The First Minister officially handed over a Scottish and Southern Energy “Sustainable Energy Module” to the President of Malawi during his recent visit to Scotland. The Module harnesses wind and solar energy and can be used as a vaccination centre, a birthing clinic or a teacher development clinic.

However, the priorities for the Scottish Executive’s International Development Policy are health, education and civil society development. Therefore, we have not taken any steps to build long-term links between Scotland’s energy sector and Africa.

The Executive has offered the following funding in 2005-06 to support core or developmental work:

Forward Scotland - £381,389

Scottish Environment LINK - £25,000

Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society - £16,500

National Society for Clean Air - £8,000.

In addition the Executive provides grants for projects to a number of organisations which could be described as environmental or have environmental concerns. Information on current funding for projects is on the Executive’s website www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Environment/17108/7457.

The impact of price rises on fuel poverty depends on a number of factors including the energy efficiency of the home and household income. The Fuel Poverty in Scotland Report for the Scottish House Condition Survey estimates that an across the board rise of 5% would increase the number of fuel poor households by 30,000, assuming that incomes and household energy efficiency remains unchanged. We will review the case for further research into various aspects of fuel poverty in the context of decisions on the future of our central heating and warm deal programmes.

The Scottish Executive is committed to ensuring a consistent supply of the best-quality dental graduates to deliver first-rate patient care.

The number of applications to study dentistry in Scotland regularly exceeds the number of available places. The allocation of places to dental schools is intended to provide an output of dental graduates to meet the demands of the NHS. Allocation is not intended to match the number of applications, many of which do not satisfy grade requirements.

The number of Scottish dental graduates is predicted to meet or exceed demand in Scotland from 2008.

The eight areas in Scotland which are classed as designated for the purposes of recruitment and retentions allowances are Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, Grampian, Highland, Orkney, Shetland and Westerns Isles NHS Board areas and within the area of Argyll and Clyde NHS Board, Campbeltown, Dunoon, Lochgilphead, Lochgoilhead, Oban, Rothesay, Tarbert, and the Isles of Mull, Iona, Colonsay, Tiree, Islay and Jura.

The decision on where to place dentists recruited from overseas within individual NHS board areas rests with the relevant board.

Responsibility for recruiting dentists lies with the health boards and independent practitioners. The Scottish Executive is aware that health boards have in the past made efforts to recruit from outside Scotland, such as Northern Ireland, Eire, Sweden and Finland.

The Scottish Executive has encouraged recruitment through a range of recruitment and retention incentives. The contract for dentists from Poland was an innovative development-led by the Scottish Executive Health Department. The Executive will review how better collaboration between health boards and the Scottish Executive Health Department could facilitate similar recruitment initiatives.

We are committed to NHSScotland being an exemplar employer. Enhancements to staff terms and conditions provide benefits to staff by recognising their contribution through fair pay, greater flexibility and improved development opportunities; they also help deliver benefits to patients by creating a more motivated and better skilled workforce, and a platform for new working practices that can drive more responsive patient-centred services.

The annual NHS staff costs over the last five years for each NHS board, expressed also as a percentage of each board’s total budget, was as follows:

NHS Boards:

	2000-01		2001-02		2002-03
	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget
Argyll and Clyde	196,389	46%	210,323	51%	232,522	53%
Ayrshire and Arran	160,343	45%	170,860	48%	187,936	49%
Borders	51,103	48%	53,541	53%	58,083	53%
Dumfries and Galloway	72,928	48%	75,442	51%	80,803	51%
Fife	135,664	43%	142,386	47%	159,195	49%
Forth Valley	121,359	46%	128,107	51%	137,829	51%
Grampian	246,319	51%	259,194	56%	285,639	57%
Glasgow	548,569	56%	582,413	61%	649,892	63%
Highland	103,652	49%	112,585	55%	125,626	57%
Lanarkshire	206,465	41%	220,507	43%	241,024	45%
Lothian	402,324	56%	427,897	60%	471,172	63%
Orkney	8,781	38%	9,564	44%	10,982	46%
Shetland	10,112	37%	10,818	40%	11,633	39%
Tayside	240,117	57%	250,924	59%	276,133	62%
Western Isles	16,365	41%	17,318	42%	20,165	45%
Total	2,520,490		2,671,879		2,948,634

