Chamber and committees

I apologise to Brooke Paterson. This morning, I read the story and made some investigations into the issue. I very much regret her experience. Further scrutiny will have to be done, because I have had limited time to look at what happened, but it appears to me as though an error was made in the classification of the call, which was not given the priority that it should have been given. That is not acceptable. We have to look into whether an error was made and whether steps need to be taken to remedy the situation.

The Government’s efforts to resolve the challenges that sometimes affect the Ambulance Service’s ability to respond, which relates to the congestion of ambulances at hospitals, require a whole-system response. We need to reduce any delays that individuals experience when leaving hospital—97 per cent of patients leave hospital without any delay to their discharge. It is also about the availability of social care and the throughput of different accident and emergency departments to ensure that the Ambulance Service is able to respond timeously.

Those issues are all at the heart of the points that were made by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. As I said earlier, the Government is addressing those issues, which reflect the whole-system challenges that we face in the aftermath of Covid.

Mr Greer quoting SallyAnn Kelly, the chief executive of Aberlour, provides me with a welcome opportunity to record, in the Parliament, my appreciation for her work. She has been a formidable champion for the children of Scotland and for Aberlour. [Applause.] I record my warmest thanks and my good wishes to her on her impending retirement from that role, and I am grateful to Mr Greer for providing me with the opportunity to do so.

As I said, I am very sympathetic to the point that Mr Greer puts to me, but we have to go through the detail to make sure that we can take such a course of action, which involves a great deal of dialogue with our local authority partners. Mr Greer will know about that because he and I spent quite a lot of time wrestling with issues of liaison with local authorities—if I can put it as delicately as that—while the Green Party was in Government with us. He knows what we have to go through. I say to him in all clarity that I am very sympathetic to his suggestion, but we have to ensure that we take all the steps to do that correctly. We will use our best intentions as we consider the bill and take any action as a consequence.

I am concerned by those findings, which underline the hardship that older people are facing during the cost of living crisis. That is precisely why we are investing in support for low-income pensioners, including an estimated £157 million for pension-age winter heating payment and pension-age disability payment, which helps with additional costs for those who are living with a disability. Unlike in the rest of the United Kingdom, eligible low-income households, including pensioners across Scotland, are also guaranteed to receive support through our winter heating payment. Unlike the UK Government’s cold weather payment, it provides a guaranteed payment every year to eligible clients, rather than relying on sustained periods of sufficiently cold weather.

I very much welcome Mr Whittle’s engagement on these questions. Mr Whittle has developed a contribution to Parliament that has focused unreservedly on the importance of early intervention and on the measures to reduce demand in healthcare services. Those messages are very much part of the population health framework that the Government set out earlier this year, so I welcome Mr Whittle’s engagement on that issue.

The NHS is being reformed by the steps that we are taking. As I recounted in my answer to Mr Sarwar, we are undertaking more procedures within the national health service. However, there is a need for us to concentrate much more on early intervention and on good health protection. As I said, those steps are inherent to the Government’s policy programme.

There is also the need to ensure that the NHS is well funded. The Government has put in place a record funding settlement for the service to address the fact that we have an ageing population and consequently greater healthcare need. However, the budget needs to be supported in Parliament. I encourage Mr Whittle to use his influence in his party to secure support for the Government’s budget this year—such support was absent last year. If Mr Whittle is interested in having a collaborative discussion to ensure that we have all-party support for investment in our NHS, the Government is willing to take forward those proposals.

I recognise the evidence that the member references. Many in the chamber will personally know an individual or a family impacted by dementia. That is why I recently held a round-table discussion in Bute house to discuss how we can better unlock innovation in supporting people with advanced dementia. That was suggested to me by Sir Iain Anderson, a distinguished Scottish businessman. I have asked the Minister for Social Care and Mental Wellbeing to take forward work on that.

