Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Official Report makes every effort to meet its target of publishing committee Official Reports as quickly as possible and to agreed deadlines. The date of the next meeting is the first determinant of priority.The importance of timely publication is appreciated, but there are periods of more intense committee activity when the number, frequency and/or duration of meetings exceed the capacity to produce the Official Report in time for a committee's next meeting. To address such situations, the following order of prioritisation was devised by the directorate of clerking and reporting and endorsed by the conveners group in April:

• Stage 2: Executive bills

• Stage 2: non-Executive bills (including committee bills and members' bills)
• Consideration stage: private bills
• Major inquiry (eg SQA)
• Evidence at stage 1: Executive bills
• Evidence at stage 1: non-Executive bills (including committee bills and members' bills)
• Preliminary stage: private bills
• Other evidence

Details of publication dates are in the official report's production schedule, which is available on SPEIR and updated daily.There were 120 committee meetings in the 12 weeks between the Christmas and Easter recesses: the Official Reports of all 120 were produced in time for the next meeting of the committee. There have been 59 meetings in the four weeks from 23 April to 18 May, during which time there was a heavy schedule of stage 2 meetings. The public holidays on 7 and 28 May cause significant delays in publication, but some Official Report staff will be working on the privilege holiday on 25 May to reduce the backlog.The SPCB addressed official report resourcing in February 2000. The consequential recruitment and training processes are on target to be completed by September.

The figures are shown in the table.

Grade	Salary Band	No of posts in each band as at 31 March 2001
1	£8,755 - £12,300	74
2	£10,815 - £15,375	135
3	£12,670 - £19,960	36
4	£15,760 - £24,165	32
5	£18,910 - £28,365	13
6	£23,115 - £42,025	28
7	£36,770 - £52,530	4
8	£74,200	1
Board members	£7,409 for 24.5 hours per month	10+1 unpaid
Chairman	£25,123 for 56 hours per month	1

The Legal Aid Fund is not cash limited and therefore Scottish Ministers are required to provide whatever monies are necessary to meet the legal aid granted by the Scottish Legal Aid Board. There is therefore no question of a freeze on legal aid.

The figures are shown in the following table and exclude temporary staff.

	1996-97		1997-98		1998-99		1999-2000		2000-01
Salary Band	No. of leavers	% of no of posts in band	No. of leavers	% of no of posts in band	No. of leavers	% of no of posts in band	No. of leavers	% of no of posts in band	No. of leavers	% of no of posts in band
1	26	33	27	34	24	32	25	29	23	31
2	5	4	19	16	23	20	24	21	23	17
3	5	11	3	7	6	16	4	9	4	11
4	3	33	1	8	3	21	2	13	1	3
5	1	8	0	0	2	17	1	9	1	8
6	2	11	0	0	6	32	0	0	2	7
7	1	14	1	17	2	33	2	50	0	0
8	0	0	0	0	1	100	0	0	0	0
Total leavers	43	14	51	18	67	24	58	20	54	17

The First Minister addressed the hypothetical situation where the report of Audit Scotland or the committee convinced ministers that there are serious difficulties with the contract. He further stated that there is no evidence whatever at this stage to justify such a course of action.The situation envisaged is clearly hypothetical and it is not possible to quantify possible penalties and/or compensation at this time.

None. Scottish Borders Council initiated its local emergency plan and acted upon this in conjunction with Scottish Power, Lothian and Borders Police and other emergency services. Throughout the emergency, officials kept in close touch with Scottish Power and submitted regular reports to ministers to keep them apprised of the overall response to the emergency situation. It will be a matter for Scottish Borders Council to review their emergency planning arrangements to see what, if anything, might be improved.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-13568 on 9 March 2001.

I refer the Member to the answer given to question S1W-12814.

Funding for child protection is part of the general budgets of the many agencies involved such as Social Work Departments, health boards and the police, who have discretion to determine their own spending priorities. Expenditure specific to child protection is not therefore separately identified or monitored.

Businesses should apply to their local authority for hardship relief from rates. The additional funding of hardship relief in the 17 local authority areas will be provided through a redetermination of Revenue Support Grant in the Local Government Finance (Scotland) Order 2002. The scheme is not cash limited and local authorities will need to make claims for this grant to the Scottish Executive by 30 September 2001, giving details of the rate relief given. Guidance has been issued to local authorities and copied to business representative organisations in Scotland. It is also available on the Executive's website www.scotland.gov.uk/agri/footandmouth under "publications".