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This is an operational matter for the Scottish Ambulance Service, the information requested is not held centrally.

Scottish ministers have no power to instruct the developers of the Beauly to Denny power line to underground the line, but recognise the need to reduce the impact of the line in the Stirling area. This is why we chose to impose Condition 19 of the consent upon the developer, requiring a Stirling Visual Mitigation Scheme, specifically for the purpose of mitigating the visual impact at Stirling, in addition to a Stirling Rationalisation Scheme, condition 18, to deal with the cumulative impacts of wirescape in the area.

Following submission of formal proposals from Scottish Power Transmissions (SPT) for the Stirling Visual Mitigation Scheme in March 2011, Scottish Ministers issued a request to Scottish Power Transmission and Stirling Council to work together to re-examine all the options, because ministers are determined that all options, including undergrounding have been, or are fully considered before any subsequent proposals are considered.

There is emerging evidence on the use of transcatheter aortic valve implantation, and as agreed at the time of the original decision, I have asked for a further review to be carried out to assess whether this most up to date research provides more robust evidence about the clinical and cost effectiveness of the treatment.

NHS Scotland’s National Planning Forum (NPF) has asked the Scottish Health Technologies Group to provide support to this review. The scope of this review will be to consider the latest published research. This will enable further consideration of its current recommendation on the clinical and cost effectiveness of the treatment. Clinicians from Scottish cardiac centres will also be involved.

The NPF will agree a timescale for this work when it next meets on 1 July 2011.

Decisions regarding the provision of NHS services are a matter for NHS boards.

In the case of medicines, all NHS boards have arrangements for clinically-led consideration of Scottish Medicines Consortium “not recommended” medicines for individual patients, including medicines to treat rare diseases. The process for such consideration is known as Individual Patient Treatment Requests and clinicians remain responsible for clinical decisions regarding the care of individual patients.

Information on the number of NHS patients who have received healthcare services through private arrangements under the guidance in document CMO(2009)3 is not held centrally.

Information on the number of NHS patients who have received healthcare services through private arrangements under the guidance in document CMO(2009)3 is not held centrally.

Scottish Government officials worked with Moray Council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and other key partners to develop the economic case for retaining the RAF presence at Lossiemouth. This work had cross party political support. The document can be found at:

http://www.moraytaskforce.com/facts-and-figures.html.

Scottish Government officials worked with Fife Council, Scottish Enterprise and other key partners to develop the RAF Leuchars economic case. This work had cross party political support. The document can be accessed on Fife Council’s website at:

http://www.fifedirect.org.uk/index.cfm

Scotland’s ancient Roman sites form part of our rich heritage which is a key asset in our drive to boost tourism and meet industry growth ambitions. Partners are currently looking for opportunities to capitalise on rural heritage tourism by building on a recent report commissioned by Scottish Enterprise entitled Valuing Rural Heritage.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) operates independently from the Scottish Government. Details about the nature of the SMC processes are available at:

http://www.scottishmedicines.org.uk.