 The next item on motion 10145, in the name of Willie Rennie, will be, without any questions, on East Newk first responders. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I will ask those who wish to press the request to speak buttons. Willie Rennie will open the debate for around seven minutes. Willie Rennie will now open the debate for around seven minutes, please. I am disappointed that so many are leaving the gallery. They are going to miss the debate of the year. They still have time to turn around if they wish to hear the fantastic contribution that I am about to make. As always, East Newke first responders is an independent community resuscitation charity working to improve the survival chances of people who suffer life-threatening emergencies in the East Newke of Fife. They cover the beautiful fishing and coastal villages of Ailey, St Moran's, Pittenweem, Anstrother, Sellardite, Crale, as well as the inland communities, too. The heart of the area is a good 20 minutes from St Andrew's and 30 minutes from leaving, and that is where their nearest ambulance stations are. The charity is totally funded by public donation and they support their community with life-saving equipment, training, first aid cover at events and health awareness. I want to pay tribute to the work that they do for their community. They deserve the recognition from this Parliament. They work with the Scottish Ambulance Service to respond to life-threatening emergencies to provide care until the ambulance arrives. They form a vital link in the chain of survival and increase the survival chances, especially for people with heart attacks and cardiac arrests. They have also equipped every community in the area with a public access defibrillator. It is a feature of the East Newke to see the flashing white light on green boxes fixed to the side of public buildings. They are running school lifesaver projects, too, but East Newke first responders want to do more to save more lives. For some time, they have been finding it difficult to access training for volunteers to add to the network. The Scottish Ambulance Service insists that they should conduct all the training, but they have not provided sufficient and local training opportunities on a frequent enough basis. It seems that volunteers are giving up because they are required to wait for so long, or it is not feasible for them to access the training that is available. That is my first request that the Scottish Ambulance Service provide more training in a range of areas across the country on a more frequent basis, or they should change their model. That brings me on to the use of new technologies. Operating internationally, Good Sam is short for good smartphone-activated medics and is the world's most advanced emergency alerting and dispatching platform. The phone app allows alerters to dial the emergency services and, at the same time, notify nearby medically qualified responders of a medical emergency. Good Sam connects those in need with those who have the skills to provide critical help before the emergency services arrive. It offers real-time encrypted, on-scene footage. It is quite an amazing piece of technology. You can book off and on, but there are 30,000 volunteers worldwide that are accessing this network. In the UK, there are 8,000 responders in this country alone. It has been used successfully in London, East Midlands and the North West of England, with many lives having been saved. By the end of this year, the majority of ambulance services in England will have access and will be partnered with Good Sam. It is endorsed by the Recertitation Council and has been funded by Nesta, the innovation foundation. Appropriately trained volunteers can register with the app by submitting their qualification for approval. The qualifications need not have been gained through the ambulance service and can be qualified through other professional bodies, too. That means that each community has access to a large number of first-responding volunteers at the press of a button. Although we are only apparently three foot from a spider, you are probably no more than 200 metres from a doctor, a nurse or a paramedic. The Good Sam app connects you with that health professional if you are in trouble. A patient suffering a cardiac arrest is 10 per cent less likely to survive with every minute that passes without CPR. Good Sam is a not-for-profit co-founded by Professor Mark Wilson, a neurosurgeon and an air ambulance doctor. There are similar apps in the United States of America, called Pulse Point, and in Sweden, called SMS Lifesavers. Good Sam has been developed with the UK ambulance partners and is already being used across the United Kingdom. A randomised control trial found that the app in Sweden increased bystanders' CPR from 48 per cent to 62 per cent, but it did not increase the survival rate. The operators in Sweden have rolled out defibs and connected them to the app to increase the survival rate. In Sweden, many patients receive the first defib shot within five minutes with a survival rate of 70 per cent. It is a remarkable change. Good Sam is expanding that AED network in the UK and has mapped and verified what is by far the UK's and the world's largest AED registry. Eastnuke first responders are already embracing the new technology, but only in a limited way. It is because the Scottish Ambulance Service has not adopted it. It is considering it, but it has been considering it for some time. The cost is free to responders, and it is just £15,000 a year for the ambulance service. We have never had an ambulance on every street corner, or we ever will have that, but