Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government provides local authorities with funding for local roads and transport through the core local government finance settlement and each council is responsible for the maintenance and improvement of local roads in its area. It is entirely a matter for councils to decide what priority is given to local roads and to allocate resources accordingly. In some instances projects will be progressed jointly.

NHS Grampian has provided information on the value of Standard Rate VAT payments for the financial year 2007-08, the last financial year for which information is available. The total value of these payments is £25.396 million set against combined Resource Limits of £758.408 million (Revenue £729.245 million and Capital £29.163 million) for the same period.

NHS Grampian has provided very broad estimates of potential changes to their costs. The reduction is estimated at £1.7 million (Revenue £1.4 million and Capital £0.3 million) during the financial year 2009‘10 as a result of this one specific temporary change to the standard rate of VAT. This is set against an estimated draft Resource Limit baseline budget of £699.6 million for 2009‘10 (Revenue £667.0 million and Capital £32.6 million).

Care must be taken with these figures which are one in a number of recent changes to VAT legislation, some of which are a recurring cost to NHS organisations. These additional costs relate to VAT rules for agency fees for medical staff, restrictions on reclaimable VAT on other agency staff, except for nurses, and the removal of a concession that currently allows employment businesses to exclude the wages element from the calculation of VAT. This will have an estimated recurring impact for NHS Grampian up to £1.2 million.

Scottish Government is committed to the effective marketing of Homecoming Scotland 2009 and are continually reviewing the advertising of this initiative. There are already indicators that the advertising targeted at domestic visitors and in 40 countries around the world is working well:

More than one million people engaging with VisitScotland per month through visiting the suite of websites and receiving the e-newsletters are exposed to the Homecoming message.

The Homecoming Scotland websites have attracted over 340,000 user sessions to date (end December 2008). Over the span of Homecoming we expect 25 million people to have used these sites. homecomingscotland2009.com and homecomingscotland.com.

In the month of November, the peak of VisitScotland''s autumn long-haul I am a Scot campaign, the two principal websites alone attracted 100,000 user enquiries, equating to one visitor every 35 seconds.

The Homecoming Caledonia advert was seen by three million Scots (60 per cent of the population) when it premiered on TV in November and in Scotland the evidence of awareness is emphatic, with a You Gov poll in early December 2008 showing that 66% of Scottish people are aware of Homecoming.

I met with the UK Minster for Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism in March 2008 and discussed the plans for Homecoming and other general tourism matters.

The Scottish Government has had discussions regarding Homecoming Scotland 2009 with the Stakeholder Engagement Team at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Officials there have received a core briefing pack on Homecoming and were sent copies of the new Events Guide shortly after it was launched by the First Minister and opposition party leaders on 18 December 2008. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office are also promoting Homecoming by placing a link to the Homecoming website on 150 in-country post websites.

VisitScotland staff are in regular contact with staff at VisitBritain and, as a result, VisitScotland''s own Homecoming promotion is being significantly extended through collaboration with VisitBritain who are actively promoting Homecoming through their offices worldwide with websites, e-comms and PR and trade activity. This includes a significant presence for Homecoming across the VisitBritain network of 40 country market sites which are translated in 19 languages from Russian to Mandarin and Japanese, and which attract 10 million users. In addition, the VisitBritain global PR Conference in 2008 was themed around Homecoming and trade events across the globe have used Homecoming as their main theme.

Formal activity plans were agreed between VisitScotland and VisitBritain in 2008 and the delivery against these plans is being closely monitored by VisitScotland.

In common with all of NHSScotland, NHS Grampian will be affected by changes to be made to the rules by which NHS bodies can reclaim VAT charged in respect of agency staff working within NHSScotland.

The rules were previously changed for 2008-09 to remove the ability for NHS bodies to reclaim VAT on agency fees for medical staff. This is being further restricted in that NHS bodies will no longer be able to reclaim VAT on any other agency staff except for nursing from 2009-10. These restrictions may have a more significant impact with the additional change in respect of the removal from 1 April 2009 of a concession granted by HMRC that currently allows employment businesses to exclude the wages element from the calculation of VAT on the charges they make.

Subject to approval of the Parliament to the Scottish Government''s Budget Bill and the Local Government Finance Order for 2009-10, the additional funding for the capital city supplement will be included within the general revenue grant provided to the City of Edinburgh Council and will therefore be subject to the same conditions as apply to that general revenue grant.

The consultation paper will be published by 30 January 2009 and will remain open for a period of three months.