- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 6 December 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive what data it holds on the number of young people aged 16 and under who receive rehabilitation treatment as a result of alcohol misuse.
Answer
Information on the number ofyoung people undergoing rehabilitation as a result of alcohol misuse is not heldcentrally.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Lewis Macdonald on 6 December 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-26185 by Hugh Henry on 16 June 2006, whether it intends that information on the number of young people undergoing rehabilitation as a result of alcohol misuse will be held centrally and, if so, when this will be achieved.
Answer
We are currently in discussionwith the National Alcohol Information Resource (NAIR) about the information thatis collected about people in contact with alcohol services.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 20 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 5 December 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive how many drivers directly responsible for causing death or injury whilst under the influence of alcohol had a previous conviction for drink driving, broken down by (a) year since 1996 and (b) police force area.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-30027 on 5 December 2006. All answers to writtenparliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website the search facilityfor which can be found at
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 20 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 5 December 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive how many people were (a) killed and (b) injured by a driver who was under the influence of alcohol and who also had a previous conviction for drink driving, broken down by (a) year since 1996 and (b) police force area.
Answer
The available information onthe numbers of drink-drive accidents and casualties in Scotland is derivedfrom the GB-wide estimates compiled by the Department for Transport. The latestestimates are included at table 22 of Road Accidents Scotland 2005which was published by the Scottish Executive in November 2006, a copy of whichis available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 41118).These and other statistics collected centrally do not include information aboutany previous convictions that drivers involved in drink-drive accidents may have.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 10 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Malcolm Chisholm on 4 December 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive how many women’s refuge spaces there were in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.
Answer
The information requested isnot held centrally. Scottish Women’s Aid can provide information on the number ofrefuge spaces provided by affiliated women’s aid groups over the period requested.
The Executive has invested £12million since 2000 in providing 186 new, upgraded or refurbished refuge spaces,which include over 600 individual bed spaces, and the National Group to AddressViolence Against Women has established a “Domestic Abuse Accommodation and SupportProvision” subgroup which will be considering future need.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 20 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 4 December 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive what research it has undertaken into the effectiveness of ignition interlock systems for convicted drink drivers as a way to reduce this type of repeat offending, lower the rate of death and injury on Scotland’s roads and reduce pressure on the resources on police and emergency health professionals.
Answer
Road traffic legislation is reserved and as such is the responsibility of the Department for Transport.
The Department for Transport will shortly be completing a two and a half year research project (in Manchester and West Midlands) on the operation of alcohol ignition interlocks, in which drivers who had, in the past, been convicted of drink driving were invited to use an interlock for six months. The project has collected a large amount of data about their driving behaviour and attitudes and how they may have changed. A final report is expected in the spring of 2007.
Enabling powers have been created in the Road Safety Act 2006 to allow for a regime of alcohol ignition interlock programmes as a court disposal in Great Britain. This regime is modelled on the Drink-Drive Rehabilitation Courses that have been available throughout Great Britain since 2000.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 20 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 4 December 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive what the estimated or actual cost has been to the public purse of dealing with individuals who commit drink-driving offences in terms of (a) costs to the courts, (b) associated health resources for dealing with the victims of such offences and (c) police and other emergency services' clean-up and operational time and resources, broken down by year since 1996.
Answer
(a) The following table showsestimated court running costs for hearing cases involving drink driving relatedoffences, the majority of which are prosecuted through the courts by way of summarycriminal procedure.
The costs used in the table havebeen estimated by extrapolation from average court running and shrieval costs aspublished by the Scottish Executive in the annual Costs, Sentencing Profiles andthe Scottish Criminal Justice System report published by the Scottish Executivein terms of section 306 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act1995. Costs for 2004-05 have not yet been published.
Prosecution and witness costsare not included in the figures below.
Number of Convictions for Drink-DrivingRelated Offences and Associated Average Court Time Costs
| 1996-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-99 | 1999-2000 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 | 2002-03 | 2003-04 |
| 9,843 | 9,452 | 8,345 | 8,527 | 7,238 | 7,477 | 10,688 | 9,192 |
| £1.1 million | £990,000 | £880,000 | £810,000 | £690,000 | £830,000 | £1.3 million | £1.2 million |
Conviction figures extractedfrom Statistical Bulletin Criminal Justice Series: CrJ/2006/3 published by the ScottishExecutive http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/04/25104019/31.
(b) This information is not held centrally as regards health resources.
(c) This information is not held centrally as regards police and other emergency service resources.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Cathy Jamieson on 4 December 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive how many young people have been charged with committing offences while under the influence of alcohol or drugs in each year since 1999, broken down by police authority area.
Answer
Information on the drink or drugsstatus of accused persons is not generally available from the statistics collectedcentrally on court proceedings. The exceptions to this are offences where by definitionthe accused was drunk or under the influence of drink or drugs. The available informationin relation to these offences is given in the following table.
Persons Aged Under 21Proceeded Against in Scottish Courts for Selected Offences1, byPolice Force Area, 1999-2000 to 2004-05
| Police Force Area | 1999-2000 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 | 2002-03 | 2003-04 | 2004-05 |
| Central | 39 | 52 | 34 | 86 | 68 | 56 |
| Dumfries and Galloway | 19 | 22 | 22 | 31 | 34 | 35 |
| Fife | 56 | 55 | 49 | 135 | 77 | 65 |
| Grampian | 173 | 79 | 134 | 129 | 149 | 118 |
| Lothian and Borders | 91 | 116 | 134 | 174 | 129 | 151 |
| Northern | 115 | 40 | 71 | 100 | 101 | 81 |
| Strathclyde | 373 | 316 | 310 | 417 | 335 | 366 |
| Tayside | 81 | 57 | 91 | 119 | 115 | 89 |
| Scotland | 947 | 737 | 845 | 1,191 | 1,008 | 961 |
Note: 1. Where main offence includescausing death by careless driving when under influence of drink or drugs, drunkennessor drink driving.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 14 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 30 November 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive how it assesses the performance of members appointed by Scottish ministers to the boards of non-departmental public bodies and what powers it has to remove board members who it considers consistently underperform.
Answer
Under the terms and conditionsof their appointment, board members and chairs of regulated non-departmentalpublic bodies are subject to annual performance appraisal. Board members are normallyassessed by their board chair who in turn is normally assessed by a senior civilservant. Performance is assessed against agreed objectives.
In addition, allnon-departmental public bodies operate within the parameters of the Executive’sPerformance Management framework and are monitored by dedicated sponsor teams withinScottish Executive Departments.
Legislation establishing individualnon-departmental public bodies provides authority for ministers to appoint boardmembers and chairs, and subject to the Nolan principles, should they under-perform,for ministers to remove board members and chairs from their posts. Similar provisionsare also specified in the terms and conditions attached to individual appointments.
- Asked by: Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 November 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Robert Brown on 30 November 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive how many of the 1,426 young people referred to the Children’s Reporter in 2005-06 on grounds of misuse of alcohol or drugs are currently on rehabilitation programmes.
Answer
This information is not heldcentrally.
