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Scottish Enterprise works closely with the financial community, including venture capital funds and banks, to assess the investment market in Scotland. This has led to initiatives such as the Business Growth Fund and the Scottish Co-investment Fund being introduced. Further work is underway looking at equity investment provision above the £2 million level.

The Scottish Executive provides a wide range of support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as they work to break into export markets.

Specific measures introduced since 1999 to improve the service to business include:

Bringing together Scottish Trade International and Locate in Scotland in 2001 to create Scottish Development International (SDI), and by doing so strengthening the resources available to Scottish companies to target overseas partners;

Creating a one-stop shop for advice about global markets in the form of local Business Gateway International partnerships;

Simplifying the range of international business services available, and

Developing the Globalscot network of over 850 influential business people around the world willing to help Scottish companies.

The delivery of business support is mainly a matter for Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Within the range of business support provided by the enterprise networks, initiatives such as the Business Growth Fund and Scottish Co-investment Fund directly support equity investment in new and early stage businesses.

As part of its pipeline of support, the Scottish Executive and its agencies have a range of initiatives in place to assist Scottish innovations. These include:

the ICASS (Innovators’ Counselling and Advisory Service for Scotland) service, which provides free, specialist, confidential advice to innovators, inventors and small innovative companies on issues such as commercial viability, intellectual property protection and product development;

the Small Companies Innovation Scheme (SCIS) delivered by Scottish Enterprise and equivalent support offered by Highlands and Islands Enterprise;

the Executive’s SMART, SPUR and SPUR^PLUS industrial research and development (R&D) support schemes;

Scottish Enterprise’s R&D Plus scheme for large companies, and

the £49 million Proof of Concept Programme to assist universities, research institutes and NHS Trusts to bring ideas from the laboratory into the market place.

The main measures introduced since 1999 which are aimed at facilitating knowledge transfer from the research base to companies are shown in the following table. Further information and plans for future activity in this area are provided in the Scottish Executive’s Response to the Lambert Review of Business-University Collaboration, March 2005, a copy of which is in the Scottish Parliament’s Information Centre. The Scottish Funding Council has established an overarching Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Group which will take forward the knowledge transfer agenda in both the university and the college sectors. Technology Ventures Scotland, supported by Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Funding Council, also looks at knowledge transfer strategy and innovation across Scotland, taking an overarching role in encouraging the commercialisation of Scotland's Science and technology research, particularly from the perspective of business.

Initiative	Year First Introduced	Provider	Purpose of Initiative
Proof of Concept	1999	Scottish Enterprise	To provide pre-seed development gap funding to allow universities, research institutes and NHS Trusts to bring ideas from discovery in the laboratory to the proof of concept stage.
Knowledge Transfer Grant	2001	Scottish Funding Council	To provide higher education institutions with a flexible funding stream to support knowledge transfer activities, including commercialisation of research.
Intermediary Technology Institutes	2003	Scottish Enterprise	To act as a substitute for corporate research and development expenditure; to substantially increase and sustain the birth rate of indigenous high value-add  technology based companies leading to significant improvements in productivity gains.
SME Collaborative Research Programme (SCORE)	2003	Scottish Executive	To support Scottish based SMEs undertaking joint research and development projects with the public sector science base.
Scottish Executive Enterprise and Knowledge Transfer (SEEKIT)	2003	Scottish Executive	To support projects that promote co-operation in research and development and knowledge transfer between  the Scottish public sector science base and Scottish SMEs.
Scottish Proposal Assistance Fund (SPAF)	2003	Scottish Funding Council	To increase Scottish industry participation in the EU Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) and to  increase the scale of research and development by Scottish companies, linking those companies to the research base.
Proposal Assistance for Co-ordination of European Research (PACER)	Pilot – 2003-04   Expanded 2004-05	Scottish Funding Council	To assist Scottish universities access EU Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) funding, and to increase links with Scottish companies.
Interface	2005	Scottish Higher Education sector funded by the Scottish Funding Council	To provide a central point of access for business, particularly SMEs, to research in the higher education sector.
Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department (SEERAD) Knowledge Transfer and Management Grant	2006	Scottish Executive	To improve knowledge management and transfer and collaboration from SEERAD Main Research Providers

 

A range of support is in place to help companies in Scotland benefit from pan-European programmes for technology transfer.

The Innovation Relay Centre (IRC) Scotland assists Scottish organisations in Transnational Technology Transfer (TTT) through the IRC Network across Europe.

The Scottish Proposal Assistance Fund is designed to increase Scottish Industry participation in the EU Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) which supports collaborative research and development with a commercial end in view.

The central heating programmes in their current format will come to an end this year, however, new programmes will be announced shortly which will continue until at least 2008 and the next spending review.

The information requested isnot held in the format requested or for all of the time periods stipulated. I referthe member to the answers to questions, S2W-9973 and S2W-10733 on 9 and 29 September2004 respectively. All answers to written parliamentary questions are availableon the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

At present we believe that nosections of the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route will be single carriageway, but thata wide single carriageway with overtaking sections would be sufficient for the trafficpredicted to use the 13km Stonehaven to Milltimber spur. The final solution willdepend on the detailed traffic modelling and design work currently being undertaken.We will also be discussing this with our project partners.

Transport Scotland hasthe operational responsibility for this area, and can be contacted for more informationif required.

In the requested period 133 practicesceased and 137 practices began providing NHS general dental services.

The information requested forthe financial years 1999-2000 to 2004-05 is detailed in the tables: Number of DentalPractices that Ceased Providing NHS General Dental Services. For comparison detailsof the number of dental practices in Scotland that have commenced providing NHS general dental servicesover the same period are also provided in tables: Number of dental practicesthat began providing NHS general dental services. Copies of these tables havebeen placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. numbers: 38690 and38691).