Chamber and committees

The Information and Statistics Division (ISD) compiles and publishes a large number of key health indicators for Scotland and these are presented on ISD Online, SKIPPER and in the Performance Assessment Framework, for example. These publications have developed through time to meet the needs of key stakeholders for health information. Many of the OECD indicators are reflected in these outputs.The ISD contributes to the OECD compendium of statistics through the submission of data to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) for publication by the OECD as country level comparisons. The ISD also contributes to the regional breakdowns of health indicators which are published by the ONS in Regional Trends and periodically in UK Geographic Variations in Health.Requests to resource the development of major new statistical outputs for the home countries, such as a more extensive regional comparison similar to the OECD, can be made through the user/provider consultation process for national statistics.

The information requested is given in the following table:Locum Consultants Directly Employed in NHSScotland at 30 September 2001 by Health Board

Health Board	Headcount	Whole Time Equivalent
Total	110	85.3
Ayrshire and Arran	6	2.3
Argyll and Clyde	9	7.0
Fife	2	2.0
Greater Glasgow	30	24.6
Highland	3	3.0
Lanarkshire	16	14.2
Grampian	6	4.8
Orkney	1	1.0
Lothian	21	15.3
Tayside	4	1.8
Forth Valley	9	5.5
Western Isles	1	1.0
Dumfries and Galloway	3	2.7

The information requested is currently being collated. Once complete, I will write to the member with a full response and place a copy in the Parliament's Reference Centre.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-29329 on 27 September 2002. 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/search_wa.Full results of the Audit Scotland/ISD survey will be available later this year. In addition, proposals are being developed for implementation by NHSScotland for the collection of information on nurse-led activity. It is too soon to say when the first results from this new information collection will become available.

The setting of fees within the maxima specified in the Fees Order is an operational matter for the Care Commission. In setting fees, the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act requires the commission to have regard to its reasonable expenses in carrying out its functions under the act.

NHS boards are given a unified budget to enable them to meet the health care needs of their resident populations. There is no specific prescribing element uplift in the unified budget. It is for each individual NHS board to decide how much money to allocate to their prescribing budget.The Arbuthnott formula, which has a prescribing element, has informed NHS board allocations for financial years 2001-02 and 2002-03. On average each NHS board received a 6.5% increase in 2001-02 and a 7.2% increase in 2002-03. This was made up of a minimum increase for each NHS board of 5.5% in 2001-02 and 6.8% in 2002-03 and additional money for those NHS boards where their Arbuthnott shares were greater than their actual shares.

No specific allocations are made for staff budgets. Staff costs are met from the overall sums allocated to NHS boards to enable them to meet the health care needs of their resident populations. Therefore, information on funding allocation by workforce group is not available centrally.

Crops grown outwith the separation distance around a GM crop do not come within the scope of the legislation regulating GM releases. Growers, whether they are the farmer involved in the trial or neighbouring landowners, are at liberty to do what they wish with these crops. Before a GM crop is approved for release, the possible consequences of pollen flow from the crop is assessed carefully. Approval would not be granted if there was considered to be a safety threat to neighbouring crops or to human health.

No. Such tests do not form part of the protocols applicable to the farm-scale evaluations and would only serve to confirm what is already known about the behaviour of pollen from these crops. The possibility of tiny quantities of pollen from the GM crop travelling outwith the trial crop is recognised and the potential consequences are addressed as part of the risk assessment process which is undertaken prior to the granting of approval. Our expert advisers are clear that pollen from the GM crops that have approval for release poses no greater safety threat than pollen from the equivalent conventional crop. Experience of the operation of separation distances suggests that any GM presence beyond this distance will be extremely small.

In the farm scale evaluations, the same ecological research is conducted on the non-GM crops grown as a control crop as is conducted on the adjacent GM crop. Those tests involve the collection of information on the following indicators:soil seed bank; arable plant diversity, biomass and estimated seed return; field margin and boundary vegetation, noting species in flower and signs of spray drift; Gastropods (slugs and snails): abundance, activity and diversity measures; Arthropods on vegetation, concentrating on plant bugs (Heteroptera), spring tails (Collembola), and the caterpillars of butterflies, moths, (Lepidoptera) and sawflies: diversity and biomass measures; Carabid beetles and other ground dwelling arthropods: abundance and diversity measures; bees and butterflies: observational studies, andbirds and small mammals: observational studies. The purpose of these trials is to establish whether the agricultural practices required to grow herbicide-tolerant GM crops has a different environmental impact than the practices used on conventional crops. The evaluations are not attempting to study other aspects of GM cultivation such as gene flow which has been the subject of many other scientific studies.