 Gweithreidrychanol y dyfodol iaeth Gweithreidrychanol y First Minister. I intend taking constituency and general supplementaries after question 2. Please press during question 2 for such a supplementary. I'll take supplementaries to questions 3-6 as they arise. Please press during the relevant question. If we have any time in hand following question 6, I'll take outstanding questions. I call Douglas Ross question 1. Diolch, Professor.yelling I raised the Crisis in Scotland's Abulance service last week I said that the scandalous waiting times could cost people's lives This morning we all read in shock and horror about 65-year-old Gerard Brown who died after a 40 hour wait for an ambulance When the paramedics reached him, all they could do was pronounce him as dead bod fel y bodi wedi yn fawr. Fe下面o'r dylai'r ddwyledoedd gael eu posibilau naddwydwydio, gallwn y pethau wedi bod yn cael ei ddylai'r ddyddech chi'n dau'r lawer. Mae'n ddatguwch i'r ddod o'r ddwyledoedd gaso'r ddyd coursesio mae'n edrych ei ddod. Ond rwy'n mynd i ddadiol i amgylwyddiadau werthwyr, fydd ddwyledoedd i ddod i gych chi'n rhyw i eu llam i ddiol i'i gweithio'r stryd, The First Minister said to Gerard Brown's GP that said, This is third world medicine. And what does The First Minister have to say to Dylan Brown who is grieving the death of his father? You should still be alive. First Minister. Well, firstly my condolences are with Mr Brown. The individual cases that I reported in the media this morning obviously required to be fully and properly investigated a that would not be right for me to pre-empt those investigations. But what is reported is unacceptable and I am in no doubt about that. As I said last week, our ambulance service is working under acute pressure right now, largely due to Covid. I want to take the opportunity to thank our paramedics and technicians for the work that they are doing in such difficult circumstances while they are responding heroically to these challenges. I recognise that some people are not getting the standard of service that they should be getting or indeed the standard of service that the Scottish Ambulance Service wants to deliver. That is not acceptable and I apologise unreservedly to anyone who has suffered or who is suffering unacceptably long waits. A range of actions have already been taken to address those challenges. For example, additional funding to support new recruitment. A number of additional actions are currently under active consideration. I am happy to summarise those in further exchanges but I can confirm now that this includes consideration of seeking targeted military assistance to help deal with short-term pressure points. Such military assistance is already being provided to Ambulance Services in England and we have had military assistance for other aspects of the pandemic over the past 18 months. I will be meeting personally with the Scottish Ambulance Service to assess its progress on all of the actions that are being considered and the health secretary will be making an update statement to Parliament next week. This is a service under acute pressure. I think that people understand the reasons for that pressure but the obligation is on government to work with the service to ensure that it can meet those pressures in the interests of patients across the country. Douglas Ross, the First Minister says that these cases will be fully and properly investigated but that should not be happening in Scotland in 2021. When I raised concerns about people dying waiting for an ambulance last week it was met with groans from the SNP back benches and the First Minister did not answer. Since then every day we have heard of tragic life-threatening waits for ambulances like an 86-year-old woman who lay in agony on a hard kitchen floor for eight hours with a broken hip. Just this morning Evelyn from Kilwynning called a phone-in to raise a 23-hour wait for an ambulance for her husband. She thinks that eventually—and those are her words—their luck is just going to run out. Last week the First Minister would not accept that ambulance service is in crisis. Surely the last seven days have changed her mind. Will she now accept that the ambulance service in Scotland is in crisis? I do not challenge in any way, shape or form, the extent of the pressure that is on our ambulance service and indeed on all parts of our national health service. It is incumbent on me, as First Minister, with all of my colleagues across Government to support the service as it faces up to those challenges. Those challenges are largely caused by the Covid pressure, which is increasing the overall degree of pressure that our health services are under. It is my responsibility to deal with those challenges in Scotland, obviously, but those are challenges that are mirrored in health services across the UK and, indeed, in many parts of the world because of the realities of Covid. The fact that anyone in our country waits an unacceptable period of time for an ambulance when they need urgent care is not acceptable to me and it is not acceptable to anyone, and that is why we will work closely and intensively with the ambulance service to support it to meet those challenges, which I would expect to continue for a period as the Covid pressure continues and, of course, as we go into the winter months. I set out last week some of the actions that we have already taken, significant additional funding to support significant extra recruitment of paramedics and technicians in our ambulance service. We are currently with the