Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government allocated Glasgow City Council an additional £0.165 million in 2009-10 and £0.332 million in 2010-11 for the provision of respite. This, together with allocations to the other local authorities, was on top of the overall local government settlement. The purpose was to enable local authorities to deliver in full by 2010-11 the commitment in the concordat to progress towards delivering 10,000 extra respite weeks.

The information requested is given in Annex 1 on page 13 of An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland: Respite Care, Scotland 2010 published by the Scottish Government on 28 September 2010, a copy of which is available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 52073).

The Scottish Government, through the Partnership Information Network (PIN) policies, sets the minimum standard NHSScotland boards must meet when providing support for staff with health issues. The PIN policy Managing Health at Work makes clear that it is crucially important that staff have access to competent occupational health services.

Earlier this year the Scottish Government and the Management Steering Group of NHS Scotland established the Occupational Health and Safety Strategic Forum. As part of its remit, I have asked the Forum to develop a new strategic framework for occupational health and safety provision for staff within NHSScotland, to replace the current strategy, Towards a Safer, Healthier Workplace, published in 1999.

This strategic framework will provide an opportunity to confirm our commitment to a person centred approach towards health, wellbeing and safety at work, ensuring all staff are well supported by an integrated strategy that adds value to existing occupational health and safety policies and services.

The £4.4 million announced by the Minister for Care Services in October 2010 is not new investment. It is being reinvested from the Caring with Confidence programme which came to an end in July 2010. Therefore this money does not carry any Barnett consequential.

The Winter Fuel Payment is included in the annual household income which is used to calculate fuel poverty. If this is deducted from the income of all 60 to 65 year olds approximately 1,100 more households would be in fuel poverty.

In 2008 (the most recent year for which figures are available), there were approximately 137,000 people aged between 60 and 65 (inclusive) living in fuel poverty.

DWP have informed the Scottish Government that for winter 2008-09 (the latest period for which figures are available) there were 3,282,870 winter fuel payment recipients aged between 60 and 64 in Great Britain as a whole and 289,030 in Scotland. They expect the figures to be similar for winter 2009-10. (Figures are available in five year age bands for people between 60 and 79 and for all over 80s.)

The Scottish Fuel Poverty Forum has considered the issue of the winter fuel allowance. In its report published in October 2008 it recommended that the Westminster Government carry out a thorough review of both Winter Fuel Payments and Cold Weather Payments to ensure a better fit with fuel poverty. This was reinforced in the findings of its first annual report published in July this year.

The Scottish Fuel Poverty Forum will keep this issue under review as one of the outstanding recommendations from its Towards 2016 report.

Advice from Strathclyde police, at the time of Mr Al-Megrahi''s release, indicated that, if Mr Al Megrahi had been released to his home in Newton Mearns, the cost of maintaining the appropriate level of protection would have been in the region of £100,000 a week. This estimate does not include the additional protection costs which would have been incurred by trips to hospital or if his family had been residing in the home.

Had Mr Al Megrahi been released to a hospice, the expectation would be that the security costs would be at least at this level, and quite probably higher if a larger premises had to be secured.

Given that the variable cost of patient care (including accommodation costs and medical treatment which is patient specific) among hospices it has not been possible to determine accurately the additional costs that would have been incurred on these.

The information that would be needed to calculate, by pupil numbers, an average cost of building a school is not held by the Scottish Government. Therefore, we are not able to provide an average cost for building a primary school with between 400 and 450 pupils.