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This information is not collected centrally. Patients in medical beds will be treated by a variety of staff groups. Registered and non-registered staff breakdowns are only available for nursing and midwifery and allied health professionals. However, information recorded for these staff groups does not allow the explicit identification of medical specialties so a ratio of staff to beds cannot be given.

The information requested is not centrally available.

Information collected nationally on hospital inpatient and day case discharges records the specialty of the consultant responsible for the care of the patient. Information on wards within hospitals is not captured on central returns.

The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities recently wrote to request a meeting to discuss equal pay issues generally, and that meeting will take place in due course.

Data does not exist in the form requested for a number of reasons. This information was held, until about 1991, in regional transfusion centres (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness) and not pooled, and SNBTS does not have the records for these years. Estimates can be made based on the results of tests when these became available. These rely on the incidence of infections in the community (number of new cases), the prevalence (total number of cases) and the “window period” of the test. This window period is that time from a person becoming infected until the test is positive. Information on the number of transmissions in relation to each of the type of hepatitis is as follows.

No data is available for the period prior to 1978 on hepatitis A. Transfusion-transmitted hepatitis A is extremely rare with only two cases reported in the UK over the past 20 years.

 Tests for hepatitis B were only available from 1971. Transfusion- transmitted hepatitis B infection was quite common prior to the introduction of donor HBsAg screening around 1971, following which the reported number of cases fell to around five cases per annum for Scotland. Since 1991, this has dropped further and current UK residual risk is around 1:500,000 donations. For non-A non-B hepatitis –shown to be hepatitis C from around 1990-transfusion-associated hepatitis would only be a proportion of the actual rate of infection in recipients. It has been estimated that between 7,000 and 15,000 people were infected in the United Kingdom in the 10 years prior to 1991, equating to between 700 and 1500 in Scotland, or some 70-150 each year. The current residual risk of hepatitis C is now estimated to be around one in 10 million donations and at this rate it could be expected that Scotland would experience one hepatitis C transmission every 40 years.

It is envisaged that payments will be made to secure access to availability of vaccine in the event of an influenza pandemic.

While the health department is in regular contact with NHS Lanarkshire, the planning and provision of local NHS services is a matter for individual NHS boards, providing they are in line with national guidance and frameworks, including Delivering for Health. Should an NHS board propose significant changes to the way services are currently provided then these would need to be subject to formal public consultation, in line with Scottish Executive guidance, and would ultimately come to Scottish ministers for consideration and a final decision.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:

This information is not available.

There was no minute or transcript taken at the Conference held on 3 October. Information included in the conference pack issued to delegates at the Conference can be obtained from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 38326).

Funding for the salaries and wages paid by local authorities is largely provided for by the Scottish Executive as part of a block grant which, in the current financial year, will amount to £8.1 billion. The block grant is very largely unhypothecated and it is for councils themselves to determine how they spend this in line with local needs and priorities. The funding to be made available for 2006-07, based on provisional figures, amounts to an increase of £258 million (or 3.2%) over the amount to be provided for 2005-06.

NHS community pharmacy contractors will be remunerated for the provision of care, for example to patients with common clinical conditions through the minor ailments service and for contributing to the management of chronic disease.

The mechanisms used to audit pharmacist prescribing will be similar to the systems used currently to audit the prescribing of general medical practitioners.