ambulance service considering a range of additional actions, more support for rural ambulance stations, alternative transport arrangements for lower-risk patients to make sure that the ambulance service resource is there for higher-risk patients, the deployment, for example, of more hospital ambulance liaison officers to help to transfer from ambulance to hospital and, indeed, the discharge and temporary admission wards to, again, ease that bottleneck that is existing right now between ambulances and our hospitals. As I said earlier on, we will consider seeking targeted military assistance. I do not, in any way, underestimate the extent of the challenge facing the ambulance service and, by extension, people across Scotland. This is the latest in a number of significant challenges posed to us as a result of the pandemic. Our responsibility is to take the action to support the service to meet that challenge. That is what I am focused on, that is what the health secretary is focused on, and that is what the entire Government is focused on. I listened carefully. The First Minister seems to deliberately not accept that this was a crisis. This was the second week in a row that I have asked. It is important that we recognise that this is a crisis because admitting it matters. I hope that the First Minister will stand up and admit it, because it means that the Government can start looking for help in tackling the problem. She has mentioned considering the targeted military assistance. That was a call from the United Nations. They are also asking for the ambulance service to declare, excuse me, a major incident status, and we support those calls. What about the Scottish Government? Hamza, your use of response is to tell people to think twice before they call an ambulance. Think twice before they call an ambulance. That is dangerous, and it is reckless. Will the First Minister apologise and withdraw those remarks on behalf of the Scottish Government? Will she tell people that she should never think twice about calling an ambulance in an emergency? What people are looking to the Government for is the action to deal with the situation that we face. That is more important than what we choose to call it. I am not trying in any way to evade the reality that we are currently experiencing, and it is our frontline health workers who are experiencing it, probably the most challenging combination of circumstances that our health service has faced since its establishment. There is no sense in which I am seeking to underplay that at all. Douglas Ross said that the ambulance service should declare a major incident. Let me explain that the ambulance service operates at different levels of escalation. It is currently operating at level 4 of its escalation plan, which is the highest level. Again, terminology here should not be allowed to mask the reality. It is an ambulance service operating at its highest level of escalation. It is, for example, deploying a national command and control centre as part of that to better utilise resources across the country. We will continue to consider always in which we can utilise and deploy additional resources, and some of what we are currently considering with the ambulance service that I have already set out. Let me finally turn to the comments of the health secretary. What the health secretary was saying is things that health secretaries have said for many times. I remember saying it myself when I was health secretary. I have seen comments from ambulance services in every part of the UK over the last few days saying exactly the same thing, which is that where people require intervention from the health service that would better come from parts of the service other than the ambulance service, we should encourage them to do that. Where people consider that they need an ambulance, they should never hesitate in calling an ambulance, if that is the intervention that they think is required. As First Minister, let me be very clear that the ambulance service is there to provide emergency assistance to those who need it. It is facing the most intense challenges, and some people are not getting the service that they should be, but the answer to that is for Government and the service to work to make sure that they are meeting that so that anybody who needs an ambulance does not feel that they should hesitate to phone an ambulance, and just as importantly, that they get the ambulance timuously as they have a right to expect. First Minister is saying, and I wrote it down, that she is not trying to evade the reality. Why will she not then just accept that in Scotland our ambulance service is in crisis? We are hearing it day in, day out from people across Scotland. We are hearing it from the front line, from the paramedics, from the technicians, and we are hearing it from Unite, the union and others. I am sorry, but I cannot sit here and listen to the First Minister say that the comments from the Scottish Government's health secretary are the same we are hearing elsewhere in the United Kingdom. I have heard no one else in the United Kingdom telling people to think twice before they call an ambulance. The way to tackle this extreme pressure is not to tell sick people to stay away, but to give ambulance crews the resources they need to reach every patient while they are still breathing. The health secretary should be providing solutions. Instead, Humza Yousaf is the problem. This summer, he used misleading figures about children with Covid. He wasted months on a flimsy NHS recovery plan