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Matters relating to the regulationof international trade, including responsibility for GATS negotiations, are reservedto the UK Government. The Scottish Executive has ensured that the UK Government’s representationsto the European Union on GATS reflect the Executive’s commitment to retain Scotland’spublic water services in the public sector, and the UK Government has confirmed that it has no intentionof pressing for water services to be included in future GATS commitments. Nothingin the GATS process affects the Scottish Executive’s right to determine policy onhow water services are provided in Scotland.  The forthcoming Water Services Bill will not affectScottish Water's status as a public corporation.

The regulation of internationaltrade is a reserved matter. The Scottish Executive is in regular contact with theDepartment of Trade and Industry and other Government departments on a range oftrade issues, including those relating to the General Agreement on Trade in Services(GATS).

The Scottish Executive is liaising with the DTI on the progress of the GATS negotiations, and maintainsan ongoing assessment of any potential impact of GATS on its responsibilities. Thiswill continue to inform our discussions with DTI, in order to ensure that Scottishinterests are considered.

The Executive remains fully committedto retaining water supply in the public sector. The Water Services Bill will prohibitthird parties from using the public water and sewerage networks, ensuring that ScottishWater remains the sole physical supplier of water and sewerage services to all premisesconnected to the public networks. This prohibition, together with the prohibitionon retail competition to domestic customers and provisions to license retail competitionfor non-domestic customers will reinforce our commitment to retain Scottish Waterin the public sector.

Matters relating to the regulationof international trade, including responsibility for GATS negotiations, are reservedto the UK Government. The Scottish Executive has ensured that the UK Government’s representationsto the European Union on GATS reflect the Executive’s commitment to retain Scotland’s publicwater services in the public sector.

The Executive remains committedto retaining Scottish Water as a publicly owned corporation. Scottish Water's statuswill not be affected by the forthcoming Water Services Bill.

The Scottish Executive’s supportfor all forms of renewable energy recognises the contribution that they can maketowards reducing harmful emissions, thus helping to protect and preserve Scotland’s environment.The local environmental impacts of each proposed development will vary, and areassessed against existing and robust planning guidelines as part of a consultativeprocess involving all key stakeholders.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) to respond. His response is as follows:

The SPS has now introduced arevised performance framework from 1 April 2004 whichwill provide more disaggregated output performance information for all SPS establishments.This will be incorporated in the future editions of SPS annual reports.

 

The figures are:

	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04
House of Lords	£57,000	£86,000	£106,000	£2,000	£72,000
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council			£228,000	£99,000	£110,000

 

Article 2 (a) provides a definitionof “plans and programmes” for the purposes of the Directive. Work on the preciseimplementation of the Directive is currently being taken forward by Executive officials.

Council Directive 2001/42/ECis concerned with plans and programmes, and will not apply to individual developments.