Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Executive is committed to building nursing capacity within NHSScotland and is on track to achieve the Partnership Agreement target of attracting 12,000 nurses and midwives to NHS Scotland by 2007.

In addition, the Facing the Future initiative for recruitment and retention of nurses is supporting and promoting a range of measures to boost the number of qualified nurses in NHSScotland, which is now at an all time high of 39,000 whole-time equivalents (WTE).

Information on clinical nurse specialists employed in NHSScotland was collected for the first time at 30 September 2003. Across Scotland nurse specialists who treat and care for patients with hepatitis C can beidentified under the following titles: gastro-intestinal specialist nurses, hepatology specialist nurses and substance misuse specialist nurses. Information on staff in post by NHS board and clinical area of work is published in the report Clinical Nurse Specialists – Results from the Pilot Data Collection. This report is published on the Scottish Health Statistics website under Workforce Statistics, at www.isdscotland.org/workforce.

Information on Clinical Nurse Specialists is now collected annually at 30 September each year and compliments other intelligence and data for workforce planning purposes.

The amount of Grant Aided Expenditure allocated to Lothian and Borders Police for 2005-06 is £179 million, an increase of £10 million on 2004-05. Lothian and Borders Joint Police Board has set the budget for Lothian and Borders Police for 2005-06 equal to this amount.

The number of police officers in Lothian and Borders Police at December 2004 was 2,785 (whole-time equivalents), up from 2,717 a year previously.

I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-13828, on 7 February 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament/webapp/wa.search.

The hepatitis C action plan will serve as a broad framework for further implementation of the SNAP recommendations and the key messages in the Consensus Statement which emerged from the Conference in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in April 2004. It will also draw upon the evidence from the research studies published by the Effective Interventions Unit. The plan is currently being developed in consultation with stakeholders, for issue in spring 2005. It will set out the action in train and proposed to tackle hepatitis C.

The main objectives of the plan are to set out the actions that will reduce the transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and manage the burden of disease among those individuals who know they are infected and those who do not. Key areas of the plan will cover prevention, early detection and testing, treatment and care, and monitoring and surveillance. A key element of the plan will also be to raise awareness at all levels including professional and targeted groups of the general public.

The financial implications of the action plan will be addressed as its various components are developed. However, the Executive already gives over £8 millioneach year to NHS boards in earmarked resources for work to prevent bloodborne viruses, including hepatitis C. In addition to this specific allocation, NHS boards are given a unified budget to meet the health care needs of their resident population. It is for NHS boards to decide how best to utilise this funding to meet local and national priorities, including the treatment and prevention of hepatitis C.

The Scottish Executive has commissioned Health Protection Scotland to estimate the current and future burden of HCV-related disease in Scotland over the next two decades. Further work is also being commissioned to identify how much it will cost NHSScotland to care for individuals infected with hepatitis C and how cost-effective different approaches to hepatitis C case finding and treatment would be.

I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-13828, on 7 February 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament/webapp/wa.search.

In addition to their unified budgets, the Executive already gives over £8 million per year to NHS boards in earmarked resources for work to prevent bloodborne viruses, including hepatitis C. NHS boards use these resources in a variety of ways taking account of local need, including awareness-raising initiatives and needle exchange schemes.

In October 2004, linked to SR2004, it was announced that an additional £6 million per annum would be provided for drug treatment and rehabilitation services in 2005-06. This brings the total to £32.5 million per annum, an increase of 23% on 2004-05.

Since 2002, the Executive has made available resources for the establishment and ongoing activities of the UK Hepatitis C Resource Centre in Scotland, which is based in Glasgow and offers advice on testing and treatment to those affected by hepatitis C. The services provided by the centre are in addition to those made available through individual NHS boards.

Current processes include:

- monitoring by Health Protection Scotland of the prevalence of hepatitis C among injecting drug users. This surveillance activity is designed to monitor trends so that the effectiveness of interventions can be evaluated.

- a study, funded by the Effective Interventions Unit, to evaluate the effectiveness of the raising of the limits on the numbers of needles and syringes made available to injecting drug users; a report on the findings of this study will be published in 2005.

- a study, funded by the Chief Scientist Office, to evaluate the impact of methadone maintenance on high risk behaviours among injecting drug users, which was completed last year. A final report has been submitted to the Chief Scientist Office and a scientific publication is likely in 2005.

I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-13840, on 7 February 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament/webapp/wa.search.

Sub-national population estimates and projections are not calculated for Scottish parliamentary constituencies. Information for local authority and health board areas is available on the General Register Office for Scotland website at http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/library/index.html.

Results from the 2001 Census, published by the Registrar General on 25 March 2003, show that the resident population at 29 April 2001 for each Scottish parliamentary constituency was:

Parliamentary Constituency	Total Population
Aberdeen Central	70,104
Aberdeen North	69,935
Aberdeen South	72,086
Airdrie and Shotts	77,762
Angus	77,083
Argyll and Bute	63,443
Ayr	71,382
Banff and Buchan	76,871
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross	52,405
Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley	81,388
Central Fife	75,092
Clydebank and Milngavie	67,517
Clydesdale	81,888
Coatbridge and Chryston	66,789
Cumbernauld and Kilsyth	64,552
Cunninghame North	69,124
Cunninghame South	66,693
Dumbarton	76,074
Dumfries	80,595
Dundee East	76,557
Dundee West	68,512
Dunfermline East	70,115
Dunfermline West	65,508
East Kilbride	83,893
East Lothian	76,365
Eastwood	89,311
Edinburgh Central	74,270
Edinburgh East and Musselburgh	74,555
Edinburgh North and Leith	75,571
Edinburgh Pentlands	73,963
Edinburgh South	81,413
Edinburgh West	82,575
Falkirk East	75,956
Falkirk West	69,235
Galloway and Upper Nithsdale	67,170
Glasgow Anniesland	63,385
Glasgow Baillieston	64,106
Glasgow Cathcart	61,847
Glasgow Govan	61,555
Glasgow Kelvin	64,472
Glasgow Maryhill	64,628
Glasgow Pollok	62,756
Glasgow Rutherglen	65,720
Glasgow Shettleston	55,926
Glasgow Springburn	69,324
Gordon	78,720
Greenock and Inverclyde	62,478
Hamilton North and Bellshill	70,817
Hamilton South	60,743
Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber	85,390
Kilmarnock and Loudoun	79,562
Kirkcaldy	63,598
Linlithgow	72,160
Livingston	86,554
Midlothian	64,327
Moray	79,003
Motherwell and Wishaw	65,630
North East Fife	75,116
North Tayside	78,651
Ochil	74,826
Orkney Islands	19,245
Paisley North	61,100
Paisley South	66,358
Perth	78,400
Ross, Skye and Inverness West	71,119
Roxburgh and Berwickshire	57,480
Shetland Islands	21,988
Stirling	69,272
Strathkelvin and Bearsden	81,252
Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale	65,898
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine	79,217
West Renfrewshire	67,134
Western Isles	26,502