that is not cutting it, and yesterday was a new low. We had a health secretary who effectively told people, do not look after your own health. He actually said to them, think twice before calling an ambulance. With Scotland's NHS in crisis, is not it the case that it is Humza Yousaf who needs to think twice before he speaks? People watching this will draw their own conclusions from the tone and tenor of some of the remarks that are being made. Can I stay on the substance of these issues? Those are really important issues for people across the country, and they have my full attention as they have the health secretary's full attention. Douglas Ross continues to question me about terminology. Let's be clear. The pandemic has created, not just in Scotland but across the UK and much of the world, crisis conditions for our health services. That includes the ambulance service, which is at the front line of the response of our health service for so many patients who need it. The point that I am making is that whatever somebody like me chooses to call it is less important than what we do to support our service in meeting these challenges. I think that people listening today will have recognised that there is a range of actions that we are already taking, so there are almost 300 additional paramedics and technicians. Excuse me. First Minister, just a moment. I appreciate that this is a very important emotive issue and that people are rightly passionate, but could we please hear the First Minister? There are a range of actions that have already been taken. As I was saying, there are almost 300 additional paramedics and technicians being recruited to help meet the challenge and a whole range of ways in which we are supporting the service. While saying that, I am in no way seeking to underplay how unacceptable long waits are for anybody who experiences that, of course many people who phone an ambulance, the majority of people who phone an ambulance, get an excellent service from the paramedics and the technicians who are providing that. We are considering a range of additional actions, and I have set out what some of those are. The health secretary will make a statement next week to update on those. Somebody is shouting at me why next week, because that will be the next parliamentary opportunity to make a statement. I am standing here right now, setting out the things that we are doing. I and the health secretary will be dealing with this over the course of today, tomorrow, the weekend and into next week for as long as it takes. Those are the steps that we are taking. We will continue to take those steps as Governments right across the UK will be doing similar to support their services. We are in the most challenging set of circumstances that our health service has faced. My job is to make sure that we support the service to rise to those challenges, and that is what I will focus on each and every minute of each and every day. The First Minister has evaded the issue for weeks, and she tries to hide behind the pandemic. Let us look at the stats before the pandemic. Almost 1,000 cases were ambulance waited over two hours outside a hospital to transfer patients. Over 15,000 times, the ambulance took over two hours to arrive to a patient, and a staff survey found that 63 per cent felt that the ambulance service was short staffed before the pandemic. Please do not use the pandemic as the cover for your Government's feelings. The truth is that this is an avoidable human tragedy on a heartbreaking scale. Lillian Briggs broke her hip and had to wait eight hours on the floor for an ambulance. Gerard Brown collapsed at home and dived after waiting 40 hours for emergency services. Pandemic or no pandemic, there is a simple truth. No one should be left to die on the floor while waiting 40 hours for an ambulance. Lillian and Gerard's families have been courageous enough to go to the newspapers, but there are hundreds of families who have not gone to the media who are suffering in silence. First Minister, how many hours will it take for you to fix this? I accept that there were pressures on the ambulance service as there were pressures on the entirety of our health service before the pandemic, but I think that anybody who suggests that the pandemic is not a significant contributory factor to what our health service is dealing with right now is stretching credibility. The pandemic has created the most challenging conditions for our national health service, probably since the national health service was created. That is being felt acutely in Scotland and in countries across the UK and the rest of the world. Our responsibility is to help the service to meet those challenges. I am very clear in my mind that it is not acceptable for one person, let alone more than that, to wait anything like the times that some people are experiencing right now. That is why we are taking the actions that we are taking. There are right now over 1,000 people in our hospitals with Covid. That puts an additional pressure on our hospitals, and that feeds through into longer turnaround times for ambulance services. Of course, the ambulance service is often the front-line response for those who need hospital care for Covid or for anything else. That is the reason for what we are experiencing right now, but my job is to provide the solutions. That is what we are seeking to do with the ambulance service. How many hours are we facing? Because of the pandemic and all that that creates, we are facing probably the most challenging winter for