- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Friday, 18 June 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 1 July 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to paragraph 4.4 of Final Consensus Statement of the Royal College of Physicians' Consensus Conference on Hepatitis C, what its response is in respect of the call for new drug therapies.
Answer
The regulation and safety of medicines is reserved and is the responsibility of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MRHA), or, for certain types of drugs, the European Medicines Agency (EMEA).
The MRHA has advised that any new drug applications, including those for Hepatitis C must achieve the required standards of safety, quality and efficacy before being granted a licence. The Scottish Executive would welcome any new drug therapies, which satisfied these criteria.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 June 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Mary Mulligan on 29 June 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive with reference to The State of the Nation 2004 - An assessment of the state of the UK's infrastructure by the Institution of Civil Engineers, what measures are being taken to ensure avoidance of development on flood plains and whether it considers such measures sufficient and, if not, what steps it is taking to remedy the situation.
Answer
In February we published
Scottish Planning Policy (SPP) 7: Planning and Flooding. SPP 7 states that new development should not take place if it would be at significant risk of flooding, or if it would increase the probability of flooding elsewhere. This new policy should be implemented by local authorities in the first instance, as the planning authorities for their areas.
We will publish a Planning Advice Note to supplement SPP 7 later this year.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 11 May 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Margaret Curran on 29 June 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive what statistics it has with regard to the shortage of housing in the rental and owner-occupier sectors in rural areas, particularly for local people seeking to purchase or rent property in their area for the first time.
Answer
The Scottish Executive housing statistics branch gathers information from councils on numbers of vacant council houses and lettings; and on numbers on and changes in local authority housing lists. Communities Scotland gathers information from housing associations on vacancies and lettings. Sources of the latest available published information are:
Vacant council houses and lettings: Quarterly Statistical Bulletin HSG/2004/2, available at:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00320-00.asp.Numbers on and changes in local authority housing lists: Quarterly Statistics Bulletin HSG/2003/4, available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00266-00.asp.
The latest volume of Scottish Registered Social Landlord Statistics 2002-2003, published in April 2004 is available on the CS Website at:
http://www.communitiesscotland.gov.uk/web/FILES/R&IStats200203.pdf.These sources do not distinguish people seeking to rent council or housing association property in their area for the first time. Information from local authorities relates to the council as a whole and does not provide separate information for rural areas within the council area. Similarly, Information gathered from each housing association does not separately identify rural from other areas served by the association.
The Executive does not have statistical information on numbers wishing to purchase or to rent privately.
In preparing local housing strategies councils assess local housing markets to, among other things, identify actual or potential shortages with the aim of developing strategies to address these. The review of affordable housing currently being undertaken by the Executive includes an assessment of shortages based on the available information, which will inform policy proposals.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 June 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Allan Wilson on 28 June 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to The State of the Nation 2004 - An assessment of the state of the UK's infrastructure by the Institution of Civil Engineers, what steps it has taken to identify cost-effective measures to protect existing properties from flooding.
Answer
It is for local authorities to identify cost effective measures to protect properties in their areas from flooding. However, the National Technical Advisory Group on Flooding Issues, established by the Executive last autumn, is developing improved national guidance on flood-risk management for publication later this year. This guidance will help local authorities in meeting the Executive’s long standing requirement for grant aid, that flood prevention schemes demonstrate value for money.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 June 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Allan Wilson on 28 June 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to The State of the Nation 2004 - An assessment of the state of the UK's infrastructure by the Institution of Civil Engineers, whether it will complete, as a matter of urgency, an asset management plan for river and sea defences and, if so, what steps it has taken to complete such a plan.
Answer
The Executive has recently commissioned consultants to develop a data-base of all flood defences constructed by local authorities under the provisions of the Flood Prevention (Scotland) Act 1961. This data-base will provide information and condition assessments of these flood defences.
However, management of flood defences is not a matter for the Executive: instead, this is for local authorities or landowners. While the availability of the proposed data-base will help in the management of assets it is not the Executive’s responsibility to draw up asset management plans.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 June 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Hugh Henry on 28 June 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to The State of the Nation 2004 - An assessment of the state of the UK's infrastructure by the Institution of Civil Engineers, what measures are in place to co-ordinate action between all statutory authorities in responding to flooding incidents.
Answer
Throughout Scotland, local authorities and the emergency services take the issue of flood prevention and flood warning very seriously. In all areas likely to be affected by flooding, generic multi-agency response plans exist to deal with this risk. Furthermore, each area is represented by multi-agency flood liaison/response groups, which can be brought together at the earliest sign of potential risk of flooding. Further details of the multi agency response can be found on the Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s website (
www.sepa.org.uk).
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 June 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Allan Wilson on 28 June 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to The State of the Nation 2004 - An assessment of the state of the UK's infrastructure by the Institution of Civil Engineers, whether it has any plans to create a flood-risk map for the whole of Scotland.
Answer
The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) already holds indicative flood-risk maps for the Scottish mainland; copies of these are available for inspection at SEPA’s offices. SEPA also supplied copies of the maps to planning authorities in 1997.
Last October I announced additional funding to enable SEPA to commission second generation flood-risk maps for the whole of Scotland. These updated maps will benefit from the latest available techniques, thereby allowing further refinement of indicative flood-risk areas.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 09 June 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 25 June 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to the Smoking Epidemic paragraph on page 11 of the Public Health Institute for Scotland's Two Year Report January 2001 - March 2003, whether the promised “atlas showing estimated smoking prevalence and smoking related mortality rates at post code sector, local authority, parliamentary constituency and NHS board level”, due for completion in autumn 2003, has been published; if so, where it can be accessed and, if not, when it will be published.
Answer
It had been intended that smokingprevalence estimates for the Smoking Atlas of Scotland would be producedfor the Public Health Institute for Scotland, now part of NHS Health Scotland, usingdata from the Scottish Health Surveys of 1995 and 1998 applied to the Scottish populationcensus 2001. However, because the prevalence of smoking has declined considerablysince 1998 and even more so since 1995, an atlas based on these figures would beinaccurate. It has therefore been agreed that the Atlas should be based on the 2003Scottish Health Survey data, which are unlikely to be available for analysis untilearly 2005. As a result the Smoking Atlas of Scotland will not now be availableuntil summer 2005.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 28 April 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 25 June 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive, with reference to the Royal National Institute of the Blind's report, Unseen: Neglect, isolation and household poverty amongst older people with sight loss, what steps will be taken to increase the number of rehabilitation officers for blind and partially-sighted people.
Answer
I refer the member to the answergiven to question S2W-7896 given on 12 May 2004. Allanswers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website,the search facility for which can be found at
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
-
Date lodged: Monday, 14 June 2004
-
Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 24 June 2004
To ask the Scottish Executive which dental practices in the Borders area (a) provide NHS dental treatment and (b) have vacancies for new patients.
Answer
This information is not held centrally. NHS Lothian, which administers aspects of family health services on behalf of NHS Borders, will hold information on those dentists who have joined the dental list of NHS Borders in order to provide NHS general dental services. NHS Lothian may also hold information on those dentists accepting new NHS patients.