we can have a lifesaver on every corner for next to nothing. The benefits are clear. The potential is great, the cost is low and life-saved could be high. I urge the Scottish Ambulance Service to swiftly embrace the technology so that we can access that wide network of experienced health professionals in every community. With more training and the adoption of new technology, we could save more lives. I thank Willie Rennie for securing this debating time to acknowledge what is hugely significant work in Eastnuke. I pay tribute to all first responders right across the country, some of whom I have seen at first hand and probably saving the life of a former colleague. The invaluable work that ENFR carries out in partnership with the Scottish Ambulance Service is simply first class, as is the speed at which they arrive on the scene of an incident, delivering life-saving treatment before the arrival of the ambulance. This is particularly important in rural areas such as the Eastnuke, where it can often be very difficult for an ambulance to get there very quickly. They form a vital link in the chain of survival, which is well proven to dramatically increase the casualties chances of survival from a heart attack or a cardiac arrest in particular. That is important because we know that there are around 3,500 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests each year in Scotland, where there is sadly a very low survival rate of only 8 per cent. The sooner the effective CPR is started, the better the chance of survival, and for every minute's delay, the patient's chance of life is dropping by 10 per cent. If the first shock from a defibrillator is delivered within three to five minutes, the reported survival rates can soar to 74 per cent, as Willie Rennie said. As the motion notes, the ENFR has also done invaluable work in installing life-saving defibrillators in 24 locations across the Eastnuke. That is also something about which my colleague Miles Briggs has been a very passionate campaigner for it in Lothian, working in conjunction with the Jamie Skinner Foundation. That foundation was named after a talented young footballer whose life was tragically cut very short by a sudden cardiac arrest while he was playing for Tyncastle football club. His friends and family have asked many times whether his life could have been saved if a nearby defibrillator had been used. Willie Rennie has spoken much about the Good Sam app system, and I couldn't agree with him more about the importance of that. Emergency services staff and members of the public with basic life support skills in this area are being encouraged to sign up as volunteers, but I note the request that Willie Rennie has made in the need to ensure that there is better support for those volunteers, and I encourage my constituents to take part if they can. I know that the organisation is strongly supported in the local community, relying, as it does, on the charitable donations and on those essential volunteers. Most recently, a large number of people undertook the East Nuke Nuke to raise money for ENFR, plunging into Anstrother Harbour and freezing temperatures on New Year's Day. I was not there, but I certainly can give them all my support from on the beach. I just like at this point to mention other similar and equally commendable organisations in Scottish mountain rescue, which are also providing emergency first aid in areas that are inaccessible to the ambulance service in other parts of Mid Scotland and Fife and across the country. So do the Scottish charity air ambulance, which I am proud to say shares my constituency association office building, and we hear a lot about what happens there. I commend all those who are involved with East Nuke first responders for giving up their time and, quite literally, providing a life service. Members will know that Willie Rennie is a harrier and that he will soon be taking part in the 116.5-mile run around Fife's coastal path. We wish him hit well, and we hope that he does not trouble the East Nuke first responders on that particular occasion. Clare Baker, to be followed by Tom Arthur. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I would also like to thank Willie Rennie for bringing this member's debate to the chamber. As a fifer, I know the East Nuke area well, and I would like to extend my thanks to all the members of the East Nuke first responders for everything that they do. I have spoken in many members' debates since I was first elected, including praising the work of local charities and community organisations, especially those from my region of Mid Scotland and Fife. We speak a lot about the problems facing our communities and our services in this chamber during regular business, but those members' debates often give us the opportunity to talk about the positive and the great work that is taking place on the ground. We should all be proud of the work that the East Nuke first responders are doing and the life that they can touch and change. When it comes to the East Nuke first responders, it is no exaggeration that we can say that they are truly lifesavers. We all know in this chamber the battle that we have had with tackling heart disease in this country. Statistics published just last week from ISD Scotland highlighted that, over the past 10 years, the mortality rate from coronary heart disease in Scotland fell by 39.6 per cent. While we all welcome that, heart disease is still a leading cause of death in Scotland, and there is much work to be done, especially in tackling the gap between rich and poor in this country and among males. However, those statistics show that