the health service and for society in any of our lifetimes. Therefore, for me to stand here and say, in a number of hours, we will do x, y or z. That is going to be a responsibility of Government right through this winter, to support our ambulance service, to support our accident and emergency departments, to support our wider health and social care services. Every day over this winter period, that will occupy my time, the health secretary's time and the focus of the entire Government. I think that the First Minister misses a key point. We are going to have extra pressure added by winter. If we cannot even handle the pressure pre-winter, imagine how hard it is going to be when winter arrives. That is the hard truth that the First Minister is trying to ignore. However, let us be clear about this. Our NHS staff, paramedics and call handlers are being failed to. They are the ones having to answer those heartbreaking calls and tell patients that there will not be an ambulance coming any time soon. They are the ones having to turn up to homes, to distressing scenes and expect it to explain your Government's failures. Let us listen to the staff. They are telling us that there are not enough ambulances. They are telling us that there are not enough staff in the ambulance service, or at A and E. They are telling us that there are not enough beds in our hospitals. However, it is not just patients having to wait hours for an ambulance. They are always having to wait hours outside a hospital in an ambulance. Things are so bad that the British Red Cross has been drafted in to deliver humanitarian assistance at Glasgow's flagship hospital. I note what the First Minister said about the role of the British Army. Will the First Minister listen to calls from ambulance staff and unite the union who have called for a major incident to be declared for pop-up wards and emergency departments and for the British Army to be drafted in? When will that happen? I think that in my first answer during this session, we are actively considering the detail of our request for targeted military assistance. It is important that we make that request in detail so that we know exactly what it is that we are requesting from the military. That is currently being prepared right now. On the issue of the call for a major incident, as I said to Douglas Ross, again, we are getting a bit lost in terminology here. The ambulance service is operating at its highest level of escalation. Because we do not call that major incident, it is called level 4 of their escalation, which does not change the reality. I suggest that it is more important that we focus on the substance of what we are doing, rather than, perhaps, have manufactured disagreements over the terminology. On the issue of pop-up wards, again, I think that I said—I am wrong and did not say this earlier on, but I referred earlier on to the consideration that is under way right now around temporary admission wards. Why pop-up wards may not be appropriate, because we are going into a winter period and that may not be the best conditions for patients, so we are looking at an equivalent, which is temporary admission wards. All of those things that we are being asked about today, we are already taking forward. That is an incredibly challenging situation, more so for those in the front line. As I said earlier on, let me repeat my deep gratitude to those who are working on the front line of our national health service right now, but we will continue to take the steps and provide the solutions. We all know what the problem is. We may have a disagreement about what the cause of that problem is. My job, working with others, is to find the solutions, and that is what I am going to be focused on for as long as that takes. You do not understand the urgency. You want to wait a week for a statement, and then actions to follow that. You want to consider options about what happens with the British Army. How many more Lilian Briggs need to happen in the next week before we take urgent action? How many more Gerard Browns need to happen in the next week before you take urgent action? Urgent action needs to happen today, tomorrow, the day after, the day after, not wait a week for this Government to wake up. The First Minister says that she is taking action, but for months, her and her health secretary have been in denial. Things are getting worse. People cannot afford to wait, and those problems are years in the making. 600,000 people are waiting on waiting lists for treatment. We have record-breaking A&E waiting times, and people are tragically dying waiting for ambulances. The First Minister likes to remind us that the buck stops with her. It does. How many more families will have to suffer? How much more stress will our workers have to endure? How much more time does she expect people to give her and her health secretary to fix this mess? The buck always stops with me, and whatever people agree or disagree with me on, I have never tried to shy away from that, nor will I ever shy away from that. With the greatest respect to Anas Sarwar, the Government does not simply operate when Parliament is sitting. I will go back to my office after the session of First Minister's Questions to, for example, finalise the detail of the request for military assistance, so that we can submit that as quickly as possible. We will be going back to finalise the other additional actions that we are taking, which are in addition to the actions that have already been taken. Government is literally a 24-hour-a-day