Chamber and committees

The making of Traffic Regulation Orders is a matter for the individual local authority and Scottish ministers have no role to play in this process.

Local authorities are under a duty to comply with disability discrimination legislation and should take this into account when promoting traffic regulation orders.

The Scottish Ministers are not aware of any body that is entitled to place an obstruction on a public road without prior permission of the relevant local authority.

When making traffic regulation orders under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, local authorities are required to follow the provisions of the Local Authorities'' Traffic Orders (Procedures) (Scotland) Regulations 1999, which specifies the requirements for consultation.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information at North Lanarkshire Council''s local area partnership areas. However, through the existing range of Low-cost Initiative for First Time Buyers (LIFT) schemes operated by the government, prospective homeowners across North Lanarkshire have access to the following:

- The New Supply Shared Equity Scheme (NSSE) which allows first time buyers to buy a new build property. A list of shared equity developments receiving government funding is available from the Scottish Government''s website at www.scotland.gov.uk.

- Open Market Shared Equity Pilot (OMSEP) “ a pilot scheme to allow first time buyers to buy a property on the open market.

Regarding further planned schemes, we intend to carry out an independent evaluation of the LIFT shared equity schemes next year, in the meantime, we are reviewing the relative balance of support for the LIFT schemes in the planning of the 2010-11 Affordable Housing Investment Programme.

While we are aware that a number of developers have introduced their own shared equity schemes to assist prospective homeowners, we do not hold information on these initiatives.

The Misuse of Drugs (Supply to Addicts) Regulations 1997 require that only medical practitioners who hold a special licence issued by the Home Secretary may prescribe, administer or supply diamorphine (heroin) in the treatment of drug addiction.

General practitioners and other doctors do not require a special licence for prescribing diamorphine for patients for relieving pain form organic disease or injury.

The Dangerous Drugs (Supply to Addicts) Regulations 1968 restricted the prescribing of heroin for addicts to doctors licensed for that purpose.

General practitioners and other doctors do not require a special licence for prescribing diamorphine (heroin) for patients for relieving pain from organic disease or injury.

In Scotland there is no specific scheme in operation directed solely towards rent to mortgage. Opportunities do however exist through LIFT, the low-cost initiative for first time buyers which aims to help people on low incomes become owners but whose financial resources are insufficient to meet their needs because of local housing market prices.

Data on the precise number of cases where the disclosure process has revealed sexual offences committed by prospective host parents is not available. This is because the variety of ways the position of host parent is described on disclosure applications makes it difficult to draw down aggregated statistics. Of those applications which were specifically identified as relating to host parents in 2008-09, 7% had convictions disclosed. We cannot confirm the detail of those offences, whether those were sexual offences nor any action that organisations may have taken as a result. Disclosure Scotland does not routinely gather information on what recruitment decisions are made following receipt of the disclosure certificate. For this reason, knowledge of the deterrent effect of disclosure in these cases is anecdotal and it is not appropriate to comment on particular cases. profes

Information on drug-related deaths can be found in Drug-related Deaths in Scotland in 2008 published by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) in August 2009: http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/files2/stats/drug-related-deaths/drug-related-deaths-in-scotland-in-2008.pdf.

The GROS website also provides information on drug-related deaths publications from 1997: http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/publications-and-data/drug-related-deaths/index.html.