Labour's Holyrood leader, Wendy Alexander, announced a reshuffle of her front-bench team at the party conference yesterday.

Jackie Baillie has been appointed chief of staff, with Michael McMahon in place as Shadow Parliamentary Business Manager.

North-east MSP Richard Baker MSP moves to become Labour group Chief Whip.

Ms Alexander said Ms Baillie would co-ordinate new thinking on election candidate selection.

"I have asked her to take on a major new role as my chief of staff, co-ordinating relationships between Labour's Scottish Parliamentary group, Westminster and the Labour Party," she said.

"Jackie's experience as a former party chairman is well known. She knows the party inside out and her organisational abilities will be invaluable in this new post."

In Ms Alexander's speech on Saturday, she floated the idea of primary elections to choose candidates and asked Jackie Baillie to lead the search for a way to "think afresh about how we select our new candidates for the next Scottish elections".

Ms ALexander added on her other appointments: "Michael McMahon has been an outstanding chief whip and I am delighted he has accepted his promotion to Labour's Business Manager in the Scottish Parliament."

The Labour leader added that Mr Baker has shown "tremendous enthusiasm" as the party's higher education spokesman.

Scotland Secretary Des Browne told the conference Labour had reached a turning point and it Labour at Westminster was delivering progress for Scotland in terms of energy and welfare reform.

Yesterday, education spokeswoman Rhona Brankin set out plans for a literacy commission, with a pledge to make Scotland the first country in the world where everyone is able to read.

CBI Scotland director Iain McMillan, Judith Gillespie of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, Gordon Matheson of Glasgow council, Professor Tommy Mackay, who drew up a literacy programme for West Dunbartonshire, and Scottish youth parliament chairman John Loughton will serve on the commission, she said.

Ms Brankin told the Scottish Labour conference in Aviemore: "If children cannot read, they cannot do modern studies, or read a manual on how to operate a lathe.

"Reading unlocks the door to education. For too many of our children, a lack of functional literacy - an inability to read a recipe or a newspaper, for example - creates a barrier to learning."

She announced the commission plan in a conference speech which contained a fierce attack on the SNP.

She accused the Nationalists of dumping several manifesto commitments including primary-school class sizes, nursery places for vulnerable two-year-olds, and scrapping student debt.

"The most sickening aspect of this is that the SNP spent eight years in opposition criticising Labour's school-building programme," she said.

"And yet now we are being treated to the unedifying spectacle of SNP ministers rolling up in the official cars to open Labour's new schools.

"Schools that were initiated by Labour and built under a Labour programme - frankly, it's disgusting."

Ms Brankin said education had suffered a "wasted year" under the SNP, in which not one new school had been commissioned, and spending cuts in areas where the SNP was in local authority power.

"Under the Nationalists, education faces stagnation and reversals," she said.