responsibility, and we will continue to deal with those things in that manner. I do not shy away at all from how difficult this is. I will not be the only leader of a Government right now that is dealing with those issues. Health ministers, Governments all across the world are dealing with those challenges right now. Our job is not though just to describe the problem. Our job is to provide the solutions, and that is what my Government is absolutely focused on doing. I now move to supplementary questions, and I call Jenny Minto. The UK Government has now confirmed that it again intends to delay post-Brexit food and farming import checks. Once again, Scotland's vital food and farming sector finds itself paying a price for the Tory's extreme Brexit plans. Does the First Minister share my concern that this last-minute delay highlights that the Tory Government has no real solution to the Brexit issues that it has created and is just kicking the can down the road once again? Yes, I think that that is absolutely correct. We have been warning about the implications of not just Brexit but a hard Brexit now for months and months and months. Just this week, of course, as the member rightly says, we have seen a further delay to the necessary infrastructure, necessary, although deeply regrettable, infrastructure that needs to be in place to support some of that. It is, of course, our food and drink sector, our agriculture sector that are paying the price for this. I very much hope to see the solutions put in place to alleviate the situation as quickly as possible, but I do not think that anybody should be in any doubt that those sectors are going to be facing the inescapable consequences of Brexit for some time to come. That, of course, is the responsibility of the Tory Government at Westminster. Many across my region have participated in Age Scotland's big survey for older people, which revealed more than half the reporting that the pandemic had made them lonely. One third felt that their mental health had deteriorated, and one third felt that they were fed to be a burden to society, but a staggering 71 per cent was being targeted by phone scammers. First Minister, those figures make grim reading, and they are a reminder of how marginalised older people feel in our society. Therefore, what further action will the Scottish Government put in place to make sure that those trends are reversed? The impact of the pandemic on older people and the impact on loneliness and isolation is well understood. There is a range of different ways in which we need to seek to tackle and address that. We have one of the things that we have done, which I know was narrated in the Audit Scotland report just this week about Covid spending. We have spent disproportionately compared to other parts of the UK on support for the charity sector, because many of the charitable and third sector organisations provide a lot of the front-line support, and we will continue to provide as much support there as possible. Of course, all of us, as individuals, have a role to play in trying to make sure that we are looking out for and looking after some of the most vulnerable people in our own lives—whether that is family members, friends or neighbours—and, therefore, particularly as we go into the winter months, it is incumbent on all of us, as citizens, to think about what we are doing to try to alleviate the loneliness and isolation that older people in particular will feel. In the last 24 hours, unison members at the University of Dundee informed management that they will take five days of strike action, starting in the first week of teaching of the new term. Proposed changes to the university pension scheme will hurt only the lowest paid of staff, disproportionately female workers, and could result in workers losing up to 40 per cent of their pension. Will the First Minister personally intervene to bring parties back to the table to stop those workers being thrown into pension or poverty and to avoid disruption to the education of a generation of young people who have already lost so much? First Minister, those are obviously matters for universities, which, of course, are substantially Government funded but independent institutions, but I would strongly encourage them to get round the table with unions and with workers in order to find solutions that do not penalise staff in the ways that have been set out but also ensure that there isn't disruption to education. I will unequivocally call on our universities and trade unions to get round the table and find solutions. The Scottish Qualifications Authority yesterday published an update on the arrangements for next year's qualifications and assessments. It appears that some kind of provision for direct appeals will be maintained, which is welcome. Does the First Minister agree that any appeal provision must be free and we cannot return to the previous system whereby the SQA charged a fee for appeals, resulting in them being used disproportionately to the advantage of pupils at private schools versus those in the public sector? No decisions have yet been taken for the longer term around the appeals system. Obviously, those issues will be considered in line with some of the broader issues that are being considered around assessment and exams. However, I agree in principle that it is important that we have an appeal system that is accessible for young people. That may be one area, and there are many of those areas where changes have been made that have been necessitated by the pandemic are good