Seòmar agus comataidhean

The practice of requiring these figures applies in every sheriffdom.

Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) plays a key role in meeting the Executive's commitment to closing the opportunity gap by helping to create and sustain jobs in the assisted areas of Scotland, thereby addressing areas of relatively high disadvantage and unemployment.This commitment has recently been further strengthened by a direct link with the New Deal scheme, under which firms can be offered a premium rate of grant as a targeted incentive to recruit and retain New Dealers.The Executive is also committed to sustainable development, and in the recent spending review we committed to assessing all RSA applications involving grant offers of £2 million and over against the Executive's sustainable development objectives.

Information concerning the amounts paid to individual farmers is protected by the law of confidentiality and the Data Protection Act and cannot be disclosed.

The Executive has been fully involved in the UK-wide Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and we are committed, along with the other UK administrations, to the Asset Recovery Strategy. The new legislation strengthens the powers of the courts to confiscate criminal assets, and it introduces new powers of civil recovery and taxation which will greatly assist efforts to recover cash and other assets gained through criminal activity. The cash seizures and money laundering elements of the act will be implemented in late December this year, and most of the remaining provisions will be implemented in February 2003.We are strengthening the Criminal Confiscation Unit in the Crown Office, and we are establishing a new Civil Recovery Unit, so that we can make full use of the powers available in the new legislation. A multi-agency money laundering unit has also been created within the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency to investigate and intercept suspicious financial transactions.The outcome of this skills and capacity building will be that we are able to seize increased amounts of criminal assets to redistribute them to good causes. We have already paid £250,000 from recovered assets to Greater Glasgow NHS Board to support the costs of additional addiction services for the Glasgow homeless. The First Minister has also announced a further award of £180,000 to assist family support groups across Scotland, which are helping the families of drug misusers. Future awards will depend on the amounts we collect from forfeitures and confiscations.

The information is detailed in the table:

Level Of Payment	Total Number of Payments
£100,001 to £150,000	133
£150,001 to £200,000	85
£200,001 to £250,000	49
£250,001 to £300,000	50
£300,001 to £350,000	37
£350,001 to £400,000	30
£400,001 to £450,000	12
£450,001 to £500,000	9
Over £500,000	66
Total Claims	471

Our guidance to medical professionals, Managing Incidental Drug Misuse and Alcohol Problems in Mental Health Care Settings, recommends that substance misuse is covered in assessments of patients with mental health problems. These assessments would address issues of self-harm.The Guidelines on Clinical Management of Drug Misuse and Dependence recommend that psychiatric issues should form part of assessments of patients seeking help with drug misuse problems.Further advice on developing integrated care for drug misusers was published this month. Integrated care aims to combine and co-ordinate all services required to meet assessed needs of drug misusers, including their mental health needs. Risks of suicide and self-harm form part of these assessments. We are also working with the Scottish Advisory Committee on Drug Misuse and the Scottish Advisory Committee on Alcohol Misuse to look further into the needs of people with drug and alcohol problems who may also have underlying mental health conditions.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-29441 today. 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. Professional training forms a core element of the activities referred to in the answer.

The information is detailed in the following table:

Level of Payment	Total Number of Payments
Less than £20,000	909
£20,001-£30,000	141
£30,001-£40,000	92
£40,001-£50,000	93
£50,001-£60,000	64
£60,001-£70,000	67
£70,001-£80,000	38
£80,001-£90,000	37
£90,001-£100,000	41
Over £100,000	471
Total	1,953

Note:The total number of payments made has been amended since the answer was provided to question S1W-29955.

The Scottish Executive has received a number of case studies, illustrating the possible impact of increased business insurance premiums, particularly Employers Liability Compulsory Insurance, and, in some instances, difficulty in securing cover has been identified. It is important to clarify that this type of information is not routinely collected. Not withstanding that fact, the Scottish Executive will continue to encourage individual companies, business organisations and trade associations to share their evidence and concerns on this important matter, to help to build up an accurate representation of the position developing across the UK.Responsibility for the statutory requirements affecting Employers Liability Compulsory Insurance rests with the Department of Work and Pensions and I have written to the Minister of State for Work, who is taking the lead on this matter, to express my concerns. The Executive is already directly involved in discussions about options for change and inter-departmental consultation is now well under way. The Scottish Executive will continue to work with the Scotland Office to represent Scottish business interests.

Reducing unnecessary bureaucracy in the police service is clearly an important matter and we are always open to ways to reduce this. The Policing Bureaucracy Task Force, set up by the Home Office in 2001 to consider ways of increasing police officer visibility in England and Wales, collected information on the number of pro forma documents as part of its work. While information on pro forma documents used by Scottish police forces is not collected centrally by the Executive, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland is due to publish the results of a thematic inspection into public reassurance and police visibility in Scotland in November 2002.