Chamber and committees

Number of Assault on Police Officers by Police Force Area, 1995-96 to 2004-05

Source: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary’s Annual Statistical Returns from police forces.

Unknown: not known or no data supplied.

“Any form of physical, sexual or mental and emotional abuse which might amount to criminal conduct and which takes place within the context of a close relationship. The relationship will be between partners (married, cohabiting or otherwise) or ex-partners. The abuse can be committed in the home or elsewhere.

 While available evidence suggests that the most prevalent instances of domestic abuse are male violence towards women, this definition acknowledges and includes female violence towards men and violence between partners or ex-partners in close, same-sex relationships.”

The Victim Information and Advice (VIA) service within COPFS works to help ensure that victims of crime in cases involving domestic abuse receive the information and support they need. The following table shows the number of summary cases involving domestic abuse that were referred to VIA in each police force area in 2004-05. Comprehensive information relating to earlier periods is not available.

Domestic Abuse Cases referred to VIA: Summary Cases: 2004-05

Information in relation to cases dealt with under solemn procedure is only available for the period since July 2005. The available information is set out in the following table.

Domestic Abuse Cases referred to VIA: Petition Cases: July to September 2005

It is not possible to separately identify cases where the accused was male or female.

Deaths in Scotland from Pneumococcal Meningitis¹

Note: 1. 1995-99, ICD9 code 3201; 2000-04, ICD10 code G001.

Number of Patients Staying Overnight in Hospital Between Christmas and Boxing Day, by Health Board of Treatment and Year: 1999-2004

The table shows numbers of admissions to non-obstetric/non-psychiatric acute specialties on Christmas Day in each year from 1999 to 2004. The data are presented by health board of treatment, year and diagnosis category (based on principal diagnosis).

In June this year, I announced a maximum nine-weeks waiting time for eight key diagnostic tests, including MRI, CT, ultrasound and barium scans, from the end of 2007. These standards apply to patients requiring routine scans; patients who need to be seen urgently will continue to be tested quickly according to their clinical priority.

Information on waiting times for diagnostic scans is not collected centrally. The Health Department is currently working with the Information Services Division and NHSScotland to improve the collection and analysis of information about diagnostic waiting to enable NHS boards to manage, report and improve performance against the Executive’s commitments.

Meantime, NHS boards are working to reduce diagnostic waiting times for patients through service redesign, investment in capacity and more efficient working to ensure that the standards will be met. Many NHS boards are making use of the MRI and CT scanning services provided by the Golden Jubilee National Hospital.

Every member of staff in the NHS, regardless of their specialism, plays a vital part in saving lives in the modern NHS.

Information on expenditure by NHS boards on the specific groups of staff requested is not collected centrally; however, information on the following groups of staff is available:

(Categories of staff are grouped to associate as closely as possible with the appropriate Whitley Council salary scales).

Information on the costs of these groups of staff and the increase between 1999-00 and 2004-05 is given in table 1 of NHS Staff Expenditure 1999-2000 and 2004-05, a copy of which has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 38186).

The staff figures are taken from Scottish Financial Return 15 which were completed by all boards and trusts and returned to the Scottish Executive Health Expenditure with their annual accounts.

Proportion of NHS Budget

It is not possible to identify exactly what each NHS board spends on administrative staff as there is no definition of this with which to collate information. However, expenditure on staff on administration and clerical pay scales has been used as an approximation although this may include staff who might not be considered administrative and conversely may exclude those that are who are paid on a different pay scale, such as senior managers.

Another issue is that the budgets in 1999-2000 and 2004-05 are not directly comparable due to the introduction of resource budgeting in 2002-03. Therefore expenditure on administrative and clerical staff has been expressed as a percentage of total revenue expenditure for the two years in question in the table.

The level of maintenance costs reflects both the number and the age of Government Car Service vehicles.