The numbers of student nurses entering training are as follows:

(a) 2001-02    2,804

(b) 2002-03    2,916

Information on the number of student nurses entering training in 2003-04 will be available in July 2004.

The available information on drug offences which were recorded by the police is given in the following table.

Breakdown of Recorded Drugs Offences, 1999-2000 to 2003-2004^P

	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04P
Illegal importation of drugs	7	1	4	3	4
Production, manufacture or cultivation of drugs	106	131	144	205	249
Supply, possession with intent to supply etc. of drugs	8,032	9,024	10,130	9,940	9,284
Possession of drugs	21,776	22,470	26,188	30,510	32,463
Drugs, money laundering related offences	1	0	0	0	0
Drugs, other offences	452	455	284	280	275
Total	30,374	32,081	36,750	40,938	42,275

(P) Please note that data for 2003-04 is provisional.

Information on leavers is not collected centrally. However, annual censuses of the nursing and midwifery workforce at 30 September can be used to establish annual flows of staff out of NHSScotland.

The table shows the number of qualified nurses and midwives who left between the September 2001 and September 2002 censuses and the September 2002 and September 2003 censuses. Information on the September 2004 census will not be available until 2005. Figures are also shown relative to the staff in post at the start of the period.

Number of Qualified Nurse and Midwife Leavers Between Each Census

	Leavers	Leavers as % of Staff in Post at Start of Period
Leavers between September 2001 and September 2002	2,853	6.7
Leavers between September 2002 and September 2003	2,863	6.6

Source: National Manpower Statistics from Payroll.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The deployment of police officers in any force area is a matter for the Chief Constable of the force concerned and information of this nature is not held centrally. However, the number of officers available for deployment has been increasing. As at March 2003, the overall number was at a record level, and our Partnership Agreement contains a commitment not only to increase the numbers on operational duty in every Scottish force but to also to improve on the level of overall police numbers.

The full-time equivalent number of permanent staff employed in the core departments of the Scottish Executive, executive agencies and associated departments, broken down by local authority area in which they are located, is provided in the following table. Information on the location of staff employed by other government departments is not held centrally.

Number¹ of Civil Servants (Full-Time Equivalents) in the Scottish Executive Core Departments, Agencies and Associated Departments, Figures as at 1 June 2004²

Scotland Total	15,289
Aberdeen City	588
Aberdeenshire	339
Angus	99
Argyll and Bute	72
City of Edinburgh	7,497
Clackmannanshire	412
Dumfries and Galloway	252
Dundee City	154
East Ayrshire	69
East Dunbartonshire	175
East Lothian	34
Eilean Siar	30
Falkirk	584
Fife	121
Glasgow City	1,821
Highland	353
Inverclyde	310
Moray	38
North Lanarkshire	458
Orkney	35
Perth and Kinross	625
Renfrewshire	131
Scottish Borders	291
Shetland Islands	30
South Ayrshire	114
South Lanarkshire	191
Stirling	361
West Dunbartonshire	45
West Lothian	62

Notes:

1. Full-time equivalents, rounded to the nearest whole number.

2. Figures for Historic Scotland, Registers of Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service are at  April 2004.

The table below shows the percentage of the Scottish budget that was spent by non-departmental public bodies in the years 1999-2000, 2000-01, 2001-02, 2002-03 and 2003-04.

	1999-2000 (£ Million)	2000-01 (£ Million)	2001-02 (£ Million)	2002-03 (£ Million)	2003-042 (£ Million)
Scottish Budget1	15,895	17,993	19,890	20,972	22,764
NDPB Allocation	209	223	259	290	346
% of Total Budget	1.31	1.24	1.30	1.38	1.52

Notes:

1. The figures for the Scottish budget were taken from Serving Scotland’s Needs 1999 (for 1999-2000) and from the Draft Budget 2002-03, 2003-04 and 2004-05 (for the remaining years).

2. The figures for 2003-04 are prepared on a full resource accounting basis andinclude provision for capital charges.

The Scottish Executive does not recommend funding levels for local roads maintenance, it provides local authorities with Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) allocations. GAEs allocations are not funding as such. They form part of a more complex formula used to calculate a single Revenue Support Grant figure for each local authority which covers all grant‑aided local authority services. It is for each local authority to decide on its spending on individual services based on local needs and priorities.

Trunk road maintenance funding levels are shown in tables 11.1 and 11.2 of Scottish Transport Statistics, No 22, 2003 Edition, a copy of which has been placed in the Scottish Parliament’s Reference Centre (Bib. number 29044). Table 11.1 shows expenditure for all Scotland and table 11.2 shows expenditure by Operating Company. Expenditure is not allocated or gathered by local authority area.

The Scottish Law Commission hopes to publish its report on this subject by the end of 2004. It will include a draft bill.

Information held by ISD Scotland shows that 96 public health consultants were in post at September 2003 from a total establishment of 104, a vacancy rate of 7.7%.

The route to consultant posts is through specialist registrar training. We have increased the total number of specialist registrar training posts in publichealth medicine from 31 to 34 over the last two years. It is projected that eight training posts will complete specialist registrar training in 2004 and a furthereight in 2005. This will help to ensure an adequate supply of public health practitioners at consultant level.

The National Workforce Committee is leading on the work force development agenda and will be assisted in this by the new Workforce Numbers Group (WoNuG). This group will for the first time look comprehensively at the health care work force, including the public health work force. It will advise the committee on work force numbers and modelling across all staff groups and make recommendations on work force size and shape in a sensible and pragmatic way.