 Rwy'n cael ei wneud, ac mae'r next item of business this afternoon is consideration of business motion 1719 in the name of Graham Day on behalf of the Bureau, setting out revisions to this week's business. Can I ask Graham Day to move the motion? Move, Presiding Officer. Thank you very much. No one wishes to speak against the motion, therefore the question is that motion 1719 be agreed. Are we agreed? Yes. Thank you. The next item is topical questions and the first question is from Liam McArthur. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on reports that firearms police were deployed to routine incidents that did not require a weapon more than 5,000 times in the last year. Minister Ash Denham. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Police Scotland is a service where the vast majority of officers are not routinely armed. The changes to the deployment model, which was considered by the Scottish Police Authority in December 2017 and introduced last May, followed extensive consultation by Police Scotland with a wide range of organisations, including members of the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee. Those changes have allowed armed officers to utilise their core policing skills and attend incidents where speed of response or vulnerability was a key factor. The incidents referred to equate to around 0.3 per cent of the total number of incidents that Police Scotland officers attend each year. The deployment of armed officers is an operational matter for the chief constable and is overseen by the Scottish Police Authority. I spoke to the chair of the SPA today and was informed that the SPA board members had already planned to consider the first year of their revised deployment at their next board meeting, which is scheduled to take place later on this month. Liam McArthur. Minister, for that response, the minister referred to the commitment to keep Parliament and the public updated. This is indeed critical. We all recall Police Scotland adopting a fundamentally different policy in 2013, allowing firearms officers carrying weapons to do all routine duties, having received the SPA and not told anyone else. In his evidence to the Justice Committee in January, the cabinet secretary said that the community impact of the deployment model continues to be assessed. At that point, Police Scotland was considering an independent evaluation by the Scottish Institute of Policing. Has this yet been undertaken and when will it be published? That has been undertaken and this is part of the substantive papers that will go before the board for discussion at their next meeting in May. The decision to make the change was done so as a consensible use of police time in order to be able to respond to incidents where speed of response and vulnerability was a key issue. I spoke to the SPA chair, Susan Deacon, this morning and she assured me that this is being done in a proportionate way. It is important to keep in consideration that Police Scotland responds to about 1.8 million incidents per year. The responses of incidents that we are discussing right now are just 0.3 per cent. There is obviously a monitoring process that is in place to consider this. Police Scotland reports to the board regularly, they do this on a quarterly basis. As I mentioned in my previous answer, they had already planned to discuss this issue in more detail at the next board meeting. It is important to restate that we are not routinely arming police officers, but there is a proportionate approach that measures the use of police resources and is obviously subject to the proper oversight. I thank the minister for that response and assume that the report that is being prepared will indeed be published. Five of the eight legacy forces had the policy of firearm officers storing weapons in the boot of their armed response vehicles and undertaking routine duties unarmed. Weapons were only accessed when firearms were necessary or when the public or police officers were in imminent risk. The SPA refused to include that in its consultation and options back in 2014, only including visible courage, covert courage or threat to life deployment. Does the minister believe that the previous model is worthy of further consideration? I think that this is a matter for the police authority that they are and have informed them. They are keeping under review. They are obviously due to substantively look at this issue at their next board meeting and it would obviously be up to them to decide on whether they wanted to change that model at all. Just to reassure the member that we are not routinely arming police officers, it is just 0.3 per cent of incidents where armed response officers would attend. There are criteria for that as well where the police officers would be sent out by a tactical unit to issues where speed of response was important. I am sure that the member would appreciate that, at times, speed of response to things such as missing persons, incidents such as domestic violence, speed of response is of the essence. However, the SPA is keeping that issue under review and Police Scotland reports to it on a quarterly basis. I have no objection to the nearest officer who has been able to attend incidents to speed up police response. Does the minister accept that some of those deployments may have been unnecessary if the SNP hadn't slashed front-line policing? I think that the member will not be surprised to hear that I do not agree with that analysis. This change to deployment model was a measured approach in order to use capacity appropriately. It is only used in a small number of cases, as I have already said, where speed of response is important. I think that the member has just alluded in his question to the fact that he does not have an issue with the nearest unit of police officers responding to an incident. I think that we would all in the chamber agree that that is appropriate, at times, in order to keep our communities safe. Mylton McGregor. Thank you, Presiding Officer. In an earlier answer, the minister mentioned missing people. Can I ask the minister how many missing and vulnerable people have been traced or assisted by officers deployed in the armed response vehicles since their roles were extended last year? According to information provided by Police Scotland, more than 3,500 missing and vulnerable people have been traced or assisted by officers deployed in armed response vehicles since their roles were extended. These officers have provided medical assistance at over 600 incidents and dealt with more than 1,000 road traffic matters, including collisions, speeding and drink driving offences. John Finnie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The minister will be aware that there is an obligation in Police Scotland to continually assess, risk assess the situation and how they deploy officers. I am sure that she will join me in welcoming the welcome reduction in firearms-related incidents that we heard about last week. Will that be reflected in a downturn in the number of officers who are being deployed? The Government, on the one hand, says that it will not interfere in operational policing but clearly is giving the green light to more overt arming, including the use of taser. Just to reassure the member, I am sure that he is aware that there are over 17,000 police officers in Scotland. The number of armed response police is actually 524, so just to reassure the member that there is only a small proportion. I think that that equates to about 3 per cent of police officers. I am sure that the member will also welcome me in seeing the police stats this morning that showed that we have over 1,000 police officers in Scotland. That number is up since 2007, so I am sure that the member will welcome that as well. To reassure the member again, the Police Scotland reports on the issue and is keeping a close eye on it. That is reported to the Scottish Police Authority, who are reviewing it and will look at the matter in detail at their board meeting in May. 2. Monica Lennon To ask the Scottish Government whether it will agree to a public inquiry into issues relating to the collection of clinical waste and its impact on the NHS. I do not consider a public inquiry necessary, given that the Government has taken a number of steps to ensure that clinical waste continues to be collected without a negative impact on our NHS. 3. Monica Lennon's contingency measures were activated on 7 December 2018, when healthcare environmental services withdrew collection services from the majority of NHS boards. These arrangements ensure that waste is appropriately stored, collected and disposed of, in line with industry regulations and there has been no disruption to NHS services. 