we are moving in the right direction. For an individual admitted to hospital with their first heart attack, their chances of surviving at least 30 days have increased from 86 per cent to almost 93 per cent. Amongst those aged 75 and over, that has increased from 71 per cent to 85 per cent. That rise is not a coincidence. It is due to awareness raising about the triggers of heart attacks and the early warning signs of an oncoming attack, and it is due to the hard work of our health professionals. However, it is also due to the vital difference that early intervention can make. In those cases, the use of CPR and defibrillators can make all the difference. On last year's European restart to heart day, the Scottish Ambulance Service released figures that shows that more Scots are being resuscitated following a cardiac arrest. Our ambulance services and paramedics do a great job in treating heart attack victims and patients who had experienced life-threatening emergencies. However, often the most crucial time can be the time in between the attack and the emergency services that are getting there, and that can present a unique challenge in more rural areas. That is where the first responders can step in. Seeing someone you know and love, or even a complete stranger, suffer an attack and being first on the scene can be a scary moment. The ability to react to that can be the difference to whether that person can survive or not. The East Newark first responders are able to work to improve the survival rates of people who suffer life-threatening emergencies in the area, and our all resource from public donations is something that everyone in the East Newark can and should be rightly proud of. That the first responders are able to work in partnership with the Scottish Ambulance Service is important, and Willie Rennie made good points about the benefits of the Scottish Ambulance Service being prepared to invest more into training and into new technology. The Good Sam Medical Dispatching app provides us life-saving care as an innovative solution that is a vital link in the chain of survival. We should all be commended—sorry, we should commend all those involved in setting up this initiative and welcome the positive working relationships that are developing. Those volunteers are not just content with saving lives themselves but are committed to working with others in the local community to ensure that they too are equipped with the skills and, in the case of public access defibrillators, the equipment to help others. Their schools CPR lifesaver project is building a whole new generation of lifesavers and perhaps a whole new generation of first responder volunteers. That this is to be rolled out to every primary school in East Newark is no mean feat. As mentioned, the project goes beyond just training children. It also actively encourages them to take their new skills and pass them on to family members and friends. Curtain of Largo school pupils trained an extra 66 people, Collinsborough another 79, and Anstra there an extra 105 people. With a success rate like this, East Newark must be one of the leading areas in Scotland for trained lifesavers per head of population. For that and for all the work that the East Newark first responders do, I, my constituents, would like to thank them dearly for all the work that they have done. Tom Arthur, to be followed by Alexander Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I wish to begin by congratulating Willie Rennie on securing this debate and thanking him for providing this opportunity to learn members to highlight the fantastic contributions made by community first responders in East Newark and across Scotland. My constituency of Renfisher South is home to the Newston and Uplamore first responders, and I am delighted to welcome representatives Lewis McCall, Ryan Ledgerwood and Jim Wilson to the public gallery today. As you can imagine, I am going to focus a wee bit more on the Newston and Uplamore first responders than I would on East Newark. I would say that this is not the first time that Newston and Uplamore first responders have been recognised in the Scottish Parliament. In October of 2014, my constituency neighbour Jackson Carlog and his previous role as West Scotland regional member led a members debate congratulating the community first responders on dealing with their 100th emergency call since becoming operational. Within two years, that number had surpassed 700, and I imagine that now it must be somewhere over 1,000. I would suggest that this debate complements Joanne Lamont's recent members' debate in which, in Teralia, we discussed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and the importance of bystanders CPR. Community first responders can also clearly be important actors in the chain of survival. That was recognised by my predecessor, MSP, for Red Fisher South Hugh Henry, who, in Mr Carlog's debate, rightly stated that community first responders can complement the work of our excellent ambulance service and can make a difference by saving lives. The value of community first responders is clear to all of us here, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the volunteers who provide this valuable service. However, we must also recognise the great leadership that enables community first responders to operate. Stewart McClellan, Ross Nelson, Neustin and Oblaimour first responders have two outstanding leaders who have demonstrated vision and skill in taking an idea and transforming it into an organisation that is delivering front-line medical care to communities right across my Red Fisher South constituency, including