Chamber and committees

I am certainly happy to look into that. In general terms, we will do everything we can to help those who continue to be impacted by Covid. I am happy to look into the detail of the particular question and to revert to Mark Griffin as soon as possible.

A number of high-quality candidates have been interviewed for that important role, and the appointments process is now in its final stages. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care will provide an update to the Parliament early in the new year.

Of course, addressing women’s health inequalities is much bigger than just one person, but there is no doubt that the appointment of a women’s health champion is an important part of our women’s health plan. That is why we have invested the time that is necessary to consider who is the very best candidate for the role. The appointment has taken a bit longer than we had envisaged but, as I said, that process is now in its final stages.

The judge of how long I stay in this job is not Douglas Ross; it is the people of Scotland. On all evidence, the people of Scotland think, when it comes to the choice between me and any of the other party leaders in this chamber, that they want me to be First Minister. I take that responsibility very seriously and I will continue to do the job to the very best of my ability.

We will continue to take the actions that we have been taking. Douglas Ross talks about teacher numbers, but there are more teachers per head of pupil population in Scotland than there are anywhere else in the United Kingdom, including where the Conservatives are in power. Spending on education in Scotland is higher than it is where the Conservatives are in power.

As I have already demonstrated, although there is considerable work to do, we are making progress in narrowing the attainment gap. We see that in figures this week, in exam results and in the fact that a record number of 18-year-olds from deprived areas are now going to university, which is something that I am proud of, and which everybody across Scotland should be proud of, too.

First, the retained EU law bill, which sounds technical and abstract, puts at very real risk the high standards that people in Scotland have come to expect as a result of European Union membership. It threatens to eliminate 47 years of environmental protections, food standards, workers’ rights and much else in the rush to facilitate a deregulated race-to-the-bottom economy. Angus Robertson has written twice to the secretary of state in charge of the bill, including with proposed amendments to limit its damage, but to date there has been no reply. Of course, the approach to immigration is, as the member has rightly said, also a threat to Scotland’s prosperity and our progress to net zero.

On the issue of carbon capture, utilisation and storage and the Acorn project, we continue to press the UK Government to include the project in its support for carbon capture, and I hope that we will see some positive movement from the UK Government in that respect in the not-too-distant future.

On the 31-day standard, performance this quarter has dipped very marginally below 95 per cent. Of course, we will work with health boards to get that back up. The 62-day standard for urgent referral for suspicion of cancer to first treatment is not being met, but we are taking a range of actions to secure improvement there.

It is important to note that the targets are percentage targets. We set those targets, and I am not suggesting for a minute that they are not important, but when we look at the number of people treated on both those pathways, we can see a significant increase—more patients were treated on the 62-day and 31-day pathways in the latest quarter compared with the previous quarter, and in the latest quarter compared with the same time last year, and with the last full quarter before the Covid pandemic. In fact, we are now treating 35 per cent more people on the 62-day pathway than we were 10 years ago, and just under 16 per cent more on the 31-day pathway than we were 10 years ago.

That is evidence of the fact that more patients are going through and being treated on those pathways. That is important, because the premise of Anas Sarwar’s question is absolutely correct: people need to receive urgent treatment for cancer. If we look at the 31-day performance target, we can see that the median wait for treatment there is four days. On the 62-day standard, the median wait for treatment is 48 days, and we will continue to take action to improve that even further.

The promise was to close the attainment gap over the then forthcoming session of the Parliament. I made that commitment, which was referenced as being “within a decade”. I remain committed to doing that, and during the course of this line of questioning I will be happy to talk about the progress that we are making.

No. Just to be precise—I always like to be precise—I note that the specific commitment that was made was to “substantially eliminate” the attainment gap. For the avoidance of doubt—[Interruption.]

We will continue to work each and every day to meet not only those targets but all targets across our health service. That is happening right now and in the most challenging of circumstances, as I think everyone knows. The fact of the matter is that, because of the investments that are being made and the actions that are being taken, the capacity of cancer services is increasing. That is demonstrated by the increase in the number of patients being treated on those pathways, which is important.

Of course we need to see even more patients being treated, but I repeat the point that I made earlier: for the 31-day standard, the median waiting time is not 31 days but four days from the decision being made to treat a cancer patient to the treatment actually starting. For the 62-day standard, which is from urgent referral to treatment, the median waiting time is 48 days. We will continue taking action to improve that further.

I do listen—I listen very carefully to what is said in the chamber. I also listen very carefully to and work closely with organisations such as Macmillan Cancer Support, which does such a good job across cancer services.

It is because we take all of that so seriously that we have put, and will continue to put, so much effort into ensuring that we reward those working in our national health service as well as we possibly can. Today, this is the only part of the United Kingdom in which there are no strikes in our national health service. The commitment that we give to our national health service, which will be demonstrated in the budget this afternoon, is to continue to build capacity so that we continue to improve treatment for patients with cancer and for patients who present to the NHS for any reason.

Beatrice Wishart’s question is pertinent and timely. Parts of Shetland continue to experience an extended loss of power. SSEN is making every effort to restore supplies, but many properties have been off power for days. Local agencies have declared a major incident, and a significant response is being and has been mobilised to support the affected communities.

The numbers as of this morning—they might have moved on since then—were that 2,400 customers across Shetland remained offline and 2,899 customers’ power had been restored since the power cut took place. Resources continue to be deployed to Shetland, and SSEN has a 60-strong team out in the field to work on repairing damage. Another 62 field staff were to arrive by ferry this morning, including mutual aid support workers from Scottish Power Energy Networks and Northern Powergrid, and approximately 20 further field staff will arrive by ferry tomorrow morning, which will take the total number of staff who are working to restore power in Shetland to approximately 140.

A Scottish Government resilience operation was formally activated on Tuesday to provide whatever support and co-ordination we can, and SGoRR—Scottish Government resilience room—will have a further meeting this afternoon. I will take the point about communication resilience to those people in that meeting and ask for consideration of what more the Scottish Government can do to support the communication efforts, because that is important—although I know that everybody is working hard to communicate information as best they can.

A final piece of information is that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans who, of course, has ministerial responsibility for resilience, is currently en route to Shetland to see for himself the operation that is under way.

I appreciate how difficult things are right now for students, as they are for everybody given rising energy costs and other inflationary pressures. We provide universities with funding so that they can provide hardship funds to students who need them. Universities should make their students aware of how to access that funding.

We will continue to work with NUS Scotland as we have done over many years to consider how best to support students generally, but particularly in these difficult times. We already do much to support students to ensure that student debt is much lower in Scotland than it is in other parts of the United Kingdom, not least through free tuition.

The fact of the matter is that the driving factors behind increased energy costs do not lie within the powers of this Government. I hope that, one day soon, they will, so that we can tackle so many of these issues at root cause instead of having to continue to deal with just their symptoms.