Chamber and committees

I do not agree with that. I agree that these are extremely challenging times for GPs and everybody who works in our national health service. The target for GP recruitment is for 2027, and we will of course have to focus and work to meet that. I say, with the greatest respect to Audit Scotland—I take everything that it says very seriously—that I am not sure that anybody can look to 2027 and predict what is going to happen. It rightly points out that meeting the target will be challenging, but it is important that we remain on track.

The GP head count has already increased by 277, and the head count among the wider multidisciplinary teams has increased by more than 3,000. Of course, that is increasingly important, because GPs rely on other health professionals to help them to do the excellent job that they do.

To come back to the final point that I made in response to the previous question, we have more GPs, proportionately, than other parts of the UK do. Earlier, I mentioned England; we also have more GPs per head of population than Labour-run Wales does and more than Northern Ireland does. Therefore, there is much work to do in Scotland, but we do it from a position of relative strength.

I will always feel responsibility for the Promise, whether I am in government, in this Parliament, or wherever I happen to be in future stages of my life.

I have absolute confidence that whoever succeeds me as First Minister will share my commitment to keeping the Promise and delivering on that, but let me make this promise of my own: if, at any point, I think that the current Government or any future Government is not doing that, there will be somebody on the back benches being very loud and very vocal about it. Mr Whitfield can hold me to that.

The whole family wellbeing fund is really important, and I am extremely committed to it and will want it to continue to be delivered.

We talk about young people in care. It is really important that any young person in care is loved and supported, and that they are safe and secure and nurtured. However, one of our biggest responsibilities is to try to prevent the need for young people to go into care, by supporting families and keeping families together, where we can. That is the purpose and the objective of the whole family wellbeing fund. We want to transform services so that families can access the support that they need when they need it and in the way that they need to do so. When I was in East Renfrewshire on Friday, one mother in particular told me about the importance of that early intervention approach in ensuring that her daughter was able to stay with her and did not have to go into care.

The fund will focus on the system changes that are required to shift investment towards early intervention and prevention, which is a critical part of how we keep the Promise in practice. The £58 million investment in this year’s budget includes the provision of £32 million directly to children’s services planning partnerships to support work at a local level. Further details of the programme proposals will be confirmed in due course.

Many things have been important to me during my years as First Minister; I am sure that I will get the opportunity to speak about some of them in the next few weeks. Few, if any, of those things have been more important to me than the Promise to care-experienced young people. Our society should be judged on how we care for and love the most vulnerable children that we have and I think that this Parliament as a whole—not just this Government—should be committed to ensuring that every young person is loved and nurtured. If we do that, we will have something to be genuinely and really proud of.

In relation to Annika’s case, I would of course be very willing to look into the particular circumstances. I do not want to see any child wait that length of time for access to care and treatment. The member is right to say that that is so important to their quality of life.

More generally, and as has been alluded to, there have been issues with the service in Lothian, and the vast majority of the recommendations that came out about some of those issues have already been accepted and the work has been completed. We will continue to work with NHS Lothian to ensure that the quality of the service that everybody relies on is as they have a right to expect it to be.

On the individual case, I will of course be willing to look into the matter if the details can be provided to my office.

Douglas Ross referred to the fact that I was health secretary before becoming First Minister, which I am extremely proud of.

Let me just reflect on this fact: in the eight years that I have been First Minister, the people of Scotland have had no fewer than eight opportunities to cast a verdict on me, my party and my Government. With every single one of those eight opportunities, the people of Scotland have rejected the Conservatives and put their trust in me, my party and my Government. I have every confidence that whoever succeeds me as leader of the SNP will continue that record of success.

We are taking many initiatives to make our economy more circular and to reduce waste, and it is important that we continue with them. There is much more to do, which is why we are committed to a circular economy bill.

The Conservatives would be more credible on these issues if they did not oppose, in a knee-jerk way, everything that we bring forward in trying to improve performance around the circular economy, such as the deposit return scheme. Let us focus on what we need to do better, but let us try to find a bit of consensus so that the country can do exactly that and live up to the obligation that we all have.

On Monday, I had the pleasure of visiting the Roslin innovation centre, where I was able to welcome Ana Stewart and Mark Logan’s outstanding report. The report sets out a range of detailed and ambitious recommendations that consider how to close the gender gap for women in enterprise across Government, the education system, enterprise support networks and wider society.

First and foremost, it is an issue of fairness—women face clear barriers in realising their business ambitions, including in getting access to start-up and growth finance—but it is also important for our economy. If women started businesses at anything like the rate at which men do, it would deliver a significant boost to our economy.

The report is an important piece of work and I look forward to seeing its recommendations implemented.

I completely agree and thank Fiona Hyslop for that question. Supporting women into enterprise and closing the gender gap is, as I said in my initial answer, more than an issue of fairness, important though that is; it is one of economic necessity.

Women are slightly more than half the population, but only around one in five businesses in Scotland are led by women—we need to change that. The recommendations in the report, which span a whole range of factors, from some of the cultural barriers that women face, to systemic barriers, to things such as access to finance, will all be important in helping us do so. From a different place to the one that I am standing in now, I look forward to continuing to support the full implementation of the recommendations in Parliament.

Again, I thank Ana Stewart and Mark Logan for all the work that they have done to produce the report.

In relation to individual cases, it is always unacceptable if someone waits too long for treatment in the national health service. The

“tail end of last year”—

which was Douglas Ross’s phrase—was during the winter peak of pressure. Since then, although I stress that there is still considerable progress to be made, eight-hour and 12-hour waits in accident and emergency departments have reduced, and we continue to support them to make further progress.

Douglas Ross mentioned recruitment. We have record numbers of staff in our NHS right now. Since this Government took office, we have increased NHS staffing by 28,800 people. We have higher staffing per head of population than in England or other parts of the UK.

Funding has doubled in our national health service. We have higher funding proportionately than anywhere else in the UK—to the tune, proportionately, of about £1.8 billion, which is equivalent to 44,000 nurses in our national health service.

Yes, we have significant work to do to reduce waiting times, but we are focused, first, on the longest waits, and we have seen significant progress in reducing them.

I make the comparison with other parts of the UK because Douglas Ross stands here and asks people to believe that those problems are unique to Scotland and, somehow, down to the health secretary in Scotland. That is where the Audit Scotland report is instructive, because it says that those issues are not unique to Scotland. On page 7, it says that

“Scotland’s NHS is not alone in facing these issues”

and that

“many of the factors”

are outwith

“the control of the Scottish Government”.

We will continue to do our job, working with and supporting the national health service. We will do that despite Douglas Ross’s determination to turn it into a political weapon, which we have just seen all too clearly.

First, I did not suggest that any MSP who raises patient experience is using it as a political weapon; what I said—and what I will say again—is that anyone who tries to suggest that these issues are unique to Scotland’s NHS is seeking to use our NHS as a political weapon. To use Douglas Ross’s phrase, I think that that is shameful on the part of the Conservatives.

On the recovery plan, it is the case that we have considerable work still to do. However, let us look at the progress on eight-hour and 12-hour A and E waits. Earlier, I said that those have dropped significantly since the peak over the winter period. Eight-hour waits are down by 54.9 per cent, and 12-hour waits are down by 61.6 per cent. That is because of the support that we are giving to the NHS and the work of staff on the front line.

On waiting time targets more generally, the numbers waiting the longest for treatment have reduced by almost a quarter for both in-patient and day-case treatment and also for out-patient treatment. There are significant challenges—more significant than at any point in the history of the NHS—but we are supporting our NHS with record funding, record staffing and the wider support that it needs to address those challenges. That is what this Government will continue to do.