4. Monica Lennon I thank the Cabinet Secretary for her reply. It is disappointing that the Scottish Government is not supporting a full public inquiry. I agree with Professor Hugh Pennington, a leading expert in bacteriology, that a public inquiry should be held in the interests of patient and staff safety, taxpayers' money and to protect our NHS from failed private contracts. 5. Monica Lennon Does the Cabinet Secretary believe that she is a duty to get to the bottom of this clinical waste scandal so that it can never be repeated? The nature of the clinical waste scandal, as Ms Lennon characterises it, is that a company breached its contractual obligations to our health service in Scotland. Having done that and having failed to take up the opportunity of the additional 20 days to meet those contractual obligations, which were part of the contract in which they were afforded, our contingency measures, which we had planned for, given the difficulties that they were experiencing with NHS south of the border, were activated. Those contingency measures continue. The framework agreement was in place and was out to tender. That had to be delayed because of the change in market circumstances. A new contractor has been awarded. That new contract is effective from 1 April with the usual transitionary period and will take full effect from a date in August. With all that in mind, I do not believe that the scandal is either of this Government's making if it is such a thing or, indeed, of NHS Scotland's making. I think that all our attention should be focused on that company meeting its obligations not only to the health service in Scotland but to its employees. That is not the right focus to be made towards this Government. In terms of what Professor Pennington said, I have a great deal of respect, of course, for his expertise and his knowledge. When I look at what he said, he said, from what I have heard, I prefer to base my actions and my decisions on the basis of evidence and proven evidence. That is what I will continue to do. I thank the cabinet secretary for her further response. Unfortunately, this chamber has heard very little of the evidence. The cabinet secretary will recall that, at the start of this year, Scottish Labour asked her to pause the procurement process to bring in the contract back into the NHS. The private sector is right. The private sector has failed. The cabinet secretary has previously said that it has put the NHS at risk. Over the weekend, there have been media reports that contingency plans are costing double what the old contract costed. Perhaps the cabinet secretary can confirm if that is accurate. Given the delays, I hear what she said about the transition period, but we understand that today we are a bit behind with the contract. Given the delays and given it will cost £100 million over 10 years, will the cabinet secretary give further consideration to bringing the contract back into public hands? The contract has been awarded. To change that, it risks the Government being held in breach of contract. I am not prepared to put the Government at risk in that regard. The contract has been awarded. I do not know where Ms Lennon gets her information. We have heard that, but my understanding is that we are on track for Trudebe to take full responsibility for that contract from the date in August that has been agreed. Contingency arrangements continue, and there will be a phase transition between contingency and the new contractor. As I said when I made my statement on 23 January, I will come back to the chamber and update them, either through an inspired question or by other means, on the final cost of the contingency arrangements. I also said in that statement that contingency arrangements, by their very nature, cost more. However, the numbers that Ms Lennon is quoting are numbers that I suspect do not take account of the necessary and sensible deduction that she would make from the cost of the contingency arrangements. The cost in normal course had met her contractual obligations, which, unfortunately, she did not. Can I ask the cabinet secretary specifically about the 200 tonnes of waste that is still stored at the company's site in shorts, and ask if the liquidation of the company and its associated companies is going to have an adverse impact on the timing of the disposal of that particular waste? I am grateful to Mr Neil for that question. The recent SEPA inspections have not identified any significant environmental risk and no risk to the wellbeing of local communities, but SEPA continues to monitor the situation on both sites, both at shorts and at Dundee, on a weekly basis. On the recent liquidation of the company, I am awaiting further information as to whether or not that allows SEPA to act in a different way from the manner in which it is currently acting, and I am happy to advise the member of that once I have that additional information. Graham Simpson We have had reports of waste piling up at health centres, of it being uncollected from GP practices. Can the cabinet secretary assure us that that is not continuing? Can she say where the waste will be taken when that new contract comes into effect? The cabinet secretary has made a number of assertions and reports, all of them, when they come to my attention and have been investigated. Where there have been difficulties in the early part of the contingency arrangements in December and January, those were resolved. The cycle of collection follows the cycle in terms of the contingency arrangements, follows the same cycle as was the case in the HES contract. In other words, more clinical waste is of greater risk to the public, is collected more frequently than clinical waste, for example, from dental surgeries or wherever, but the collection rotation remains exactly on the same cycle as it was under the HES contract. Where there are any further reports, there have been a number of media reports and so on. Those are always investigated by my officials and by SEPA, and so far they have either found to be false or out of date, or where they have highlighted discrepancies and mistakes that have been made, they have been corrected. At this point, the monitoring continues. There is no risk to the public or to the environment, and we continue to keep a close eye on the situation. As I said to Mr Neil with respect to the new status in terms of the company's liquidation, when we have additional information on what that may do in terms of SEPA's actions, I will ensure that members are informed. The transportation of the waste under the HES contract, I would want to be absolutely accurate in my response to the member on that, so if he is content, I will write to him with that detail. I do not have it in front of me. I will happily share that with him later today.