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In order to ensure that a safe and secure environment is always maintained throughout the Parliament, it is not possible to allow all staff access to a lunch break between 12 noon and 2.00pm each day. It is particularly difficult on business days when more posts have to be covered and when business continues beyond 12 noon which means many more staff must have their break scheduled into a shorter period. In order to accommodate all staff, lunch breaks start at 11.30am with the final breaks at 1.30pm so that all have access to the restaurant which serves lunch until 2.30pm.

The staff who are scheduled for a one hour lunch break from 11.30am are normally those employed on shift work contracts and they receive a further one hour break before the end of their 10 hour working day. Between eight and 12 staff are scheduled for lunch at 11.30am each day and since breaks are organised on a rota basis the same staff are not affected every day. If all security personnel were to have lunch between 12 noon and 2.00pm then additional staff would be needed but they would be surplus to requirements outwith that two hour period.

Over 33,000 snags in total have been reported at Holyrood and, since the Royal opening of the building in October 2004, that figure has been reduced to 950 to date.

I have placed the information on visits carried out by Scottish ministers between 22 March and 5 May 2003 and between 22 March and 5 May 2004 in the Parliament’s Reference Centre (Bib. number 36567). During these periods, Scottish ministers also attended Parliament, parliamentary committees (whose proceedings, notes etc are already attended in the public domain), political engagements, meetings with other Scottish Executive ministers and met with officials of the Scottish Executive.

In addition, Scottish ministers attended meetings of Cabinet, Cabinet Sub-Committees, Ad-hoc Groups of Ministers, other Ministerial Groups and Cabinet Seminars. The dates of these meetings to 31 December 2004 are published on the Scottish ministers’ area of the Scottish Executive website. In the future, dates of these meetings from January 2005 will be published on the website on a regular basis. (Please use the link below to access the website.)

http://sh45inta/about/FCSD/CabSec/00014944/page1425518831.aspx.

The Executive does not generally publish details of current ministerial engagements. However, we intend to routinely publish retrospective information about recent ministerial engagements through our publication scheme maintained under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Remedial works on all snagging and emerging defects at Holyrood require to be completed within 12 months from the practical completion of the project.

Snagging items were initially identified by the Design Team for Trade Contractors to remedy. Since Parliament staff moved into the building, any emergent defects are logged with the Facilities Management (FM) Help Desk, categorised by FM and the Holyrood Project Team and instructed appropriately for action.

A list of Scottish Executive publications and their costs since 1999 is given in Scottish Executive List of Publications/Costs 1999-2005 a copy of which has been placed in the Parliament’s Reference centre (Bib. number 36555). There is currently no central record of the information in the format requested and it could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The Executive has had no contactwith UK Government regarding the development of new nuclear power stations.

Investigations into compliance with the relevant Agricultural Wages Orders by these agencies are on‑going and it would not be appropriate to comment further.

Prior to the introduction of the priority-based dispatch system which rolled out across mainland Scotland between August 2002 and April 2004, 999 emergency calls to the Scottish Ambulance Service were dealt with on a “first come first served” basis. The speed of response depended not on the condition of the patient but on the volume of calls being responded to and the ambulance resources available at the time. The performance standards applied by the Scottish Ambulance Service varied according to population density – as with other ambulance services in the United Kingdom. These are known as the ORCON standards. In Scotland, to ensure that the standards reflected local demography, they were applied based on local authority areas. The standards were:

High Density (more than 3.0 persons per acre) – 50% of calls to be responded to within seven minutes and 95% within 14 minutes;

Medium Density (less than 3.0 but more than 0.5 persons per acre) – 50% of calls to be responded to within eight minutes and 95% within 18 minutes;

Sparse Density (less than 0.5 persons per acre) – 50% of calls to be responded to in eight minutes and 95% within 21 minutes.

Under the priority based dispatch system, which is used in all mainland board areas, 999 emergency calls are processed using well proven, clinically approved, screen based software (called Automatic Medical Priority Dispatch System). Based on the responses of the caller, the software assigns the call a response category. The categories and standards applied are:

Category A – clinically defined as “immediately life threatening”. The target is that by March 2008, 75% of such calls should be responded to within eight minutes across mainland Scotland. The ambulance service has phased the introduction of priority based dispatch and is progressing towards this target.

Category B – clinically defined as “not life threatening but still serious”. The target for this category of calls is that 95% should be responded to within either 14, 19 or 21 minutes depending on the population density of the health board.

The ambulance service continues to apply ORCON standards to their responses to calls from NHS Western Isles, NHS Shetland and NHS Orkney.