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Notes:

1. Excludes cash sums of £107 million in 1995-96 and £83 million in 1996-97 which was additional borrowing consent to enable councils to purchase New Towns stock.

2. Non-HRA Spending includes all non HRA spending, whether funded by borrowing, receipts or capital funded from revenue. it also includes the spending on private sector repair and improvement grants, shown in the line below.

3. Following council housing transfers in Scottish Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and Glasgow, these councils do not appear in the figures for 2003-04 onwards.

4. Under the Prudential Regime for local authority capital finance, introduced in April 2004, HRA borrowing consents are no longer issued by the Scottish Executive, and it is for councils to determine their own level of borrowing, in line with the Prudential Code. In addition, the rules (introduced in 1996-97) requiring councils to use a proportion of their HRA receipts to redeem debt were not continued beyond April 2004.

5. From 2002-03, the figures exclude cash sums of £9.3 million a year of RSI funding which is allocated through the Local Government budget

6. The Affordable Housing Investment Programme was established in April 2005. It includes the Communities Scotland Development Programme, the Community Ownership Programme and the Housing Estates Regeneration Fund. The figure provided for 2005-06 is as set out in the Budget Act, and for 2006-07 is the real terms equivalent of the planned figure published in the Draft Budget 2006-07. In both years, subject to parliamentary approval of revised budgets, actual spend is expected to be higher than the figures provided above, as a result of using anticipated receipts, and resources currently held in the central unallocated provision.

The Scottish Executive funds Glasgow Homelessness Network to collect data from organisations providing services to rough sleepers across Scotland. Whilst this provides information about the physical and mental health of rough sleepers, and whether they are registered disabled, it does not include specific information on autism spectrum disorder.

Regarding the collection of data on the incidence of autism spectrum disorder more generally, I refer to Lewis Macdonald’s response to the answer to question S2W-19055 on 20 September 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

No national data is currently available. Detecting autism is complex. The SPS prefer to focus on assessing need in order to address and support any identified functional need, rather than to try to make such diagnoses. The Scottish Prison Service is drawing together local studies to identify and address the needs of prisoners with learning disabilities.

On non-business days visitors can also take a paid for guided tour which includes the garden lobby, chamber, committee rooms and Queensberry House foyer. Tour guides are trained to meet the various additional requirements that may be required by a disabled person to allow them to fully participate in the tour. Further disability equality training for the guides is planned in the coming year.

Visitor services will be reviewing the Guided Tour Programme as part of a wider review of Visitor Services planned for autumn 2005 and this will include considering the range and types of tours on offer.

In addition the text relating to the exhibition in the Main Hall, which offers further information on Parliament, is also available in Braille.

The Braille leaflets are publicised on the sign rack and on our website. In addition, Visitor Service Officers can make available leaflets and exhibition text on request.

Our leaflet welcoming people to the Scottish Parliament, states that Guide Dogs are welcome and encourages visitors to contact us in advance with any additional requirements.

It is important when dealing with children to consider each case on its merits so that an appropriate response can be made. Applying a set of fixed criteria for written warnings would run contrary to this.

The Executive produced guidelines in June 2004 on the use of Police Restorative Warnings by the Police, supported by £500,000 over two years to fund implementation. Chief Officers are committed to replacing the senior police officer warning across Scotland with restorative warnings by April 2006.