Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Minister for Justice announced on 27 October that an additional £6 million per annum will be provided to support drug treatment and rehabilitation services. This will bring direct support for services to a total of £32.5 million per annum, an increase of 23% from 2004-05.

The following table sets out the number of firms registered for criminal legal assistance in each year since registration was introduced in 1999. The figures relate to the position in December, when the register is published.

Year	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004
Firms	733	709	684	663	665	661

 

The civil legal assistance register formally came into being on 1 July 2004. There are currently 747 firms on the register.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The table below sets out the administration costs and staff employed in respect of the criminal legal aid registration scheme for each year since 1998-99.

	1998-99 (£)	1999-2000 (£)	2000-01 (£)	2001-02 (£)	2002-03 (£)	2003-04 (£)
Expenditure	112,475	121,173	134,943	118,473	106,782	108,478
Staff (Whole-Time Equivalent)	4.5	4.5	4.5	4.2	3.9	4.0

The cost of work undertaken in 2003-04 in connection with the establishment of the civil registration scheme was £28,547. 0.8 whole-time equivalent staff were employed on this work.

No. Sportscotland already operates a Building for Sport programme under the Lottery Fund, which is open to football clubs. However, any application would be considered against the criteria for the programme and how the project would contribute to the targets set out in Sport 21 and other policy objectives such as the Action Plan for Youth Football. Decisions on individual applications are a matter for sportscotland.

There are no proposals at present for the use of PPP funding. The proposed level of charges will be considered as part of the assessment process to ensure that they are affordable by user groups. There will be conditions and agreements that will regulate charges. These will be reviewed by a user advisory group on a regular basis.

We welcome the Scottish Law Commission’s initiative in publishing the draft code, prepared by a group of leading academics, in order to stimulate discussion of the topic. We are looking forward to receiving from the commission the comments that have been submitted on the principle of codification. We will then consider what action might be taken to debate the matter further.

The Scottish Executivewelcomes Edinburgh’s success in being granted the title: City of Literaturein the UNESCO Creative Cities Global Alliance. The Edinburgh World City ofLiterature project aims to work with UNESCO to identify potential partnercities in the developed and developing world. Through a network of world citiesof literature, Edinburgh will set out to promote international exchangebetween writers, readers, literature organisations and publishers.  Scotlandwill benefit from these exchanges in the resulting higher profile for Scottishliterature and the potential increase in cultural tourism. In addition, the project aims to provide a focus and co-ordinationfor literary activity, to encourage greater participation at all levels ofScottish society, and to attract new initiatives to Scotland.

The Scottish Executive hasawarded the project £20,000, but, as yet, no decision has been taken on futurefunding.

The UK Delegation to UNESCOis discussing a possible contribution of up to £50,000 to UNESCO's newCreative Cities Fund, to enable developing countries to benefit from Edinburgh's initiative.

The information requested isnot held centrally by Scottish Court Service. The list of safeguarders maintained bySheriff Clerks derives from the panel of safeguarders maintained by localauthorities under the Children (Scotland) Act 1995.

The nationalCurriculum Guidelines 5-14, for English language currently advise that Scottishtexts should be actively sought and used in classrooms, the aim being to fostera sense of personal and national identity through pupils' experience and study ofScots writing and Scots songs and through their conscious awareness and use of Scotslanguage. The guidelines for Social Subjects (History), Expressive Arts and Personaland Social Development stress the importance of maintaining a focus on the Scottishcontext

There is,however, no statutory curriculum in Scotland and responsibility for the delivery and content of the curriculumrests with individual education authorities and headteachers who must assess theneeds of their pupils and design an appropriate curriculum. This includes the extentto which Scottish literature is included in the curriculum.