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None of Scottish Homes houses at any time transferred to Communities Scotland. All Scottish Homes tenants were supplied with a newsletter in September 2001, which explained the future for Scottish Homes and its remaining tenants. A copy of the newsletter has been put in the Parliament's Reference Centre.

The Scottish Legal Aid Board, at present, does not hold information on the ethnicity of applicants. Applications for advice and assistance are monitored by gender only and this is reported in the board's annual report.As a public body, under the recently laid Race Relations Act 1976 (Statutory Duties) (Scotland) Order 2002, the board will be required to publish a race equality scheme setting out how they intend to fulfil their duties under the order. All bodies have until 30 November 2002 to comply with the order.

Institutions already have a significant degree of flexibility in the use of Hardship Funds. Institutions themselves decide how to disburse the Hardship Funds to individual students within guidelines laid down by the Scottish Executive. For example, institutions are allowed to offer short-term repayable cash advances; to use up to 10% of their total Higher Education (HE) allocation to provide scholarships or bursaries and to provide payments of up to £3,500 per year to individual students without recourse to the Executive. Each institution is also free to determine its own "means-test" and the frequency of instalments. Institutions have also now been advised that they may vire up to 20% of their Mature Students' Bursary Fund (MSBF) allocation to their HE Hardship Funds, provided that this is consistent with the objective of targeting support on assisting mature students with childcare costs. This will enable institutions to adjust the distribution of their funding allocations based on their actual student population in the current academic year, as MSBF is phased in.

Since autumn 2001, both the thresholds for parent and spouse contributions and the amounts available for support for students over 18 have been the same regardless of whether the student is on a further or higher education course. We are considering whether there are additional changes which should be made to the support arrangements in order to achieve further alignment.

Good progress has been made. Over 1,400 central heating systems have now been installed and Eaga hope to install 3,500 heating systems by March 2002.

The final response to the questionnaire was received in mid-February and the results are being analysed. I expect to report on the results in the next few weeks.

The Ministerial Working Group's report was published today, and is available on the Scottish Executive website.

The NHS in Scotland provides the conduit for the bulk of the £26 million per annum Health Improvement Fund resources, which includes priorities to improve the diet of children through supporting the provision of fruit in pre-school settings and breakfast clubs and fruit/salad bars in school settings. NHS boards have received their allocations and notification of the priority topics and it is for boards, in partnership with other local interests, to determine how best to meet local needs to improve community health in their local areas. I look forward to receiving the evaluation report from the pilot Fruit Plus initiative in Glasgow, which is partly funded through the Health Improvement Fund.

The Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) is represented on the Joint Advisory Committee which is overseeing the development of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-22733.