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Financial Inclusion is part of the Executive’s wider Closing the Opportunity Gap approach to overcoming povertyand decisions on how this will be evaluated will be made in due course. Individualinitiatives currently being measured include the number of front line money advisersin post in each local authority area, the growth in credit union membership andnumbers receiving financial literacy training.

The Executive met with the banksand other stakeholders on the 17 January this year. Items discussed included:

The First Year ImplementationPlan for the Strategy for the Financial Services Industry in Scotland.

The Scottish Executive’s FinancialInclusion Action Plan.

HM Treasury’s intention to workwith the banking industry regarding reducing the number of people who are “unbanked”– which is a GB-wide initiative.

The Scottish Executive does nothave information about the number of basic bank accounts opened in Scotland.

The Scottish Household Surveyhas found that, in the first three quarters of 2005, a bank or building societyaccount was held by the respondent or partner in 91.1% of households, compared to85.7% in 1999. In the most deprived 15% of areas the increase was from 67.5% in1999 to 81.6% in the first three quarters of 2005.

These figures do not includepost office or credit union accounts. If they are included then 94.9% of householdsin the first three quarters of 2005 had an account with either a bank, buildingsociety, post office, or credit union. A comparable figure for 1999 is not availablefrom the Scottish Household Survey.

I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-25490 on 9 May 2006. 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.

The Executive is providing £160,000 per year core fundingfor the Scottish Maritime Museum. We have also agreed to continue funding of £30,000 in2006-07 for its curator post. I am pleased to say that the Executive will also provideadditional funding for maintenance of the collection in 2006-07 and we shall writeto the Scottish Maritime Museum with a formal grant offer as soon as possible.

In the Cultural Statement on19 January 2006 I announced that future funding for non-national museums, includingScotland’s industrial museums, would focus on supporting significant “national standard”collections. In addition to funding of £440,000 set aside for industrial museums,the Executive will make available further funding of £500,000 per annum over thenext two years to continue to support our  non-national museums and to enable thelaunch of the museums’ recognition scheme on which the Scottish Museums Councilhas consulted on our behalf. Future funding for the Scottish Maritime Museum will beconsidered in this context.

The requested information isin the following table:

1999-2000 (£)	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07
0	90,000	370,000	190,000	240,000	160,000	300,000	305,000

 

The Executive is currentlyin the process of drafting a National Overview of the Partnership in Practice(PiP) agreements for 2004-07. The agreements indicate local authorities are generallymaking good progress and identify locally agreed priorities for action. TheNational Overview will highlight areas of good practice and draw attention tonational initiatives that assist local authorities in developing their Partnershipin Practice agreements for 2007-10.

In addition to writtenreporting, the Executive holds Partnership in Practice Network meetingsregularly. These meetings enable local authority and NHS board representativesto discuss positive local initiatives and also give the Executive regularopportunities to receive and give feedback on the PiP process.

Local authorities receive£16 million Change Fund per annum, to help implement the recommendations in Thesame as you? review of services for people with learning disabilities.Additionally they are to receive an extra £4.2 million in 2006-07 and £5 million2007-08 to take account of the increasing population and of post-hospitalclosure demands. The additional change funds are included with general localgovernment grant aided expenditure. A breakdown of Change Fund allocations by localauthority can be found in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 39507).

With this exception, nospecific funding allocation is made to local authorities for learningdisability services. Funding comes from community care allocations and it isfor local authorities to allocate these resources as appropriate for their localarea.

A table showing net revenueexpenditure figures for learning disability services, by local authority area,has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 39534).