Chamber and committees

The Scottish Executive does nothold this information centrally.

I refer the member to the answerto question S2W-17971 on 16 August 2005. All answers towritten parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the searchfacility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

The Scottish Drug Misuse Database(SDMD) collects information on new individuals coming into contact with drug treatmentservices.

Information showing the number of new clients aged less than 16 years, reportingcannabis use, who have accessed drug treatment and rehabilitation services in thelast five years, and broken down by age andNHS board, has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number39914).

Information showing the numberof people aged 15 yearsand under, discharged from generalacute Scottish hospitals with a diagnosis of mental and behavioural disorders dueto use of cannabis, has also been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 39914).

The Scottish Executive does nothold this information centrally.

The Crown Office and ProcuratorFiscal Service’s Case Management Database recordsdetails of the charges against each accused in terms of the specific common lawor statutory offence that is alleged to have been committed.

The following table shows thetotal number of charges for contraventions of Section 35 of the Tax Credits Act2002 where the charge was reported to the Procurator Fiscal between April 2004 andMarch 2006 and led to a prosecution in either the Sheriff Court or the DistrictCourt.

The Database does not containinformation about the amount of money which was proved to have been fraudulentlyobtained.

Charges Involving OffencesUnder Section 35 of the Tax Credits Act 2002¹

Verdict	2004-05	2005-06
Guilty	8	10
Not Convicted	0	3
Proceedings still Active	0	4
Total Prosecuted2	8	17

Notes:

1. The information in this tablehas been extracted from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service’s Case ManagementDatabase. The database is a live, operational database used to manage the processingof reports submitted to procurators fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies. If a ProcuratorFiscal amends a charge submitted by a reporting agency the database will recorddetails only of the amended charge.

2. The database is charge-based.The figures quoted therefore relate to the number of charges rather than the numberof individuals charged or the number of incidents that gave rise to such charges.

 

The information available isnot in the form requested. Data on the numbers of pupils studying each secondarysubject is not collected as part of the annual School Census, and consequently itis not possible to provide pupil to teacher ratios by secondary subject.However, information on the overallpupil to teacher ratio in each sector since 1990 is available in the SEED StatisticalBulletin entitled Teachers in Scotland, 2005, whichcan be accessed using the following hyperlink http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/03/28083648/0.

This information is not heldcentrally.

There are a number of possiblecharges which can result from offences involving a knife. The information recordedcentrally on those proceeded against in courts is based on the type of offence committed,for example assault, rather than the way it was committed. Therefore specific informationon persons with a charge proved for wounding someone with a knife is unavailable.

The available information isgiven in the following table. Cases of rape by someone known to the victim and ofdrug-assisted rape are not separately identifiable in the statistics held centrally.

Persons Given a CustodialSentence in Scottish Courts for Rape¹: Number and Average Length ofSentence, by Police Force Area, 2000-01 to 2004-05

	Number					Mean sentence (days)2
Police Force Area	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05
Central	1	-	2	1	1	3,653	-	3,013	1,642	731
Dumfries and Galloway	2	1	1	-	-	2,374	4,383	2,557	-	-
Fife	1	5	4	-	9	2,557	2,374	2,740	-	2,110
Grampian	1	1	2	2	3	6,209	3,653	1,644	2,465	2,070
Lothian and Borders	8	9	6	7	9	1,804	2,222	2,572	1,404	2,103
Northern	-	3	4	2	3	-	3,531	3,196	2,009	1,440
Strathclyde	9	18	13	14	12	2,516	2,227	1,953	2,087	2,123
Tayside	2	2	2	5	2	3,470	2,009	1,279	2,922	2,375
Scotland	24	39	34	31	39	2,549	2,426	2,323	2,073	2,036

Note:

1. Where main offence.

2. Excludes life sentence orsentence length not known.

The information requested isnot available centrally.