We will also build on efforts that we are already undertaking to better understand what interventions can make a difference to people’s dementia risk, learning from initiatives such as the Scottish Government-backed pilot of the brain health service and clinic in Aberdeen. Our 10-year dementia strategy focuses on enhancing support in our communities, including through investing in grass-roots support, challenging the stigma that people face following a diagnosis, and improving the training and expertise of our health and social care workforce.

Yes, I agree that those measures should be taken—they are in the population health framework and the dementia strategy and are exactly the approach that the Government is taking. There is a link between what Mr Choudhury has put to me and what Mr Whittle put to me a moment ago about the need to shift to early intervention and community support. I acknowledge the importance of the expansion of care to ensure that we deliver much more of it at home and in the community, where people want to care for their loved ones, according to their circumstances. That will be the focus of the Government’s activities in this area.

We will be helped by the dialogue that has been initiated by the round-table discussion that I held in Bute house, by the considerable impetus to our thinking provided by the formulation of the dementia strategy, and by Sir Iain Anderson’s intervention to support me in that activity.

I share Mr Lumsden’s specific concern, because I understand that one of the components of the STV proposals is that the Aberdeen news programme would potentially cease broadcasting. Different issues affect different communities around the country, and I acknowledge that STV is very successful at reflecting the different issues in different parts of the country.

Mr Lumsden raises the particular issue of how different parts of the country might be affected, and I entirely agree with him on that. I will make sure that that is reflected in the representations that the cabinet secretary makes on the matter.

That is an important issue. As Carol Mochan indicated, the fall in alcohol-related deaths is welcome. However, there remain a large number of deaths as a consequence of alcohol harm. The Government has made strategic interventions around minimum unit pricing, which are designed to address the issue. I am pleased to see the progress that has been made as a consequence, and we have updated that policy approach.

The Government will take other steps in relation to public health education and advising individuals of the dangers of excess alcohol consumption. We also need to work collaboratively to ensure that all parts of the public and private sectors are working together to convey those messages. That will underpin our approach to the limitation of harm through taking steps on alcohol marketing and promotion. I am keen that we engage constructively with the industry to make sure that that is the case.

As I have indicated since I became First Minister, I recognise that there are challenges and weaknesses in the provision of healthcare in the aftermath of the pandemic. Along with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, I am absolutely focused on addressing those issues.

As I indicated in my previous answer, 97 per cent of discharges from Scottish hospitals happen without delay. It is expected that there will be 213,000 extra appointments and procedures, which exceeds our commitment, as promised in our programme for government, by more than 60,000; the number of operations that were performed in July was the highest in five years, with an increase of 8.9 per cent compared with July last year; and the number of hip and knee operations reached an all-time high in 2024.

Mr Sarwar raised issues in maternity care. Some of those will be assessed following clinical advice about the sustainability of services in some rural areas in Scotland. That is a difficult issue, but the Government listens carefully to clinical advice, as the Parliament would expect it to do.

There is another issue that is difficult. Our national health service depends on the flow of staff coming from other countries to support us, and our challenge in that respect is being made extraordinarily more difficult because of the immigration policies that are being pursued by the United Kingdom Government. Those policies are absurd and are making it more difficult to deliver public services. In Scotland, 26 per cent of social care staff are people who have come from other countries to this country, and the UK Labour Government is making such movement much more difficult. I suggest that Mr Sarwar should try to get his Labour Government in London to take a different stance on immigration; we would all be better off as a consequence.

I very much agree with the concern expressed by Rona Mackay, who brings her formidable experience as a journalist before she became a member of Parliament. Local journalism is absolutely important for the scrutiny of public policy at all levels in Scottish society. I was concerned to hear this morning’s reports about STV and the recent news about the Daily Record.

This morning, the Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, Angus Robertson, has indicated to the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee that he will engage with STV, Ofcom and the trade unions to highlight our concerns. We will give whatever assistance we can in that respect. It is absolutely vital to our democracy that we have sustained media engagement, and the Government will do all that it can to support those who are affected. This will be a very worrying time for all the affected employees. They have my understanding and my support.