Chamber and committees

I have one question for Fanchea Kelly and Margaret McCarthy. The Scottish Care chief executive, Donald Macaskill, has estimated that 30 to 40 per cent of the country’s residential adult care facilities might close permanently because of the immediate challenges that they face. In your opinion, would the projected £1.3 billion that is earmarked for the national care service be better invested in the local delivery of social care now?

My question is for Sandra MacLeod. In your written submission, you emphasised that

“It is essential that the scrutiny of legislation by Parliament and stakeholders is not diluted by using secondary legislation over primary legislation.”

What would you prefer to see in the bill at this stage? What do you understand as co-design with respect to the bill?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the cyberattack on 4 August 2022 which reportedly targeted NHS Scotland’s patient management software. (S6T-01010)

Following the attack, NHS staff were forced to keep patient records on paper, in emails and in Word documents. There are serious implications for patients’ safety, privacy and trust. Can the cabinet secretary confirm the scale of the data breach, including the number of patient records that were affected by the attack, and say what measures were put in place to keep patient data safe as digital systems were restored?

The alarming reality is that, with on-going geopolitical turbulence, we are seeing more and more such malicious attacks and healthcare is clearly in the perpetrators’ crosshairs. How confident is the cabinet secretary in the resilience of health boards to defend against future attacks and does he agree with the former digital director of NHS National Services Scotland that the NHS needs to up its game in the face of serious cyberattacks?

I associate myself with those remarks from the First Minister. I pay tribute to Hazel Nairn, who tragically went missing during Friday’s adverse weather. As the search continues, my thoughts are with her family and the responders on the ground.

In Brechin, two of the pumps belonging to the town’s £16 million flood defences failed, flooding homes and causing extensive damage. Villagers raised concerns with me about the safety of an electrical substation in Inchbair, which was half-submerged in water for days. Communities rallied together over the weekend, but improvements need to be made to the organisation of the emergency response to such weather events.

How will the Scottish Government work with local resilience partnerships to expedite that process and reassure people in my region that every possible step has been taken to protect them?

To ask the First Minister what assessment the Scottish Government has made of the emergency response to flooding in the north-east of Scotland in recent days. (S6F-01565)

We need to stop the haemorrhaging of existing GPs in search of better conditions abroad or early retirement, and to stop those who are considering cutting the sessions that they currently work.

Mr Doris talks about blame, and he is blaming Brexit for these dire situations. We cannot plug the gaps when the system is a sieve. More than a third of practices report having at least one vacancy, which is a higher figure than at this time last year. It takes years to train a doctor. The SNP Government must focus on retaining the talent that we have.

Humza Yousaf says, “Judge me by my record”. On resources, the cuts of £65 million from the primary care budget and £5 million in support payments mean that GP practices will have to try to meet patient demand with even fewer resources than before, and the kicker? The slashing of £65 million from primary care was announced on the same day that the Crown Office confirmed that almost £51 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on a range of malicious prosecutions.

If the health secretary left his bunker and his spin doctors and listened to our doctors and nurses on the NHS front line, he would understand that establishing multidisciplinary teams in primary care is vital if we are to scale up our patient care. We know that there are problems with putting in place multidisciplinary teams that can help to spread the GP workload.

We have an NHS recovery plan that has seen things getting worse, not better. We have a winter resilience plan that tells the public to access urgent care only if the situation is life threatening, which piles even more pressure on primary care. Things are so dire that NHS leaders have considered introducing a two-tier system for treatment, which would charge the wealthy.

How many warnings from the front line of our NHS will it take for this health secretary not just to listen but to act? Primary care is at breaking point. Members have laid bare the fact that there simply is not the capacity to meet demand.

Sadly, Graham Simpson highlighted the fact that, under the SNP, we now have a national have-not service. Jeremy Balfour outlined the alarming stats and bleak picture. Dr Sandesh Gulhane highlighted the lack of trust in Humza Yousaf and shed light on conversations that are taking place behind closed Government doors. Jackie Baillie stated that GPs are on their knees while Humza Yousaf says, “Go to the GP rather than A and E”. What does Humza Yousaf do? He deflects and he blames Labour. He makes personal attacks on Jackie Baillie. He sneers at Dr Sandesh Gulhane. Alex Cole-Hamilton talked about a “slap in the face” to GP practices and the heroic healthcare staff. Paul O’Kane talked about GPs being at their wits’ end.

Research by the British Medical Association clearly shows that it is not just some practices that are struggling but the vast majority and that, if primary care buckles, it will be catastrophic not just for general practice and patients, but for the whole healthcare system.

There are two overriding issues affecting primary care: a lack of GPs and a lack of resources. Bob Doris referred to Humza Yousaf’s plan to recruit 800 additional GPs by 2027. However, the BMA says that we do not need 800 additional GPs—we need 1,000 and we do not need them by 2027; we need them now.

We also need to stop the haemorrhaging of existing GPs—