Chamber and committees

I do not find it acceptable that anyone waits longer than they should for an ambulance. We know that the pressure that the Scottish Ambulance Service is under at the moment is because of many of the other pressures on our national health service that have been caused and, in some respects, exacerbated by the pandemic.

We are working very closely with the Scottish Ambulance Service to resolve the issue. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care spoke to the chief executive of the Ambulance Service this morning. Next month, 90 additional technicians will come into employment by the service.

We are also funding the health service. We bolstered investment by £10.5 million last year, and an additional £20 million has been invested this year.

Although any individual wait is unacceptable, and we must work to resolve that, it is worth bearing it in mind that despite all the challenges, and despite the fact that our Ambulance Service serves some of the most rural areas in the United Kingdom, during 2020-21 our crews responded to more than 70 per cent of the highest-priority calls in less than 10 minutes, and to more than 99 per cent in less than 30 minutes.

We will continue supporting our Ambulance Service through this challenging period—just as we continue to support the entire national health service.

As I set out on Tuesday when I outlined the programme for government, we are making immediate investments of £120 million into mental health, with a particular focus on prevention and early intervention. We are already funding health boards to improve community child and adolescent mental health services and to enable the expansion of community services for people aged 18 to 25. The funding that I announced will enable the clearing of historical waiting lists, which I accept are too long. They were long as we went into Covid, and that has been further exacerbated by the experience of Covid. The funding that we will make available is specifically targeted to deal with the issue that Jamie Greene raises.

I remember Jason and I hope that Beatrice Wishart will pass on my best wishes to him. I am happy to engage with Jason through Beatrice Wishart, or he can email me directly, to set out exactly what the Scottish Government and our agencies are doing to keep fishermen as safe as possible. Our fishery protection vessels have a key part to play in that. He clearly has some real concerns, and that reflects my memory of him as a very engaged young man. I would be happy to have a further discussion with him directly.

The managed isolation service in Scotland is operated under a United Kingdom Government contract, which places responsibility for setting the quality and levels of service on the UK Government. The Scottish Government’s international passenger co-ordination team is in regular contact with Corporate Travel Management, which is the UK Government’s travel agent, and we continue to work with them to ensure a high-quality service for travellers.

In short—yes, I trust the system. As I have said in relation to Covid and the various different systems and approaches that we have had to take over the past 18 months—not least the vaccination programme in general—there will, in a system so big and complex, be individual cases of things going wrong. We should not shy away from that, but what is important is that we have processes in place to fix those things.

Yesterday, in my Covid statement, I gave the number of the helpline that people can phone to have any such mistakes rectified, and I encourage them to do so. I know that the system is taking on a number of those questions and very quickly resolving them on a daily basis.

I very much agree with Christine Grahame’s comments about international students. We always want to offer a warm welcome. They make a significant cultural, economic and intellectual contribution to our universities and, indeed, to the whole country, and they are welcome here.

Scottish Government officials have been engaging directly with universities on the issues that are highlighted in the question. They have contacted CTM, which has said that it is addressing those issues as a priority. My officials will continue to work with the universities to improve processes.

Students should, of course, contact their universities if they continue to experience issues with the booking system.

In recognition of the difficult circumstances that international students have faced, the Scottish Government has also taken steps to put support in place. For example, international and European Union students can apply for financial hardship support from the Scottish Government’s higher education coronavirus discretionary fund.

First, I apologise to Stephanie Callaghan and take full responsibility for getting her mixed up with Evelyn Tweed and for getting the questions mixed up. It is my responsibility and I am not making excuses, but there is constant noise that sometimes makes it difficult for me to hear. However, it is my responsibility and I apologise to Stephanie Callaghan.

I will make sure that the answer that I gave about the work that is on-going around the city region deal, in particular, gets to Evelyn Tweed.

I apologise again to both members for that confusion, which was confusion on my part.

We continue to take steps to support staff. The staff in test and protect are working under extreme pressure. They have my gratitude, but it is more important that they have our on-going support through the recruitment of more staff and by our making sure that they have the resources that they need.

It is important that we all understand the point about provisional versus finalised figures. I have been making the point today that it is important to wait for the finalised figures. The member has quoted the figures that assess performance within the World Health Organization target, and what usually happens there is that the provisional figure is higher than the finalised figure. Last week’s provisional figure, which was over 80 per cent, has now, in the finalised figure, come down to the level that the member has cited today. However, today’s provisional figure—[Interruption.] No it is not—I will come back to the second point in a minute. Today’s provisional figure is higher than last week’s provisional figure. We will see the finalised figure next week, but that suggests an improvement in performance.

The other figure—the one that Jackie Baillie cited last week and that Douglas Ross cited today—is the figure for the overall number of cases being closed, and we find that that figure is much lower in the provisional data than it is in the finalised data. It was 43 per cent last week but became 82 per cent today.

I know that that is complex, but it reflects a system in which, when a snapshot of a date is reported, many cases are still in process and it takes a few days after that for the figure to be finalised.

I encourage all members who have not done so already to look in detail at those figures and to understand that difference between provisional and finalised data. That would perhaps prevent our using provisional figures in a way that is misleading and in a way that—inadvertently, I am sure—downplays and understates the performance of those who are working so hard in test and protect.

As I said a moment ago, a Scottish citizen who has received one or more of their vaccines outside Scotland but within the common travel area should contact the helpline. That is taken account of. We are continuing to work with NHS Digital to establish data-sharing arrangements within the common travel area and internationally, and those arrangements will be in place as soon as possible. If someone lives in Scotland but has been vaccinated outside Scotland or England, where there is already a data-sharing agreement, they should obtain proof of their vaccination from the country in which they were vaccinated.

We obviously continue to work with local partners. The area that Evelyn Tweed represents is hard hit, and we continue to work with the health board and the local authority there and more broadly to ensure that the situation with Covid cases is addressed appropriately and that broader recovery is taken into account. Covid has impacted the Stirling and Clackmannanshire city region deal, but work is on-going with regional partners to ensure that the deal is delivered. I am happy to ask the relevant minister to write to Evelyn Tweed with a full update.