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The Scottish Executive and the UK Government will shortly be publishing a road safety strategy for the period to 2010. The strategy will underpin new and challenging targets for casualty reductions which will build on the progress already made. Fatal and serious casualties in Scotland have halved since the early 1980s.

The Scottish Executive will continue to provide funds to the Scottish Road Safety Campaign for the development of road safety education and publicity materials, including the current "Foolsspeed" campaign. It will also continue to fund the operation of the Children's Traffic Club in Scotland, to ensure that road safety education is available free to all three- and four-year-old children in Scotland.The Scottish Executive reviews annually accidents on trunk roads and investigates clusters of accidents at particular locations and routes with high accident rates. This enables necessary remedial measures to be carried out.

The deployment of police officers to specific duties is an operational matter for Chief Constables. The police are committed to the principles of the Best Value approach as a means of increasing the efficiency of forces and improving the already high standards achieved for response times.

Self-help groups such as those involved with Neighbourhood Watch and crime prevention/community safety panels operate entirely on a voluntary basis, supported by local police forces. The Scottish Executive provides support in the form of publicity materials and in the case of panels has, since 1997, awarded £54,000 of funding for local crime prevention initiatives. I also announced last August the introduction of new challenge funding of £1.5 million for projects from community safety partnerships to run in tandem with the CCTV Challenge Competition which receives similar funding.

The distribution of Grant-Aided Expenditure, which feeds into the distribution of Aggregate External Finance, is based on a formula assessment of councils' relative expenditure needs agreed with CoSLA. Glasgow City Council's below average increase in GAE this year was largely due to the continuing phasing in of revised Social Work GAE indicators and the normal redistributive effects on a number of other service assessments within the agreed formula approach.

I announced the revised aggregate figures for this year's local government finance settlement and the general approach I would be taking to the distribution in my statement to Parliament on 8 December. The proposals for individual allocations which I announced in my reply to a Written Parliamentary Question (S1W-3294) on 15 December 1999 are still the subject of consultation with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. The Parliament will have the opportunity to consider the final allocations when the Local Government Finance Order 2000 is laid later this month.

The Scottish Executive does not set specific efficiency savings targets for health boards or NHS Trusts. Boards and Trusts are expected to supplement the substantial real terms increase in resources they received this year by improving the efficiency with which they deliver services. All the savings generated in this way are re-invested locally in health service developments.

The Joint Ministerial Committee will bring together Ministers from the UK Government and the three devolved administrations. The remit and structure of the JMC are set out in Annex A of the Memorandum of Understanding.

JMC (Poverty) covers issues on child poverty and pensioner poverty and JMC (Knowledge Economy) will consider joint action on information technology in education and industry. Both will be chaired by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. JMC (EU) covers European Union issues and will be chaired by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth AffairsMinisters of the devolved administrations and the territorial Secretaries of State will be members of the Committees as well as relevant UK Ministers. It will be for the Committee members to decide where and how often the Committees will meet.Paragraph A1.11 of the Memorandum of Understanding provides that "the proceedings of each meeting of the JMC will be regarded as confidential by the participants, in order to permit free and candid discussion. However, the holding of JMC meetings will be made known publicly and there may be occasions on which the Committee will wish to issue a public statement on the outcome of its discussions."

This is an operational matter for Scottish Enterprise. I will ask the Chairman of that organisation to write to Mr Gibson.

The level of new business start-ups in Scotland is determined by a range of factors, including the overall state of the Scottish and UK economies. The quarterly GDP statistics indicate that the Scottish economy experienced a modest slowdown in the rates of GDP growth over the first half of 1999, along with UK and other European economies. However, the most recent economic indicators are favourable and the latest forecasts suggest that growth in Scotland will accelerate from 2000 in line with the UK.We also have a number of specific initiatives in hand to increase the number of start-up businesses assisted by the enterprise network, and to improve the quality and consistency of advice and support for small businesses across Scotland. We will announce details of these improvements shortly.

The budget of the Scottish Executive is allocated fairly across Scotland. Financial plans for 2000-01 include:£914 million allocated to Glasgow Health Board;£830 million local authority grant to Glasgow City Council;£51 million for Glasgow Development Agency;£45 million local authority gross non housing capital allocation.