Service and are taking steps actively to encourage the recruitment police officers from black and minority ethnic communities. Six out of eight forces now have ethnic minority lay advisor groups and the two remaining forces also have arrangements for advice.

The Scottish Executive has not discussed these specific issues with either COSLA or the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). Following the publication of the report of the Action Group on Languages, Citizens of a Multilingual World, the Scottish Executive Education Department provides funding to local authorities to support the learning and teaching of any language other than English. The SQA makes provision for a range of languages including Japanese and Russian.

We made a Programme for Government commitment to expand support for families and very young children through family centres and mobile and outreach services, for at least 5,000 additional children by 2002. The findings of the first phase of the Sure Start Scotland evaluation confirm that we have already exceeded this target. Over 9,000 additional children received support in the first year of implementation of Sure Start Scotland (1999-2000). This increased to over 15,000 additional children in the second year (2000-01). During this period over 6,000 additional parents were supported. The figures cover a wide range of provision which vary in intensity, from one-off interventions to sustained support over a long period.We are today publishing the summary report of the evaluation, Mapping Sure Start Scotland, and I have arranged for a copy to be placed in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 20952).

We have just launched a consultative policy paper entitled The Scottish Fire Service of the Future. This paper sets out our proposals to further develop and improve the fire service in Scotland. Implicit in all of this is the Executive's continued support for the work of the fire service. A copy of the consultation paper is available in the Parliament's Reference Centre.

We have made arrangements to enable Supporters Direct to extend its service to Scotland through the employment of a caseworker based in Scotland. Funding of £75,000 a year for two years from 1 April 2002 is being provided from the Scottish share of funding from the major football pools companies.

This report was published today and is available on the Scottish Executive's website.

I understand that the option of extending passenger services to Dunfermline was considered by the partners promoting the Stirling - Alloa - Kincardine rail link at a Value Management Workshop hosted by Railtrack in May 2001.The workshop recommended that extending passenger services to Dunfermline should not be considered any further as part of the Stirling - Alloa - Kincardine scheme on grounds of cost. No firm estimate was made at the workshop but it was clear that the additional cost would be very significant. It is, of course, open to other parties to assess the feasibility of extending passenger services in the future.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-24321.

Eight objections were lodged to the draft orders for the proposed Eastern Link Road at Kincardine, of which two have been subsequently withdrawn.

We are currently considering the report of the Review of Educational Psychology Services which will be published by the end of February. Our response will follow in due course.