Chamber and committees

I acknowledge the seriousness of the point raised with me by Martin Whitfield and the comments made by the chief constable. Police Scotland has adapted and changed its presence and the composition of its staff to ensure that it has more capability to interrupt the networks that Mr Whitfield raises with us. I pay tribute to Police Scotland in that respect.

The child sexual abuse and exploitation national strategic group, which comprises operational partners including Police Scotland, is taking forward a series of priorities and actions to prevent and disrupt child sexual abuse and provide support to victims and their families. I assure Mr Whitfield of my Government’s determination to work with all relevant partners—including Mary Glasgow, whom I met yesterday and who is a fantastic individual and advocate on behalf of children—to do everything in our powers to address the situation.

However—I do not make this point in any way pejoratively; I make it deadly seriously—the regulation of social media companies is the preserve of the United Kingdom Government and Ofcom. I will be the most trenchant supporter of the toughest measures that the UK Government puts in place to regulate those individuals and organisations. The UK Government is taking steps in the Online Safety Act 2023, but we will be prepared to work with the UK Government to maximise the effectiveness of those measures. I assure Mr Whitfield that we will take all the actions that we can, but we also need to take the toughest stance on social media companies, because there is lawlessness out there online. That lawlessness is damaging our children and must be arrested.

I am very happy to explore particular issues. As I said in my answer to Beatrice Wishart, the Aberdeen to Wick PSO is a Highland Council PSO. The Barra PSO is a Scottish Government PSO, I think.

If Mr Carson wants to furnish me with the details of the specific case, I will examine it, because waiting that length of time for a call to be answered sounds completely unacceptable to me. I will look at the case, if Mr Carson gives me the details.

The median response time for purple calls is 7 minutes and 51 seconds. The Scottish Ambulance Service will work extremely hard to ensure that it meets the public’s expectations.

The action that I take is the action that I take every single week, which is that I meet the leadership of the national health service to press for the strongest possible performance in our national health service. As I explained to Mr Sarwar a moment ago, the fruits of that activity are that we now see falling waiting lists, a reduction in long waits and more people being treated in our national health service. That will be the focus of my attention.

On Tuesday, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and I met the chief executives of all the national health service boards around the country to reiterate the importance of timely attention to scheduled and unscheduled care. It is unscheduled care that Pam Duncan-Glancy raises with me. That, along with maternity issues, was the subject of discussion with the health service leadership, and that will continue to be my focus.

That issue lies at the heart of the choices that are to be made about our energy future. That is why I believe that expanding our renewables, storage, hydrogen and carbon capture activities will help us to build an affordable, resilient and clean energy system. That is why I do not support the development of nuclear power resources in Scotland: I think that they are expensive and we have alternative sources that are much cheaper.

The practical effect of all that is that a Labour Government that pledged to cut bills by £300 has presided over an increase of bills of £190 since the general election. Let us hear that again: the Labour Government promised to reduce bills by £300 but they have gone up by £190. No wonder the people of this country do not trust the Labour Party in Scotland.

The Scottish Government is in dialogue with the United Kingdom Government about the bill. In principle, we support it. We obviously have to go through the process of consideration around legislative consent, which the Scottish Government will do in a timeous fashion, and Parliament will of course be engaged in that consideration. It is important that the principles and values that are enshrined in the bill are taken forward.

It is not—I am being corrected. I will take the issue away and we will explore the possibilities. I acknowledge that the connections are important and that the distances that are involved for other transport mechanisms are very significant for members of the public. We will explore the idea that Rhoda Grant has put to me.

I recognise that there will be occasions on which public services do not meet the expectations of members of the public. I think that the right thing to do—I will do this no matter what Mr Sarwar puts to me or how he characterises my responses—is to be honest and open with the public and to apologise when those standards are not met.

I can say that Scottish Ambulance Service staffing has gone up by 31 per cent in the past 10 years and that we now have more paramedics—the number of paramedics has gone up by 57.6 per cent in the past 10 years. I can also say that, according to the most recent data that is available to me, the median response time for purple calls was 7 minutes 51 seconds. That information is relevant and important because it relates to the optimum time for the delivery of a response by the Scottish Ambulance Service.

Our staff are working with more resources, under incredible demands, to meet the expectations of members of the public, and, in the overwhelming majority of cases in the country, that is exactly what they do.

I have to be mindful of the fact that we are delivering a just transition—not any old transition, but a just transition.

A just transition enables me to look the staff of oil and gas companies in the eye and say that we are doing everything possible to manage the transition to avoid the industrial devastation that Scotland experienced under the mercenary actions of the Conservative Government in the 1980s, which I will not repeat.

The Scottish Government recognises that, as I explained in my first answer to Mr Greer, there will be a need for the utilisation of some oil and gas resources for the foreseeable future. That has to be undertaken in a way that is compatible with our journey to net zero. That is the approach that the Scottish Government will take.

When I provided evidence on behalf of the Scottish Government to the UK Government’s strategic defence review, I raised the fact that the quality and maintenance of service accommodation are a major concern for service families based in Scotland, and said that the UK Government should ensure that our service personnel and their families live in accommodation that is fit for purpose.

Plans for investment were initially announced in the strategic defence review earlier this year but, to date, there has been no discussion of the renovation of Ministry of Defence-owned housing in Scotland.