To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many (a) families and (b) single people are accepted as homeless within (i) Inverclyde district, (ii) Strathclyde and (iii) Scotland as a whole.

The number of applicants under the homeless persons legislation assessed by local authorities as homeless, as recorded in the returns submitted to the Scottish Development Department in he year ended 31 March 1989, are as follows:

	Number
Inverclyde district	111
Strathclyde region	4,494
Scotland	9,561

These returns do not record information on the composition of applicants' households. It is not therefore possible to say how many were from families and single people respectively.

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give an estimate of the current number of homeless in Scotland, and, of those, how many suffer from (a) alcoholism or drug dependency, (b) Al DS and (c) mental illness.

Information on which to base such an estimate is not held centrally.