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We issued on 26 February Getting Our Priorities Right - Good Practice Guidelines for working with Children and Families Affected by Substance Misuse. This guidance, coupled with the resources already provided through initiatives such as the Changing Children's Service Fund, Surestart and Social Inclusion Partnerships, allied to training offered by Scottish Training on Drugs and Alcohol, will do much to improve the lives of children affected by substance misuse.The Executive's Effective Interventions Unit published a review of family support in November 2002 which is designed to help Drug Action Teams and their partner agencies to develop more effective ways to support the needs of families and carers. We are also assisting family members coping with drug misuse to set up a national network of family support groups. £180,000, recovered from criminal assets, will be used to support the work of the network, once it has been established.

The Supporting People Initiative, which is a new funding and policy framework for the provision of housing support services, is on target for implementation on 1 April 2003. We have today written to local authorities with provisional grant allocations to enable them to undertake these functions. Under the initiative, local authorities will have responsibility for planning and funding housing support services in their area and the financial information has been placed in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 26753).

We have put record resources into policing. As a result police numbers are at an all time high.We are giving all council-led Community Safety Partnerships a share of £12 million over three years to identify and address local community safety priorities.We have awarded £10.3 million to some 161 CCTV systems and recently allocated £2.5 million to upgrade, centralise and modernise some of these systems.As part of the Local Government Settlement, £180 million of Quality of Life funding for local authorities has been allocated over the next three years on top of an extra £95 million this year to improve the local environment and encourage children and young people to make healthy lifestyle choices. £7.3 million of this was allocated to Neighbourhood Safety, CCTV improvements and to removing graffiti and reducing vandalism.In the 2002 Spending Review the Executive committed £30 million in order to tackle anti-social behaviour, the poor quality of the environment and to help local people build strong safe communities. The Executive will be making an announcement shortly about proposals to extend Community Safety Warden schemes more widely across Scotland as well as other community-based initiatives to address anti-social behaviour.

Current monitoring of the Rough Sleepers Initiative target involves a three-stage assessment, which is repeated annually. Full details of the methodology being employed are contained in the reply given to question on 11 September 2001. The report of the full three-stage assessment of the incidence of rough sleeping in Scotland in 2002-03 is now available. I am placing copies in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 26601).In summary the report indicates that during the October 2002 study period of 14 days, 404 people reported sleeping rough at least once. This compares to 500 people in the May 2001 study period. An assessment of available accommodation showed that on a targeted night during the October study period, when 80 people reported they had slept rough, 164 bed spaces were available across Scotland.But tackling rough sleeping is about more than providing access to accommodation. The Rough Sleepers Initiative has recognised the very complex needs of many people who find themselves sleeping rough, by funding targeted health care, social support, drug and alcohol services, one-stop assessment centres, day centres, outreach services and supported accommodation. It will never be possible to stop people sleeping rough. What the Executive has done is to ensure the provision of a network of services and support so that those who find themselves on the streets can quickly connect with the help and support they need.The information contained in the report will be used to assist local authorities in the development and delivery of their homelessness strategies, and in particular in achieving a more effective match between services and people sleeping rough.

Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) helps businesses to grow and develop by supporting investment projects that might otherwise not have proceeded as envisaged.The RSA quarterly report, published on 22 January, showed that in the three months to December 2002, 43 businesses in Scotland accepted over £12 million in RSA. These offers related to projects with planned investment of nearly £80 million with the aim of creating and safeguarding over 1,500 jobs.

The Scottish Executive provides direct support to lower income homeowners in a number of ways including the central heating installaton and Warm Deal Programmes and low-cost home ownership schemes within Communities Scotland's housing investment programme. It also provides funding for local authorities to provide grants to private owners for improvement and repair works.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) to respond. His response is as follows:On 2 January at HM Prison Shotts, a large number of prisoners in A Hall and some in B Hall were involved in concerted indiscipline. The SPS resolved the incident at 15:00 the following day. One member of staff suffered a broken leg. There was damage to the prison accommodation.On 7 January, in a separate incident also at HM Prison Shotts, an episode of concerted indiscipline resulted in three members of staff receiving stab wounds which resulted in them being detained in hospital. The SPS brought the incident to a conclusion at 05:30 the following day.The SPS has well established procedures for reviewing such incidents which are now in progress involving the staff who handled the incident on the ground, the Incident Control Teams at SPS Headquarters and senior Governors of other establishments. Ministers were briefed at the outset, during and after each incident. Both incidents are the subject of police investigations and criminal charges have been brought in relation to the second. This, and SPS's role as a law enforcement agency, properly restrict what I can say about the action we will take following the incidents. We are in touch with other law enforcement agencies, the emergency services and others to review learning points and actions we can take to reduce the risk of such incidents occurring and further improve our response to them. The same process is under way internally, and at a time of high prisoner numbers we are revising contingency plans following the loss of accommodation at Shotts as a result of these incidents.I would like to place on record SPS's concern for the well-being of the staff injured in these incidents and our appreciation of the professional and effective response of staff and managers at Shotts and other establishments to these difficult and dangerous incidents and in the major dispersal operation which followed the first.

Significant progress continues to be made. We have launched national standards for the youth justice system; announced a planned increase of 25% in secure places; amended the Criminal Justice Bill to allow more information and support to victims; provided an additional £6 million to local authorities for youth justice work and to improve IT capabilities; launched two major new funds - the Intensive Support and Youth Crime Prevention Funds to support a wide range of local programmes to broaden the range of effective disposals available to hearings from the statutory and voluntary sectors, and helped enhance community safety through the recent Safer Scotland Police campaign.

In response to representations that more time is needed to consider the full range of issues, and extend the opportunity to comment, I am pleased to announce that the consultation period for Towards Better Oral Health in Children is being extended to 28 February 2003.

St Andrew's Day events are taking place across the globe - from Lima to Luanda, and from The Hague to Ho Chi Min City. There are thousands of Scots and people of Scottish ancestry around the world who will celebrate St Andrew's Day with us. Therefore, through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I have issued jointly with the Secretary of State for Scotland a St Andrew's Day message, to the worldwide UK Embassy network, sending the warmest wishes from the people of Scotland to those gathered to celebrate the achievements of their country of birth and of their forefathers. The message will be read out at St Andrew's Day events across the world.