The Environment Act 1995 requires local authorities to carry out a review and assessment of air quality within their areas and take action where air quality objectives are unlikely to be met within a set timescale. These requirements are set out in more detail in The Air Quality Strategy for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In such cases the authority must declare an Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) and draw up an action plan that sets out the steps it intends to take in pursuit of the objectives. The objective for NO₂ is an annual mean of 40mg/m³ to be achieved by the end of 2005. To date two AQMAs have been declared in Scotland (Aberdeen and Edinburgh) with Glasgow expected to follow shortly. All three are based on traffic-related NO₂ emissions.

The Scottish Executive is working in conjunction with HEBS and ASH Scotland to explore the best means of raising awareness about the impact of passive smoking. A long-term media campaign, linked to other action at community and industry levels, is being devised. This is being informed by the results of a survey of customer attitudes to smoking in public houses and restaurants. The campaign will be multi-faceted, focusing on issues associated with smoking in the workplace and in the home as well as in places of entertainment such as pubs, restaurants, and clubs. The first phase of the campaign is expected to be launched later this year. HEBS and ASH Scotland are also collaborating to produce guidelines for local authorities on the development of tobacco policies in the workplace.

Our aim has been to ensure that the KickStart programme is not "top down" in its approach and that it meets the diverse needs of voluntary and community groups around the country. This meant that we consulted widely, including with the Social Inclusion Partnerships (SIPs). The views of SIPs have strongly influenced the design of the programme and various changes have been made. For example, as a result of SIP views, KickStart will now run for an extra year, until March 2003, and with an increased allocation of £625,000.Most of the SIP clusters are in the process of recruiting their development workers and aim to have them in post between October and November.

The following table sets out actual expenditure by local authorities on improvement and repairs grants for private sector houses for 1999-2000. Figures are not available for expenditure in 2000-01 or for the local authorities estimated expenditure in 2001-02. Real terms figures can be calculated by applying the Treasury deflators (currently 2.5%) in the normal way.

Local authority	Expenditure (£000)
Aberdeen City	1,907
Aberdeenshire	388
Angus	506
Argyll and Bute	1,779
Clackmannanshire	267
Dumfries & Galloway	621
Dundee City	1,646
East Ayrshire	235
East Dunbartonshire	150
East Lothian	604
East Renfrewshire	151
Edinburgh, City of	2,848
Eilean Siar	3,461
Falkirk	495
Fife	419
Glasgow City	6,932
Highland	4,314
Inverclyde	489
Midlothian	53
Moray	557
North Ayrshire	767
North Lanarkshire	1,689
Orkney Islands	1,408
Perth and Kinross	1,083
Renfrewshire	1,879
Scottish Borders	947
Shetland Islands	320
South Ayrshire	310
South Lanarkshire	3,500
Stirling	776
West Dunbartonshire	247
West Lothian	429
Scotland	41,177

The cost of a changeover would depend on the timing, the overall approach and individual management decisions.

As I announced on 20 June, Professor John Temple is to chair the fundamental review of medical workforce planning which was a commitment in Our National Health: A plan for action, a plan for change. The review will consider the many complex areas surrounding the supply of trained doctors to NHSScotland, including the provision for general practice.The Executive are also currently working with ISD Scotland, the Scottish General Practitioners Committee (SGPC) and the Scottish Council for Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education (SCPMDE), to develop a statistical model to project the overall supply and demand of the general practitioner (GP) workforce in Scotland. Information obtained from this study will be used to inform decisions on training posts for general practitioners.Earlier this year I also announced new arrangements to give GPs the option of becoming permanent salaried employees of NHSScotland and additional investment to fund up to an extra 50 GP posts in deprived and rural areas.

The information is not available from the statistics prepared by the General Register Office for Scotland. However, the table gives the number of fatalities caused by fires where the source of ignition was known to be smokers' materials, excluding matches and cigarette lighters.

Year	Number of fatalities in Scotland
1997	32
1998	36
19991	33

Notes:1. 1999 figure is provisional.

The Scottish Executive does not receive any money from local authorities as a result of the housing capital receipts set-aside rules.

Policy responsibility for the National Lottery is reserved. Responsibility for distributing proceeds from the lottery rests with the Distributing Bodies.

The relevant data on the recovery and recycling of packaging waste are incomplete as some businesses have yet to submit data or are in the process of reviewing their previous estimates. It is therefore too early to say whether the United Kingdom has achieved its' packaging targets under the EC Packaging Directive. The position should be clearer towards the end of the year when a review of the data which is currently being undertaken is complete.Implementation of the directive is an ongoing process. The National Waste Strategy: Scotland identifies packaging waste as a priority waste stream. The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997 transpose the directive into UK law and these are enforced in Scotland by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.