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The Scottish Executive and Her Majesty's Government are frequently in touch to discuss a wide range of issues including taxation. Taxation remains reserved to the Westminster Parliament. The Scottish Executive takes full account of representations made to it on such issues and continues to liase with the relevant Whitehall Departments to ensure that Scottish interests are taken fully into account.

According to the Labour Force Survey run by the Office for National Statistics, in summer 1997 the employment rate for working aged men in Glasgow was 62.0%. This had risen by 3.2 percentage points to 65.2% in summer 2000. Over the same three years, the employment rate in Scotland amongst working aged men increased by 2.2 percentage points from 75.2 to 77.4%.Through its membership of the Glasgow Alliance, the Executive is working in partnership with all of the relevant authorities and agencies to address this issue in the city. The alliance's target is to provide 15,000 additional job placements for Glaswegians by 2003.

All information on cause of death collected when a death is registered is held on public registers. The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) collates this information and codes the cause of death data using the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases (ICD). There is not at present a specific ICD code for methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). It is therefore not possible to identify the numbers of deaths to which MRSA may have contributed.

The water quality of the River Clyde has been improving year on year since the 1970s. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) continuously monitors river water quality and sets discharge limits into watercourses. There is a multi-million pound programme of improvements to combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and sewage treatment works throughout the Clyde and its tributaries, and SEPA is confident of continued improvements in water quality.

As I made clear in my statement which was issued on 18 January 2001, a further statement on the review will be made in May.

No untreated sewage is discharged into the River Clyde down to the Erskine Bridge except through combined sewer overflows (CSOs) which discharge dilute screened sewage at times of high rainfall. It is not possible to accurately quantify the volume of these intermittent discharges.

Health boards' unified budgets include provision for the cost of prescribed drugs and are set to allow for the introduction of new drugs and the greater use of existing therapies. It is for health boards to agree with Primary Care Trusts the amount to be set aside for prescribing and the contingency arrangements for any unexpected expenditure fluctuations.

Millennium Cellular Services have received no financial assistance from the Scottish Executive.

The Health Technology Board for Scotland is currently working on a process to comment on all final appraisals from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). Treatments for Alzheimer's disease will be the first topic to go through the process and their comment is expected in the next few weeks.As an interim measure, the Scottish Executive has asked local Drug and Therapeutics Committees to re-examine their advice to their own clinicians about the use of their drugs, taking into account the NICE guidance.

The Scottish Executive is in regular contact with the UK Government on a wide range of issues, including closures and redundancy policy.