in Barhead, Johnston, Llynwyd and Lachwynydd, not to mention communities in Ayrshire and Eastwood. That success has been made possible thanks not only to the hard work of Stewart, Ross and the many volunteers, but also due to the generosity of organisations such as St John's Scotland, who have donated thousands of pounds, Arnold Clark, Mann and Rental, who have provided two brand new 4x4 vehicles, which proved particularly useful during the winter months. The award-winning upland humour hotel has helped as well, who have provided accommodation for meetings and have also been contributions from individuals such as local historian Gina Henderson, who donated 5,000 pounds from the proceeds of her book Recollections of Neustin. We will sense of a community coming together to support a great local organisation. However, as invaluable and as appreciated as these contributions have been, there is a need to consider how we secure the financial future for all of Scotland's community first responders. I am looking forward to shortly meeting again with Stewart and Ross and this is an area that we will discuss. One suggestion that they have previously highlighted to me is the potential for setting up a national charity dedicated to community first responders, similar to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution of St Andrew's First Aid. That is something that I am keen to explore and would welcome the opportunity to engage with other members on that. In concording, let me again thank Willie Rennie for bringing us to the chamber and reiterating my support and gratitude to community first responders in Neustin and upland humour, East Newark and right across the whole of Scotland. The final contribution in the open debate is Alexander Stewart. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am very grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate today and congratulate Willie Rennie for bringing it to the chamber. We as politicians do all we hope to help individuals and that is maybe the reason that we come into this occupation. However, individuals who give of their time and talent to help others are even more of my understanding and support. Individuals who give and do that are tremendous. The assistance that can be given by individuals, as I said, is very good. That includes the introduction of the responders that we will talk about today and the professionalism that they deal with to ensure that the help is provided before medical assistance arrives. We have heard this afternoon about the East Newark responders. They are independent in a community organisation charity that works to improve the survival and outcomes of people who suffer life-threatening emergencies in the East Newark area. The East Newark area that we have already heard is a beautiful part of Scotland and covers large little towns, villages and parts of the community that are recognised the world over. Today, they are funded by donations that are given to the group and they support to ensure that communities have life-saving equipment, community training, first aid cover events, health awareness and a myriad of other organisations and other roles that they want to be part of. That carries out their partnership working alongside the Scottish Ambulance Service and that is a great thing to see. We have also talked about the Good Sam mobile app today. That is real technology for helping individuals to ensure that we are life-saving. The app helps to provide care and life-threatening emergencies until the Ambulance Service arrives. Each volunteer responds with the equipment of life-saving, and that includes the defibrillators that we have talked about already today. The personal defibrillator by the Scottish Ambulance Service is a life—they are really saving lives on a regular basis and they are dealing with category A calls that are given to those responders. The community first responder arrives on the scene first and can deliver life-saving treatment before the arrival of the backup of the ambulance and other individuals to support them. They form a vital link in the chain of survival, which is well proven to demonstrate that casualties can survive even more if they have given that information and given that support for cardiac arrest or for a heart attack situation. The chain of survival is essential but little known about outside the medical world. There are four procedures that come into this. There is the early recognition to call for help. There is early CPR that, by some time, there is the early defibrillation to restart the heart and there is also the post care to restore the quality of life for the individual. All equipment and costs that are running are supported by the charitable donations and that, in itself, is an organisation that is doing so well in the community and being donated by individual organisations. Over the time that the group has been formed since 2009, it has attended over 1,000 category A life-threatening 999s, covered local first aid events, delivered training in essential healthcare and installed over 40 public access disabilators across the area. The work of the first responders is recognised by a far wider audience and that is the essential life-saving for the communities that they represent in the area, which is miles away from the nearest hospital and retained and that opportunity is there. I commend the work of the volunteers and I wish them continued success in all that they do to maintain, sustain life in the community that they represent. I call Eileen Campbell to respond to this debate around seven minutes. I also want to add my thanks to Willie Rennie