changes that we should look to keep and to build on. I am sure that all of those things will be taken into account as decisions are taken for the longer term. Thank you. NHS Orkney has written to those who engage with CAMHS in my constituency, warning that a lack of capacity will lead to delays in people not being seen over the coming months. Young people are being directed towards local third sector organisations, but there is understandable anxiety about the impact that this will have on the mental health of many young people in Orkney. NHS Orkney is in the process of recruiting additional staff, but I urge the First Minister to engage with NHS Orkney to ensure that gaps are filled in the interim so that young people in Orkney get the support that they desperately need. Yes, I am happy to undertake that we will engage with NHS Orkney to provide whatever support we can. Liam McArthur is right to point to the fact that there is already record numbers of people working in our mental health services, and there is recruitment under way across the country, but, as he says, it is also in NHS Orkney. However, it is important that we provide support to fill any interim gaps. Therefore, I will undertake to ask the health secretary to have that conversation and write to him once he has had the opportunity to do so. Back in 2016, Nicola Sturgeon declared that her Government's intervention at Ferguson Marine in Port Glasgow was going to be an incredible triumph. She said at the time that it was living proof of how the SNP stands up for Scottish jobs. In 2019, the yard was forcibly nationalised, despite much protest and warnings that it would be a complete disaster. First Minister, which bit of welding together Scotland's future ferry fleet in Romania is standing up for Scottish jobs? I would say that, due to the Government's interventions at Ferguson's, there are hundreds of people working at Ferguson's today that would not be working at Ferguson's because it would not still be operational had we not intervened in that way. Ferguson's is on a journey to recovery. It has a way to go in that journey. I think that that is self-evident. Its priority is on completing the two ferries currently under construction and continuing the work to make sure that it is in shape to compete successfully for contracts both domestically and further afield in future. We will continue to support the yard in that vital work, but let's be in no doubt but for the actions that this Government has taken, Ferguson's doors would be closed right now and those hundreds of workers there would not have a job. Question 3, Alex Cole-Hamilton. The Scottish Government will support the Scottish Ambulance Service in coping with reports of unprecedented pressure that is resulting in significant increases to waiting times. Obviously, Presiding Officer, I have covered much of this already in previous answers, but the Ambulance Service, like other areas of the NHS, is under considerable pressure as a result of the unprecedented demand that is caused largely by the impact of the pandemic. Our Ambulance Service staff are doing a heroic job at delivering emergency healthcare to the people of Scotland, but some people are, as I have already reflected on, waiting far too long for Ambulance Services. We are in constant dialogue and engagement with the Ambulance Service. We have provided additional funding, we have taken a number of actions already, and as I have set out previously today, there are a number of additional actions currently under consideration. Alex Cole-Hamilton. I'm very grateful for that reply. We've heard the stories of Lillian Briggs and Gerard Brown, but they are not alone. I have mentioned Catherine White before. She's a retired nurse of 40 years and given her life to the care of others, but she waited 15 hours for an ambulance last month. Well, she fell again last week. She suffered fractured feet, a fractured pelvis and delirium, yet she waited another eight hours for help. Only when my constituent told operators that my mum is dying did the ambulance come after yet another hour. The Ambulance Service has been failed by this Government, just like Lillian and Catherine. That isn't just the pandemic, it simply doesn't have the resource to prioritise these cases. Calling in the army is evidence of a Government that has done too little, too late. Can I ask the First Minister what discussions she has had with the service about the integration of the armed forces and when she expects them to be deployed? Discussions are under way. As I said, we will be finalising the request for military assistance shortly. That is one of many actions that we are taking. We are providing additional revenue funding to the Ambulance Service at record levels. Staffing is at higher levels than it has been in previous years, and there is further recruitment under way. The problems that the Ambulance Service is facing are, to some extent, caused by pressures elsewhere in the national health service, not least in our accident and emergency departments, so there is also a lot of work being done there to try to alleviate those pressures. We will continue to take the actions that are necessary to support those who work in the Ambulance Service and provide the level of service that patients demand and have a right to expect. I have already said today that I do not think that it is acceptable for anybody to wait the kinds of periods that are being reported right now. It is not acceptable, even during pandemic conditions, which is why we are focused on finding