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Disciplinary action is a matter for the NHS employer. However, all NHS Scotland employers are required to adopt the values and principles of the Dignity at Work: Eliminating Bullying and Harassment in the Workforce guidance, which I launched last month at the Scottish Partnership Conference. The guidance applies to all NHS Scotland staff and has been developed through the Scottish Partnership Forum, which represents all NHS Scotland staff group. The performance of NHS Scotland in complying with this guidance will be assessed through the new Staff Governance Standard announced in Our National Health: A plan for action, a plan for change.

The Neighbourhood Renewal Statement will be produced by the Scottish Executive in conjunction with key stakeholders. The statement will include issues relating to service delivery but separate measures will be developed to monitor and evaluate outcomes from pathfinders of the Better Neighbourhood Services Fund.

The Executive is committed to making Scotland a place where people are safer and feel safer. To that end we are working in partnership with the law enforcement agencies, with communities and with all who are concerned with the protection of the public. A recent example is the financial support we have given for the campaign launched in October 2000 by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland targeting violent crime.

The Scottish Executive is taking forward a range of measures to reduce levels of smoking among young people, especially young women. These include health education and promotion activities such as mass media advertising and Smokeline; targeted smoking cessation services and a new enforcement package to target underage sales of tobacco. Importantly, an element of the additional funding being made available under the £26 million health improvement fund announced on 20 August will be used for a major education drive to cut young people's smoking.

I refer Patricia Ferguson to the answer I gave to question S1O-2270.

Since 1991, sportscotland has invested some £550,000 in a Team Sport Shinty Co-ordinator and two local development officers specifically to develop the grass roots of the sport. In addition to the £500,000 Lottery Sports Fund monies which has been awarded to improve shinty's facilities, £15,000 was approved in February of this year for the Camanachd Association from the Lottery Fund Junior Groups Programme.

sportscotland is presently working closely with the Camanachd Association on a new development plan. An integral part of the plan is the development of the game at youth and grass roots level.

The unemployment rate in Glasgow, using the internationally standard ILO measure, was 13.5% in 1998. This compares to 8.5% in Dundee, 6.0% in Edinburgh, and 3.4% in Aberdeen.

Advice provided by the Scottish Executive gives health education, including nutritional education, a secure place within the curriculum and seeks to ensure that it is provided in all schools. Support materials to assist schools include materials on nutritional education.

The Scottish Diet Action Plan Eating for Health made a number of recommendations and included nutritional guidelines for catering specifications for the public sector, targeted primarily at pre-school and school age children.

The primary responsibility for the delivery and management of nutritional education within the curriculum, the quality of school meals, and the provision of any additional services such as breakfast clubs rests with authorities.

We are publishing tomorrow the first report of the Homelessness Task Force which makes proposals for the strengthening of the current homelessness legislation. The Executive accepts the report as providing a basis for legislation in the forthcoming Housing Bill and appropriate provisions will be included in the Bill once the resource implications, including the implications for local authorities, have been assessed in the forthcoming spending review.

Under the chairmanship of Jackie Baillie, the Homelessness Task Force will now continue with its longer-term review of measures to prevent and tackle homelessness, with a view to submitting a further, and final, report in 2001.

Biomedical scientists are not classed as a profession allied to medicine but are rather one of a number of staff groups who have their salaries reviewed annually, by negotiation, through the NHS Whitley Council structure.