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College regionalisation and reform is about delivering education more efficiently and effectively while maintaining student numbers. Thousands of students with learning disabilities are benefitting, and will continue to benefit, from the improved services that our colleges offer. We expect colleges to treat all applicants fairly and to adhere fully to their legal obligations.

We also maintain regular dialogue with the Scottish Consortium for Learning Disability to ensure that we are doing all we can to support this group of learners. I have asked the Scottish Funding Council to work with the Consortium, and with ENABLE Scotland, to help colleges deliver programmes in a way that best supports into work students with a learning disability. This will include developing good practice guidance based on lessons learnt from Project Search and on extending the Transitions to Employment project, and will be funded as part of the additional £61 million announced on 6 February 2013.

All prisoners with sentences of five months or fewer retain any registration they hold with their community General Practice and are registered as temporary residents with the prison healthcare centre.

All prisoners with a sentence of six months or more are registered permanently with the prison health centre and de-registered from their community General Practice. This allows the prisoner’s clinical record to flow in and out of the community as well as the prison estate providing continuity of healthcare, access to any emergency care summary and reduces clinical risk to the prisoner by maintaining a complete, accurate and up to date record of the prisoner’s health. Upon release prisoners are required to re-register with their community General Practice.

The process of re-registration is encouraged and assisted by prison healthcare staff and others involved in the prisoner’s liberation and through care planning. Guidance has been issued by Practitioner Services Division, National Services Scotland to General Practices on the re-registration of liberated prisoners.

The 98% four hour accident and emergency treatment HEAT Standard is being maintained. Some boards are already meeting this standard but we want this to be replicated across Scotland. Through the three year unscheduled care action plan we are going to be reshaping and enhancing services to ensure that this standard is met sustainably in future, and all year round.

To get there, from a performance of 90.3% in December 2012, we are putting in place an interim additional HEAT Target of 95% performance by all boards by the year ending September 2014. This will be the first Milestone to measure progress against the planned return to the Standard performance of 98%. Boards at or above 95% will be expected to demonstrate progress towards the 98% target over the same period, and boards at 98% will be expected to demonstrate that they will be able to sustain that position. The Scottish Government wrote to all boards on 25 February, to inform them that this new target would begin in April (as part of the new HEAT year of 2013-14).

I wrote to NHS boards on 22 February 2013 reminding them that they should frequently review their behaviours and practices to ensure they have a culture which actively encourages and supports members of staff to raise concerns. I stressed that I expect them to ensure that confidentiality clauses and non-derogatory statement clauses are not used to suppress the reporting of concerns about practice in the NHS in Scotland.

The Central Legal Office has recently carried out a review of the confidentiality clause and has developed a revised draft which explicitly makes clear that an individual's right to make “protected disclosures” is protected. The revised clause is currently being finalised and will be compulsory for use across all NHS boards.

We have no plans to publish details of the issues raised by people using the NHS National Confidential Alert Line.

NHS boards have been provided with posters and business cards marketing the National Confidential Alert Line. The intention is that every member of staff should receive a business card.

On site hospice or palliative care is not adjusted for in the Hospital Standardised Mortality Rate (HSMR) model. The presence of patients admitted for palliative care is accounted for to a limited extent by the categorisation of diagnostic codes used in the HSMR methodology.

The National Confidential Alert Line for NHSScotland staff has been operating as a Freephone service since 2 April 2013.

We have no plans to publish an analysis of the calls made to the NHS National Confidential Alert Line.

The National Contingency Planning Group for Social Care Services, which was established to look at the overall preparedness of statutory agencies in addressing unforeseen circumstances that could lead to the disruption of social care provision in Scotland, continues to monitor the situation in the four residential care homes run by Castlebeck in Scotland with the aim of ensuring continuity of care for all residents.

The group’s membership includes Scottish Government, COSLA, Care Inspectorate, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Scotland Excel, NHS Scotland and the Association of Directors of Social Work.

The group is encouraged that the administrators are committed to the continuity of care and are actively looking to find buyers to maintain the services. Work is ongoing with the administrators to ensure a smooth transition to new providers.