the solutions to allow the Ambulance Service to provide the level of response that they want to and people have a right to expect. What is clear is what the pandemic has done. It has exposed the weaknesses that were there before. We have heard concerning reports from NHS staff that the Golden Jubilee, Stophill hospital and the Royal hospital for children are seriously understaffed. Struggling to cope with the volume of patients and treatment at each hospital site is now severely limited. Can the First Minister confirm if any departments have been closed to new patients and if elective surgery has been stopped in any of those hospitals? The number of boards are taking the decisions to pause temporarily elective surgery to enable them to deal with emergency services. Again, that is not something that is simply happening in Scotland. We are saying that that happened in parts of the health service across the UK because of the pressure of Covid. We will continue to support the health service to take the decisions that they consider are appropriate to provide care to people who need it. Be under no doubt, our objective is to get the health service operating again in a way that it can deal with the pressures of Covid without that having an impact on non-Covid and elective services. That is what the recovery plan is focused on and we will continue to support the health service to do that. At the heart of that, of course, is the imperative to get Covid cases down so that, as that pressure reduces, the health service can get more and more back to normal. That brings us back to the central messages to everybody about all the mitigations that we all have to follow to make sure that we keep Covid cases on a downward track. Between 2016-17 and 2019-20, more than 11,000 ambulances were sent out with a single crew member and an increase of nearly 39 per cent. When the First Minister was health secretary, she said that she would take action to eliminate rostered single manning and that ambulances should be double crewed, with at least one member of being a paramedic and less in exceptional circumstances. Those are her words. In the midst of this crisis in her ambulance service, will the First Minister tell the chamber how many ambulances have been single crewed since the start of the pandemic and why her Government has failed to eliminate the practice as she pledged 13 years ago? First Minister, I do not have that information in front of me. I will undertake to provide that information, but we did effectively eliminate single crewing. When I became health secretary, it was at unacceptably high levels. Therefore, it is the case that ambulances are single crewed only in exceptional circumstances. During a global pandemic, we will face exceptional circumstances literally on a daily basis. However, the routine rostered single crewing that was endemic under previous administrations was dealt with by the administration, and we will continue to make that a priority as we come out of and recover from the pandemic. To ask the First Minister whether she will provide an update on the preparations for COP26. We are working closely with a range of partners to deliver a safe and successful COP26 review into Police Scotland's preparations, including a recent report from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, which offered a high degree of assurance around the ability to balance business as usual policing with COP26 operations. The transport demand strategy is in place, and the Covid adaptation plan, developed by chief medical officers from the Scottish and UK Governments, will be published shortly. I had a meeting yesterday with the United Nations Executive Director on climate change to consider some of the broader issues around the COP26 negotiations. Bill Kidd. Thank you, First Minister. The Conference for Youth has always been funded by the Government of the United Nations member state hosting COP, so can I ask the First Minister what discussions she has had with the UK Government regarding their decision not to fund the conference? I put on record my thanks that the Scottish Government has stepped in to ensure that the voices of young people who have been so important in pushing for change are not lost. I do not know why the UK Government has decided not to fund the conference of youth. I do understand that that is the first time that the host nation has not done so, but I am not particularly interested in the reasons for that. It is important that the voice of youth is heard. Therefore, I was pleased to confirm that the Scottish Government will fund the conference of youth, which brings young people from, I think, 140 countries together in the days leading up to COP to formulate and then present their demands to world leaders. It will be a good opportunity for young people across Scotland to take part in that, and it will ensure that the voice of children and young people is heard loudly and clearly during the COP discussions. Question 5, Tess White. To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to prevent cyberattacks on public bodies. We work closely with public sector bodies to raise the baseline standard of cyber security in line with guidance from the UK National Cyber Security Centre. A dedicated policy team together with a range of partners are delivering the strategic framework for a cyber resilience Scotland across public, private and third sectors to further build our cyber security and resilience capabilities. The Government shares cyber threat intelligence, including those