The information requested is not held centrally.

Suicide has not, in modern times, been considered a criminal offence in Scotland and therefore, unlike in England and Wales, there is no criminal offence of assisted suicide. Any question of responsibility for causing the death of another could amount to homicide and would be investigated as such.

A decision to prosecute would be taken by Crown Counsel on the facts and circumstances of the particular case and the Law Officers do not regard it as appropriate to prepare and publish detailed prosecution policy guidance in this area as the Director of Public Prosecutions has recently done in England and Wales.

GP practices in Scotland now offer a variety of extended hours to registered patients on their list. These include earlier appointment times, evening sessions, concurrent working patterns and occasional Saturday morning clinics.

The following table details the number of GP practices which are providing extended opening hours in Scotland. Uptake position as at November 2009.

NHS Board	Category
	1	2	3	4	Total
Ayrshire and Arran	47	0	12	0	59
Borders	11	0	12	2	25
Dumfries and Galloway	33	0	2	0	35
Fife	28	0	29	0	57
Forth Valley	50	1	6	0	57
Greater Glasgow and Clyde	186	0	84	0	270
Grampian	51	1	32	0	84
Highland	69	1	29	3	102
Lanarkshire	58	1	29	10	98
Lothian	79	1	45	0	125
Orkney	9	0	5	0	14
Shetland	4	3	0	3	10
Tayside	39	0	22	8	69
Western Isles	10	0	2	0	12
Totals	674	8	309	26	1,017

Notes:

Category 1: The number of practices that have contractually signed-up to provide extended hours to their patient list.

Category 2: The number of practices that have expressed a willingness to provide extended hours.

Category 3: The number of practices that are not providing extended hours.

Category 4: The number of practices that are currently undecided whether or not to provide extended hours.

The Difficult Decisions Short Life Working Group was an NHS Board group and there has been no direct involvement of ministers or Scottish Government policy officials. The remit of the group was to develop a framework that NHS boards can use when making difficult decisions, both in planning at a population level and when making decisions about individual patients.

The membership was chaired by Dr Gina Radford, Director of Public Health, NHS Fife (now working in NHS Cambridgeshire) and included the following members:

Ms Ailsa Brown, Principal Health Economist, NHS Quality Improvement Scotland

Mr Brian Devlin, Interim Head of Strategic Support and Ethics, NHS Highland

Dr Sara Davies, Consultant in Public Health Medicine, Scottish Government

Professor John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy and Director, Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, University of St Andrews

Professor Graeme Laurie, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, University of Edinburgh

Ms Liz Macdonald, Senior Policy Advocate, Consumer Focus Scotland

Ms Jackie Sansbury, Director of Strategic Planning, NHS Lothian

Secretariat: Dr Graham Mackenzie, Consultant in Public Health, NHS Lothian

The workplan was to:

build on discussions and conclusions from the Difficult Decisions national workshop (22 February 2008);

consider the published literature on making difficult decisions in NHS boards;

survey difficult decision making in planning and for individual patients across NHS boards and regional planning groups in Scotland;

review key concepts within the group;

assess the legal and ethical frameworks within which decisions must be made, and

draft a report and circulate to members.

Further to the Area Drug and Therapeutics Committees and Exceptional Prescribing Leads event facilitated by the Scottish Medicines Consortium on 12 May 2009, the Scottish Government has asked the Scottish Medicines Consortium to facilitate another event in the spring 2010. This will provide an opportunity to bring these groups together to consider issues related to the managed introduction of new medicines within NHSScotland, particularly around how best to achieve consistency of approach in relation to individual patient treatment requests.

As well as NHS boards, the draft framework was circulated to 37 stakeholder and patient groups as follows:

Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

British Medical Association

Royal College of Nursing

Scottish Cancer Coalition

Scottish Long Term Conditions Alliance

Scottish Medicines Consortium

Scottish Independent Hospitals Association

Scottish Partnership Forum

Scottish Workforce and Staff Governance Committee

Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care

Regional Cancer Advisory Groups

Consumer Focus Scotland

Scotland Patients Association

Citizens Advice Scotland

Association for International Cancer Research

Bowel Cancer UK

Breakthrough Breast Cancer

Breast Cancer Care Scotland

Cancer BACUP

Cancer Care Research Centre, Stirling University

Cancer Research UK

CLIC Sargent

Leukaemia Care in Scotland

Macmillan Cancer Support

Maggie''s Cancer Caring Centres

Marie Curie Cancer Care

Myeloma UK

Parkinsons'' Disease Society

Prostate Scotland

Rarer Cancers Forum

Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation

Scottish Association of Prostate Cancer Support Groups

Scottish Breast Cancer Campaign

Scottish Cancer Foundation

Taktent Cancer Support

Teenage Cancer Trust

The Prostate Cancer Charity.

As outlined in the answer to S3W-28278 on 19 November 2009, the Scottish Government intends to review the implementation of the policy framework following a period of operation.

In addition, active consideration is being given to monitoring arrangements which will underpin this guidance.

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/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The Scottish Government is in the final stages of the preparation of guidance which sets out the policy framework with regard to the introduction and availability of new medicines in the NHS in Scotland. The draft guidance was circulated to patient groups, stakeholders and NHS boards and will be made available to the Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee for comment. The Scottish Government plans to publish the revised guidance by the end of March 2010.

The Scottish Government has been working with NHS boards to review local processes and is preparing guidance for NHS boards which sets out the policy framework with regard to the introduction and availability of new medicines in the NHS in Scotland. A key requirement within the guidance is the need for NHS boards to have written policies describing the systems and processes for the managed entry of new medicines and that these should be publicly available. It will be for NHS boards to ensure that this is delivered.

The Hospital Medicines Utilisation Database will provide access to high level cost and volume data on medicines use in hospitals. This has been developed and piloted and will cover all NHS boards during 2010 with the exception of NHS Highland who are currently reviewing their pharmacy system and are therefore outside the scope of phase one of the programme.