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The Scottish Government’s approach to Better Regulation focuses on five key principles – that regulation should be transparent, proportionate, consistent, accountable and targeted only where needed.

The regulatory environment should also encourage and support sustainable economic growth, competitiveness and innovation while maintaining a level playing field.

The construction industry is already statutorily required to hold specific licences or permits in order to carry out certain types of work and its practices are controlled by a wide range of regulations.

The Scottish Government has no such plans currently for further legislation. Under building standards legislation, constructors and building owners have statutory responsibility for works carried out to buildings. A person carrying out work without a building warrant where a warrant should have been obtained, or a person not building in accordance with a building warrant, is guilty of an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £5,000 (level 5 on the standard scale).

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-02032 on 20 September 2016. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, Shona Robison, wrote to the Chief Executives of Scotland’s Health boards on 7 January 2016 confirming that ADPs are to maintain services and performance in 2016-17 at 2015-16 levels utilising the funding available. NHS boards provide funding from their general resource allocation and the specific funding allocation for ADPs provided by the Scottish Government.

Information gathered from the Inverclyde test site will be published as part of the final evaluation of the Primary CareTransformation Fund being carried out by the Scottish School of Primary Care (SSPC). As yet no formal date has been agreed for the publication of this report but it is likely to be at the end of the current funding for the SSPC (March 2018).

The GP contract is formulated through a process of bilateral discussion, and agreement, between the Scottish General Practitioners Committee and the Scottish Government. These negotiations are commercially sensitive; details will be published once they have concluded.

Any drug related death is a tragedy - for the individual, family and community involved. We are continuing to tackle the damaging impact of drugs in Scotland and making recovery a reality through our national drugs strategy, the Road to Recovery.

The National Records of Scotland (NRS) drug related death report shows that we have an ageing group of drug users who are experiencing increasingly poor health. To help address this, we have funded the Scottish Drugs Forum to investigate the issues associated with older drug users and report back to the Scottish Government.

We have invested over £630 million to tackle problem alcohol and drug use since 2008. Alcohol and Drug Partnerships are to maintain services and performance in 2016-17 at 2015-16 levels utilising the funding available. Drug taking in Scotland is falling, the number of young people taking drugs is the lowest in a decade and the NRS report confirms that the number of people under the age of 24 dying from a drug related death has fallen.

Table one includes information on the average wait for treatment and the length of time that 95 and 99 people out of 100 waited to begin their first treatment, between 1st April 2011 and 31st March 2016.

The requested information for longest waiting times could not be provided as the quality of the data could not be assured. Instead, data has been provided that gives a more accurate representation than the longest wait figures as it excludes any outliers which may be due to data quality issues.

Table 1

Source: ISD Scotland Ref: IR2016-01751

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. This is a matter for the NHS boards and the individual Alcohol and Drug Partnerships.