Seòmar agus comataidhean

The employment ofsupply teachers is a matter for local authorities and we have not issued guidanceon this issue.

This is a matter forthe local authority. Under the terms of the Agreement, A Teaching Professionfor the 21st Century, procedures for the recruitment and deployment of teachingstaff are devolved to local authority responsibility.

The Scottish NegotiatingCommittee for Teachers (SNCT) has produced a Code of Practice on the Use of TemporaryContracts. The code aims to assist councils in managing their staffing requirementsin a co-ordinated and structured way and ensure that employees on temporary contractsare not treated less favourably than permanent staff.

There is no automaticright to permanent status and movement to a permanent post is normally through anapplication process. Under the Fixed Term Employees Regulations 2002, any temporarycontract extended beyond four years will be made permanent unless the authoritycan objectively justify not doing so.

The Scottish Executivecarries out a teacher workforce planning exercise with the aim of broadly balancingthe supply and demand for teachers. During the Smarter Scotland debate on 20 Junewe announced additional funding of £9 million that will enable local authoritiesto employ an additional 300 primary teachers. However, the employment of new teachersand the type of contract under which they are employed are matters for local authorities.

This information isnot held centrally.

ProjectScotland isa company limited by guarantee and registered as a charity whose aims and objectivesare to promote the welfare and relieve the needs of the population in Scotland by encouraging and assisting young people to providetheir skills and services voluntarily to charitable organisations.

Since its launch inMay 2005 ProjectScotland has placed over 1,400 young people into full-timevolunteering opportunities, the vast majority of which have been developed by ProjectScotland.

Full information aboutthe work of Project Scotland is available from its Chief Executive at 49 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7HL.

I refer the memberto the answer to question S3W-2412 on 20 August 2007. All answers to writtenparliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website the search facilityfor which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

As at 26 July 2007, 234 charges had been reported to procurators fiscalunder the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006. Thesecharges were contained in a total of 119 cases, involving 141 accused persons. Thefollowing table shows the outcome of all 234 charges so far.

Animal Health andWelfare (Scotland) Act 2006: Charges

Instructions	Outcome	Total
Court	Active	110
	Convicted	21
	Not Convicted	4
	Not Prosecuted as a Separate Charge	19
Court Total		153
Direct Measure	Fiscal Fine Paid	1
	Deferred to Reporter to the Children’s Hearing	1
	Warning	8
Direct Measure Total		10
No Action		10
Decision Pending		58
Grand Total		234

Notes:

Theinformation in this table has been extracted from the Crown Office and ProcuratorFiscal Service’s Case Management Database. The database is a live, operational databaseused to manage the processing of reports submitted to procurators fiscal by thepolice and other reporting agencies. If a Procurator Fiscal amends a charge submitted by a reportingagency the database will record details only of the amended charge.

Thedatabase is charge-based. The figures quoted therefore relate to the number of chargesrather than the number of individuals charged or the number of incidents that gaverise to such charges.

A disqualificationorder is one of the options available to the court on conviction. To date, courtproceedings have been completed in 12 cases and four disqualification orders havebeen issued, banning convicted persons from keeping animals for periods rangingfrom five to 20 years.

I refer the memberto the answer to question S3W-2412 on 20 August 2007. All answers to writtenparliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website the search facilityfor which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

There is Scottishcase law that requires staff to attend emergency calls. If a member of staff refusedto attend a location, i.e. refused to go to the area to conduct a dynamic risk assessment,then they would be liable to disciplinary action.