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There is real potentialfor tourism benefits to be spread across Scotland, and indeed this has already started happening. Many visitors come to Scotland for a city break, so VisitScotland promotes all of Scotland’s cities rather than just the traditional tourist destinations.Similarly, when visitors are considering a city break, VisitScotland’s marketingencourages them to consider leaving the city for part of their trip, to experienceother parts of the local area. Many visitors are attracted by Scotland’s wild landscape,and want a truly authentic Scottish experience far from the tourist hotspots, sothere is real potential for these more remote areas to benefit from the tourismeconomy, and again VisitScotland marketing supports this. There is, however, withoutdoubt more that could be done to encourage visitors to visit other parts of Scotlandand the government will encourage VisitScotland to support this approach.

VisitScotland isalready a high performing organisation which has demonstrated that it can makea very effective contribution to the growth of Scottish tourism. Nevertheless,I am determined to ensure that the structures we have in place to supportScottish tourism are the right ones, and I am therefore working with theindustry, and the public sector organisations which work alongside it, toidentify whether these structures need to be adjusted. Any proposals for reformwill be announced in due course.

Yes. The newEnhanced Demand Responsive Transport Initiative will encompass the currentfunding streams for the Rural Community Transport Initiative, the Rural PublicPassenger Transport Grant Scheme and the current Demand Responsive TransportInitiative.

In 2001 thegovernment set up the languages fund to support language learning and teachingin both primary and secondary schools, and in particular to support theimplementation of the recommendations made in the report Citizens of aMultilingual World. It is for education authorities to decide the extent towhich this is directed to primary or secondary schools and we do not ask themto report on the amounts allocated to each sector.

Since 2001 thefollowing amounts have been provided to education authorities under this fund:

Year	Amount
2001-02	£2.5 million
2002-03	£4 million
2003-04	£4 million
2004-05	£4 million
2005-06	£4 million
2006-07	£3.9 million
2007-08	£4 million

 

In addition tothe annual languages fund, an additional Innovation Fund was set up from2002-04 to provide match funding for languages projects which were particularlyinnovative. £694,472 was provided through this funding stream.

In January 1993, ministersannounced that all Scottish primary schools should offer teaching in a modernEuropean language. To facilitate this a national modern languages in theprimary school (MLPS) training programme was set up to train primary languagesteachers. Between 1993 and 2001 over £23 million was provided for MLPStraining.Following thepublication of the report Citizens of a Multilingual World in 2000 andthe Executive’s response to this in 2001, MLPS funding was replaced by ageneral languages fund, which could be used by authorities to support languagelearning and teaching in Primary as well as Secondary schools. Details on thisfunding stream are provided in the response to the answer to question S3W-1009 on26 June 2007. All answers to written parliamentaryquestions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility forwhich can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

Under the terms of the public service contract for the provision of lifeline ferry services to andfrom the Northern Isles, which commenced on 6 July 2006, NorthLink Ferries Ltd is contractually obliged to carryfreight and livestock as part of the Approved Services in accordance with relevantcontractual terms. We have no plans to vary the Approved Services set out in thatcontract.

Freight and livestocktariffs are charged on the basis of the lane meterage used per journey and the agreementbetween Scottish ministers and NorthLink Ferries Ltd provides for annual index linkedincreases to those tariffs. The charge per head of livestock shipped will dependon how effectively the container space is used. As the new system will incorporateprovision for some “double decking”, average charges per head should fall, againassuming that container space is used effectively.

I refer the memberto the answers to questions S3W-628, S3W-633 and S3W-634 on 19 June 2007. All answers to written parliamentary questions are availableon the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

I can confirm thatfurther development work on the new livestock containers continues and is beingtaken forward by NorthLink Ferries Ltd in conjunction with industry representativesand animal welfare authorities. NorthLink expects to have new prototypes availablefor testing and further consultationwith industry interests in time for this year’s autumn peak season, with new containersbeing phased in thereafter to be fully available by autumn 2008, in time for thatyear’s peak livestock season.

Scottish Executive officialsare participating in discussions between UK Government and European Commissionofficials about future designation of Less Favoured Areas within the EuropeanUnion. In addition, the Scottish Executive has been discussing the interimScheme for the Less Favoured Areas Support Scheme (LFASS) 2007-2009 with theEuropean Commission in the wider context of the Scotland Rural DevelopmentProgramme (SRDP) for 2007-2013.