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The Scottish Executive is in regular contact with the UK Government on a wide range of issues, including European Union proposals.

The Scottish Executive is keen to offer as many New Deal opportunities as possible and it meets with the Employment Service on a regular basis to promote its New Deal jobs. Recently the Executive held a very successful New Deal recruitment campaign in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The competition attracted 164 applications and 47 of those individuals were selected for appointment, (19 from the 18-24 element of the programme).

The research programme suggested by the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones will cost some £7 million, with £3.5 million coming from Government being matched by £3.5 million from the mobile phone industry. The Scottish Executive has agreed to contribute £150,000. The selection of projects has been in the hands of the independent Programme Management Committee (PMC) chaired by Sir William Stewart. No representations on membership of the PMC have been made. I understand an announcement of the results of projects to be funded under the first call for research proposals will be made soon. A second call has also recently been announced. The current membership of the PMC and other useful information can be found at website http://www.doh.gov.uk/mobilephones/research/index.htm.

The Scottish Executive is in regular contact with the Strategic Rail Authority on a wide range of issues, including the Strategic Plan in so far as it relates to rail services for Scotland.

The SEED annual School Census, conducted in September each year, is used to collect statistical information from schools. Class size information was collected from primary schools every two years until 1997. Since 1997, class size figures have been collected every year. Average class sizes in publicly funded schools by education authority are published in the annual School Census Summary Results bulletin, copies of which are available from the Parliament's Reference Centre.

The Scottish Executive provides funding to the Scottish Road Safety Campaign for the production of key road safety education materials and publicity campaigns. In the current financial year the campaign expects to spend about £180,000 on drug driving publicity.

The performance targets targets set for planning authorities are detailed in National Planning Policy Guideline No1: The Planning System. They include the target of determining 80% of major applications within four months.

The SEED annual School Census, conducted in September each year, is used to collect statistical information from schools. Summary class size information was collected from secondary schools every two years until 1997. Information on secondary school class sizes has not been collected since 1997. The average class size in publicly funded secondary schools was last published by education authority in the Summary Results of the 1995 School Census bulletin, and nationally in the Summary Results of the 1997 School Census bulletin.

The Scottish Executive provides funding to the Scottish Road Safety Campaign for the production of key road safety education materials and publicity campaigns. In the current financial year the campaign expects to spend about £200,000 on drink drive publicity and research into attitudes to drinking and driving.

The information requested is not held centrally. As part of our drive towards more consistent regulation of childcare, we are working towards revised staff: child ratios across all sectors. The National Care Standards Committee has proposed a staff: child ratio of 1:8 for children aged three to five and 1:10 for sessions of less that four hours. The results of consultations are expected early in 2002.