Seòmar agus comataidhean

This is a matter for the Traffic Commissioner for the Scottish Traffic Area. The information requested is not held centrally. The Traffic Commissioner is the licensing authority for the bus industry in Scotland and applies the regulatory regime. Operators are legally required to register their local services with the Commissioner. The Traffic Commissioner can be contacted at: J Floor, Argyle House, 3 Lady Lawson Street, Edinburgh, EH3 9SE.

The information about female appointments requested is set out in the following table.

% of Female Appointments

	2007-08	2006-07	2005-06	2004-05
Judges	0	0	33%	20%
Sheriff Principal	Note 1	Note 1	0	Note 1
Sheriffs	0	17%	43%	9%
Part-time Sheriffs	Note 1	30%	33%	Note 1
JPs (new Ministerial Appointments)	Note 1	41%	48%	31%

Note: 1. No appointments made in this period.

None of those appointed during the period declared him or herself to be from an ethnic minority. (This information was not routinely requested in appointments to the office of justice of the peace before 2005-06.)

New rail services that have commenced to or from Edinburgh since May 2007 are detailed below:

May 2007 timetable

First ScotRail services:

New service:   2037 Edinburgh – North Berwick

Existing services with additional calls included from May 2007 timetable:

0804 Edinburgh – North Berwick calling additionally at Musselburgh

1758 North Berwick – Edinburgh calling additionally at Musselburgh

December 2007 timetable.

First ScotRail services:

Existing services with additional calls included from December 2007 timetable:

2210 Edinburgh – Glasgow calling additionally at Uddingston and Cambuslang

2242 Edinburgh – Glasgow calling additionally at Uddingston and Cambuslang (operates Saturday only).

Transpennine Express services:

New services: 0722 Manchester Airport – Edinburgh

1127 Manchester Airport – Edinburgh

1327 Manchester Airport – Edinburgh

1527 Manchester Airport – Edinburgh

0821 Edinburgh – Manchester Airport

1152 Edinburgh – Manchester Airport

1552 Edinburgh – Manchester Airport

1752 Edinburgh – Manchester Airport.

May 2008 timetable

First ScotRail services:

New services:

0645 Edinburgh – Glasgow Queen Street (both directions)

1915 Edinburgh – Glasgow Queen Street (both directions)

Hourly Glasgow – Alloa service providing a connection at Stirling to Edinburgh.

Existing service with additional calls from May 2008 timetable:

1726 Edinburgh – Stirling extended to Bridge of Allan and Dunblane.

The Scottish Government carry out an annual teacher workforce planning exercise to estimate future requirements for teachers and the number of new teachers that require to be trained. That exercise is overseen by a Group with representatives of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Association of Directors of Education, The General Teaching Council for Scotland, teacher unions, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education Higher Education Institutes and the Scottish Funding Council. We are currently working with higher education institutions to deliver on current forecasts of 20,000 new teachers in training by 2011.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-13671 on 13 June 2008. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

Special advisers provide policy advice, not legal advice. The role of a special adviser is to help ministers on matters where the work of government and the work of the party overlap and it would be inappropriate for permanent civil servants to become involved. They provide policy, political and presentational advice and support to ministers. Professor MacCormick is the First Minister’s adviser on Europe and external relations and Duncan Hamilton is his political adviser.

Two of the current Special Advisers, Professor Sir Neil MacCormick and Duncan Hamilton, have legal qualifications.

In October 2007, the Scottish Government published a comprehensive baseline of 199 national public sector organisations and committed to a reduction in this number of 25% by 2011. The number of public bodies has to date reduced by 31 organisations.

The Scottish Building Standards Agency; Scottish Agricultural Science Agency; Communities Scotland, with the exception of their regulation function, and the Fire Services Inspectorate have been absorbed into the core Scottish Government, although already part of the Scottish Government main bargaining unit. The number of staff that transferred to the core Scottish Government for each of these are:

Scottish Building Standards Agency	33
Scottish Agricultural Science Agency	145
Communities Scotland*	304
Fire Services Inspectorate	7

Note: *Sixty-one staff also transferred to the newly created Scottish Housing Regulator.

Guidance was issued to NHS boards in HDL (2006) 8 Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and NHSScotland Partnership. This pilot project ran from April 2006 to February 2006 to March 2008 and was aimed at encouraging NHSScotland healthcare professionals to volunteer overseas.

The Health Directorate has since written to health boards encouraging them to continue to support staff wishing to take leave for development work overseas beyond the pilot period and in line with this HDL.

The Scottish Government has not issued any such guidance to local authorities.

The Scottish Government operates formal career break and special leave policies to enable staff to take time away from the organisation. As an employer, the Scottish Government is very supportive of staff who apply to take a break from employment to undertake work overseas on relief and development programmes. However, we do not hold centrally information about the reasons why individual members of staff are released from work.

The Scottish Government also support staff seeking secondment opportunities, which are in line with the Interchange Policy, to organisations delivering relief and development programmes. However, there are no recent examples of staff being seconded to such programmes.