AMBULANCE crews are to give up call-out payments in return for losing two and a half hours of their 40-hour working week to resolve the bitter dispute over rest breaks.

Unions said the agreement, which will also see the Scottish Government hire 150 new staff at an annual cost of £5 million, will see the service more aligned with the police and fire services.

The settlement is due to kick in after a five-month interim deal to allow time for a recruitment drive. It follows the rejection by unions before Christmas of a £1500 one-off payment and £100 for every call-out interrupting a rest break.

Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon told MSPs: "A long-term solution, that protects patient safety and also supports ambulance service staff, has been agreed.

"The rejection of the most recent offer made it clear to me a radically different proposal would be required in order to reach a solution to this issue and that is what has been found."

Call-out payments have been scrapped, but for the next five months while new recruits are taken on a monthly payment of £150 will be paid as part of an interim deal.

Ms Sturgeon said the extra £5m will "strengthen the clinical response to life-threatening emergencies as well as the performance of the Scottish Ambulance Service".

She added: "For remote and rural areas it will support increased numbers of community paramedics able to work in and with communities.

"The agreement ensures additional funding will be invested in the ambulance service, rather than in additional payments to existing ambulance staff.

"No individual staff member will gain financially when required to attend an emergency call during a rest period.

"I welcome a resolution that clearly demonstrates what I have always known and believed to be the case – that the priority of ambulance staff is their patients, not their personal gain."

GMB Scottish secretary Harry Donaldson said: "The outcome will be to provide and deliver a service to the public which is fit for service. It has taken time to get to this point because of the complexity of the negotiations but GMB consider that we now have a workable deal for all concerned."

Labour's Shadow Health Secretary Jackie Baillie welcomed the deal.

However, she added: "I am gravely concerned that this deal has come at a cost – patient safety.

"Numerous paramedics have written to me expressing their concerns about the impact the call categorisation system is having on public safety.

"The importance of a call should be on the basis of the severity of the symptoms, not the number you call."

During the dispute, staff worked under an interim arrangement whereby crews had to attend all "category A" call outs and emergency events.

However, Ms Sturgeon said the point of the new deal was that all call-outs would be attended with no categorisation of calls.

The dispute followed two deaths after nearby ambulance staff were not available.

Three-year-old Martyn Gray, of Crieff, died after taking ill last year. It emerged a crew taking their break 10 minutes away was not called and another crew took 48 minutes to get there.

In October 2010, Mandy Mathieson, 33, died after suffering a heart attack at her home in Tomintoul. Because the local crew was on a break another was dispatched from Grantown-on-Spey, some 15 miles away.

Her brother, Charlie Mathieson, a firefighter, described the breakthrough as a "pretty good deal".

He said that in the case of his sister it had become clear that the delay was not to blame for her death but such cases caused anxiety for the public.

He said he was unclear about the distinction in the case of ambulance crews between emergency and essential services, and whether the additional staff numbers were sufficient to help resolve issues in rural areas, but he welcomed the moves.