during real-time incidents, as part of its early warning process. It provides regular training, advice and support to the public sector, encouraging regular exercising and cyber incident response planning. Tess White. First Minister, Audit Scotland has warned that cyber crime is a serious risk to Scotland's public sector. With 27 separate attacks recorded since 2017, given the considerable cost to the public purse of the ransomware attack on the Scottish Environment Protection Agency in December 2020, as well as the on-going impact on its operations, is the Scottish Government satisfied that public bodies have achieved the standard set out in the Scottish public sector cyber resilience framework? Can I thank Audit Scotland for the work that it has done here? With the greatest respect to Audit Scotland, I do not think that any Government is under any illusion about the threat of cyber attacks in our countries to the public sector, the private sector and, indeed, to Governments themselves. It is a risk that we take extremely seriously. There have been some very significant cyber attacks happening to public sector organisations in Scotland. SEPA is obviously a case in point. The question that I think is a reasonable question is, are we satisfied that the public sector organisations are taking all of the appropriate steps? We are working with them to ensure that that is the case. Every Government should hesitate to sound as if they are complacent about this, because it is a real, present and ever-changing and evolving risk. We must make sure that, on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, we are providing the protections and supporting the public sector to do likewise, and we will continue to do that. Christine Grahame First Minister, a fair work joint statement on Covid agreed between the Scottish Government and organisations such as COSLA, STUC and the Institute of Director States— Sorry, Ms Grahame. I think that there has been a slight understanding of taking supplementary on those specific questions as we go along, but there may be an opportunity later. Oh, no, no. I thought that we were not your generals. Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you very much. In that case, we will move on to question number six, Pauline McNeill. Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's responses to analysis by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland are suggesting that the Crown Office is masking the time taken to decide on criminal prosecutions. First Minister. The report from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prosecutions is an inspection of the management by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service of criminal allegations against the police. The report rightly recognised that the public should be reassured by the robust scrutiny that is applied by prosecutors to on-duty criminal allegations against the police. The report noted a historic practice of freezing targets while further information was awaited from an investigating agency. That practice ceased in April this year, meaning that it will not have an impact on target performance in this reporting year. It was an administrative exercise having no impact on the investigation or outcome of any cases. The Lord Advocate—and, of course, this is entirely a matter for the Lord Advocate—is carefully considering all recommendations in the report and will make changes where appropriate to implement them. Pauline McNeill. I thank the First Minister for the answer and she acknowledged that the practice only ended in April 2021 because the analysis from the watchdog, the Inspectorate of Prosecutions in Scotland, revealed significant concerns that the Crown Office's criminal investigations against the police division had been setting cases to show that it was meeting targets for investigation and prosecution by freezing cases and ignoring the time taken when it was frozen. In another analysis by the watchdog last year, the resetting of key target dates also led to unacceptable delays in progressing sexual crime cases, which it said masked the true journey, time of those cases. It is a seriously concerning practice to find us out. It looks as if the Crown Office is trying to make the performance look better than it actually was, so I think that it is a serious matter. I just ask the First Minister if she would join or agree with me that there must be no return to such a practice and that transparency is vital in our Crown Office and prosecution service to ensure public confidence. Yes, I agree with that. I am sure that the Lord Advocate, where she is here, would fully agree with that as well. As I said in my original answer, this was an administrative practice. I am assured that it had no impact on the investigation or outcome of cases. Often the Crown Office in cases like this but in cases generally will require to have information from other investigating agencies. That might be sometimes the health and safety executive, for example, and that has an impact on its ability to pursue cases. Pauline McNeill is right in terms of what she says about transparency. Those are matters for the Lord Advocate. I know that she will be considering the report carefully and I am certainly willing to ask her to write to Pauline McNeill with more detail of the action in due course that she intends to take in light of this report. Thank you. That concludes First Minister's questions. We will now move on to members' business and I ask members to leave the chamber quietly. Thank you.