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The Scottish Executive is committed to reducing the levels of smoking by people in Scotland. The White Paper Smoking Kills outlines a comprehensive range of measures which we are now taking forward. These include health education and promotion activity; improvement on enforcement measures relating to underage sales; a Voluntary Charter on Smoking in Public Places; allocation of funding to health boards to spend on smoking cessation services and nicotine replacement therapy, and legislation to ban tobacco advertising and sponsorship.

The information is not held centrally. The precise cost of smoking related disease is difficult to ascertain, since cost data collected centrally from the National Health Service in Scotland cannot be attributed to individual disease. However, a report on hospital care for smoking related diseases in Greater Glasgow Health Board in 1992 estimated the cost of treatment at £14.4 million. Adjusted for inflation this equates to some £18 million in today's prices. This does not take into account costs associated with community nursing services, prescribing drugs in the community and GP services. (ASH Scotland/HEBS: The Smoking Epidemic: Counting the Cost in Scotland.)

The prescription charge medical exemption arrangements were reviewed by the UK Government in 1997. The decision taken was that the conditions which currently qualify for exemption would remain unchanged for the remainder of the current UK Parliament. The Scottish Executive has no plans to change this position.

We have begun to consider options for the future of the New Futures Fund once the current programme ends in March 2002 but it is too early to say what the outcome will be.

No. A once and for all transfer of funds was made to the health budget for Scotland by the Department of Health in 1989 to meet the costs of treatment carried out in Scotland under the reciprocal health care agreement. The cost to health boards of care provided under the reciprocal health care agreement is recognised within the total resources allocated to each health board each year.

In line with the measures in Smoking Kills, health boards were issued in April 1999 with guidance about extending and developing NHS efforts to help people stop smoking. One of the measures included the provision of one week's free nicotine replacement therapy for those smokers least able to afford to buy the products.

Health boards are investing an additional £1 million per annum over the period1999-2000 to 2001-02, on smoking cessation services.

The Scottish Executive is not aware of any trials in Scotland related to the effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). However, I am aware that there have been over 90 randomised controlled trials related to various forms of NRT undertaken elsewhere. I understand that they have found that NRT is effective in aiding smoking cessation.

Guidance was issued to health boards in April 1999 on extending and developing NHS' efforts to help people stop smoking. The Scottish Executive has allocated an additional £1 million per annum over the period 1999-2000 to 2001-02 on smoking cessation services. Health boards are required to monitor and evaluate the success of their smoking cessation initiatives including the use of NRT.

It has been the long-standing policy of successive Governments that only inpatients should receive medicines and appliances free of charge.

However, prescription charges are only applied to those who can afford to pay and there is an extensive exemption and reimbursement scheme to protect the most vulnerable patients. Many people qualify for total or partial exemption on low income grounds or because they are in receipt of any number of benefits. The Scottish Executive has no current plans to alter the prescription charge categories.

In my answer to Karen Whitefield on 15 June (question S1W-7983) I set out the conclusions reached by the Executive following consultation on the paper A New Single Tenancy for Scotland: Rights, Obligations and Opportunities. This confirmed that the Executive plans to legislate to introduce a common set of enhanced statutory rights for all tenants of social landlords.

Specifically in relation to the right to buy for current housing association tenants, our conclusion is that those tenants who currently have this right should continue to be able to exercise it on existing terms and conditions. Similarly the current provisions for exemption from the right to buy for housing associations with charitable status will continue and accommodation within sheltered housing and other group housing schemes for persons with particular needs will also be exempt.

We have given careful consideration to the representations made by housing associations in relation to those houses let since 1989 on assured tenancies which do not give tenants a right to buy. To ensure that the new tenancy arrangements do not create financial difficulties for housing associations, these houses will be exempt from the right to buy for a period of 10 years unless housing associations themselves decide to allow relevant tenants to have the new "modernised" right to buy (details of which were set out in my recent answer to Karen Whitefield).

We have also concluded that in some areas, to be designated by local authorities with the approval of Scottish Ministers as "pressured" because of the difficulties in meeting the demand for new socially rented houses, the right to buy could be suspended for all new and re-let housing association and council housing for a specific period.Further details of our proposals will be set out in the forthcoming Consultation Paper on the Housing Bill which I plan to issue shortly.

When I established the committee I indicated that I would undertake consultation with relevant parties before decisions were made. No decisions on the funding of the McCrone recommendations are possible prior to the outcome of those discussions.