 

	2003-04		2004-05
	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget
Argyll and Clyde	250,193	53%	283,828	54%
Ayrshire and Arran	205,796	49%	237,057	47%
Borders	65,828	53%	73,650	50%
Dumfries and Galloway	87,744	49%	102,464	48%
Fife	172,915	48%	203,255	48%
Forth Valley	155,002	54%	172,447	51%
Grampian	312,267	59%	356,959	59%
Glasgow	733,215	67%	815,872	64%
Highland	140,083	57%	168,059	55%
Lanarkshire	264,719	47%	304,685	46%
Lothian	522,475	57%	588,316	62%
Orkney	11,446	45%	14,680	47%
Shetland	12,775	40%	16,366	45%
Tayside	306,683	65%	344,777	63%
Western Isles	21,673	46%	25,179	47%
Total	3,262,814		3,707,594

 

NHS Special Health Boards

	2000-01		2001-02		2002-03
	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget
Golden Jubilee	-		-		11,429	67%
NHS Health Scotland	1,805	18%	1,963	16%	2,433	18%
Mental Welfare Commission	1,164	74%	1,291	68%	1,539	71%
NHS Education Scotland	5,769	4%	7,108	5%	10,975	6%
NHS National Services Scotland	57,171	35%	63,043	38%	69,567	39%
Quality Improvement Scotland	613	23%	1,716	36%	2,635	35%
Scottish Ambulance Service	63,954	66%	68,017	66%	74,784	67%
State Hospital	14,526	71%	15,600	69%	16,769	70%
NHS 24			1,249	14%	11,454	44%
Specials Total	145,002		159,987		201,585

 

	2003-04		2004-05
	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget	Staff Costs (£000)	% of Budget
Golden Jubilee	18,589	65%	22,184	67%
NHS Health Scotland	3,704	27%	3,636	21%
Mental Welfare Commission	1,857	73%	2,312	54%
NHS Education Scotland	12,872	6%	15,069	5%
NHS National Services Scotland	74,405	38%	92,407	41%
Quality Improvement Scotland	3,517	34%	5,245	43%
Scottish Ambulance Service	82,861	69%	102,882	72%
State Hospital	17,926	67%	20,915	65%
NHS 24	20,464	53%	27,202	58%
Specials Total	236,195		291,852

 

Reason for Increase

A range of factors impact upon staff costs. These include increases in staff numbers (which have been significant in recent years), annual uplifts to staff pay, movement of staff up pay scales, temporary supplements to staff pay such a New Deal banding supplements for junior doctors, introduction of pay modernisation and the change in employers’ superannuation contributions from 5.5% of total pensionable salaries to 14% in April 2004.

Staff Costs

The boards’ expenditure on staff costs are taken from the staff costs note of the published annual accounts of the relevant NHS boards and trusts for each respective financial year.

Budgets

The total budget of each board is their Revenue Resource Limit (RRL) which is reported in their annual accounts.

In 2000-01, before resource budgeting was introduced to the Scottish Executive, boards did not have a RRL. Their budget for 2000-01 has therefore been assumed to be their Total Revenue Cash Allocation which was also reported in their annual accounts.

No investigations into geothermal energy have been carried out by the Executive.

The Executive has, however, funded a number of geothermal related projects. Through the Scottish Community and Householder Renewables Initiative, we have supported 177 household ground source heat pump projects and 25 community group projects.

Utility companies employing contractors to carry out work on their behalf have a duty to give advance notice of non-emergency works to the roads authority. The roads authority then has a duty to ensure that works are co-ordinated. Roads authorities have powers to give directions as to the timing of such works.

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2005 will improve co-ordination through the statutory provision of notices for all proposed works. Both roads authorities and utility companies will be required to place notices on the Scottish Road Works Register. Increased powers of direction for roads authorities as to the timing of works, placing of apparatus and restrictions following substantial road works will also help minimise the impact on commuters.

Environmental monitoring for radioactivity is an operational matter for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. The results of this monitoring are published annually in the Radioactivity in Food and the Environment reports (RIFE). A copy of the RIFE report for 2004 can be seen on the SEPA website http://www.sepa.org.uk/pdf/publications/rife/rife10.pdf.