Chamber and committees

Our Scottish Diabetes Framework recognises that good patient information is an essential part of diabetes care, and NHS 24 has an important role to play in that context. We have had no discussions with NHS 24 regarding specialist diabetic advice, but understand that the care pathways for diabetes developed by NHS 24 take account of information provided by Diabetes UK (Scotland).

The misuse of alcohol is specifically addressed in the new GMS contract for GPs. A National Enhanced Service (NES) will be introduced which is designed to improve the quality of care provided by practices to patients who misuse alcohol. Quality will be improved by providing incentives and training GPs as part of the NES to advise and treat alcohol misuse patients. The NES also allows for the undertaking of more specialised treatment of alcohol dependent patients.

It will be for the Primary Care Trust/NHS board to commission this service taking a view of local need.

Full details of the service outline are available in the supplementary information to the new contract published by the NHS Confederation and the British Medical Association.

The Executive’s proposed ex-gratia scheme would apply exclusively to infection with hepatitis C through NHS treatment with blood and blood products and there are no plans to extend the scope of the scheme to cover any other virus.

The current priority for Drug Treatment and Testing Orders is to make the order available to courts across the country as an option for dealing with drug misusing offenders. For those offenders with alcohol misuse problems, courts can in appropriate cases impose a probation order with a condition of alcohol treatment.

The new job-sizing system has been implemented in accordance with the terms of the agreement A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century. The impact on management grades in schools is that job weights are now assessed on a range of factors, rather than on one factor only: school roll.

To date, the Executive has received 20 letters from members of the public and 13 from MSPs making representations about the results job sizing exercise. The Executive also received the results of a postcard campaign organised by the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association (SSTA), expressing concerns that the exercise benefits teachers in primary schools to the detriment of those in the secondary sector. We received approximately 1,300 postcards in total.

The Scottish Executive is not aware of any such anomalies. The range of duties undertaken by promoted postholders can be very wide. That is why no single criterion, such as pupil roll, can adequately judge the value of a post. The salary scale points identified for management posts under the job-sizing exercise is determined by the range of duties covered by these posts, reflecting the agreed contribution of factors such as school-roll, management responsibilities, policy development and monitoring, external liaison and whole school activities, as set out in the agreement A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century. We would therefore expect some differences between guidance posts in different schools.

An appeals mechanism is in place to accommodate any failure to agree between postholders and line managers in completing the job-sizing questionnaire. Local authorities all have grievance procedures in place which individuals may pursue if they remain unsatisfied.

The final job sizing mechanism agreed by all three sides on the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers uses the following criteria to assess job-size, as set out in the Agreement A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century:school roll;management responsibilities - staff, finance, health and safety, welfare, pupils and resources;policy development and monitoring - development and delivery of policies and plans;external liaison - working with parents, carers, other professionals and external agencies, andwhole school activities - participating in the whole school/authority wide activities.

The Scottish Executive is confident the new system of job-sizing management posts in schools offers very substantial advantages over the previous system, which was widely recognised as being archaic and unfair.