for giving us all the opportunity to recognise the fantastic contribution that all staff and volunteers involved with the first responders that make to saving lives in that incredibly beautiful part of Fife. It is a beautiful part of the world that Alex Standersture and others have recognised. I certainly know it from family holidays myself but it is a rural part of the country and it is not without its challenges. That is why it was important that Willie Rennie took the opportunity to describe that huge amount of collaborative work that is going on in the East Newark first responders group and the work that they have undertaken that voluntarily they have driven and motivated to protect and keep safe their community. I am certainly glad that I have the opportunity to record my thanks for that complete dedication that they have. We also similarly value the important role that was carried out by all the 132 community first responders schemes across Scotland and I am delighted again to have the opportunity to recognise their contribution in Parliament. Those that volunteer in a community first responder scheme are trained in a wide range of emergency skills, learning to use specialist equipment such as automatic external defibrillators and oxygen therapy to provide an early intervention in situations such as a heart attack or breathing problems before the ambulance crew arrives and by delivering those life-saving procedures are helping in patient survival and recovery. They also support their local communities by providing training, ensuring that more and more people have these invaluable life-saving skills but I will absolutely reflect on the points raised by Willie Rennie regarding training of volunteers and the potential capacity issue that he described around regarding that training. Volunteers are phenomenal, they are a phenomenal resource and we will certainly do not want to see anybody unnecessarily being put off from being part of this important chain of survival. At present there are, as I have said, 132 community first responder schemes providing 894 active volunteers throughout Scotland being supported by the Scottish Ambulance Service. Although that is something that we as a society can be proud of, I believe that there is always the opportunity for the expansion and introduction of more community first responder schemes. I therefore like to take the opportunity to encourage communities across Scotland to follow the lead of the East Newark first responders and other established schemes by engaging with the Scottish Ambulance Service to set up a first responder scheme in their own local area. The underlying principle and ethos behind first responders in Scotland is to equip the community with the skills that can and do save lives. Community first responder schemes are about developing greater resilience in our communities and we know that survival from a medical emergency such as a cardiac arrest depends on the chain of survival, that being the recognition of that it is a cardiac arrest and that CPR and defibrillation swiftly follows. It is by rapid bystander intervention at incidents such as cardiac arrest where the greatest gains in survival will be achieved. Starting CPR in calling 999 and buys crucial minutes until medical help arrives. The Scottish Ambulance Service advises, as Willie Rennie and others have described, that for every minute that passes without defibrillation, chances of survival decrease by 14 per cent. Research also shows that applying a controlled shock within five minutes of collapse provides the best possible chance of survival. The Scottish Government out of hospital cardiac arrest strategy has two key aims, which is by 2020 to equip an additional 500,000 people in Scotland with cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills and increase survival rates from out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, saving an additional 1,000 lives. Another part of our out-of-hospital cardiac arrest strategy involves the mapping of static defibrillators. That will allow ambulance control centres to identify and utilise publicly accessible defibrillators registered on the Scottish Ambulance Service computer-aided dispatch system. That information will be built into the ambulance control centre so that when they receive a 999 call for a cardiac arrest, the ambulance control centre will be able to sign post the caller to the nearest defibrillator. That knowledge improves the chain of survival and helps to increase the likelihood of survival. As of 16 November last year, the Scottish Ambulance Service has registered 1,553 public access to defibrillators on their command and control system, and with this number expected to grow. There are also a number of other initiatives going on throughout the country that further support our first responders and help to make the community far more resilient. As well as ensuring that we have public access to defibrillators in a range of locations supported by local training and awareness raising, and that a save a life for Scotland has been working with Education Scotland to develop resources to support schools who wish to access CPR training. Willie Rennie raised the opportunities that are presented to improving out of hospital cardiac arrest survival rates through innovation and new technology. A specialist subgroup of Scotland's cardiac arrest strategy delivery group, including the British Heart Foundation of the Government and Edinburgh University, is currently looking at a strategy for PED utilisation in Scotland. As part of that, the subgroup is examining the potential role of apps, assessing weather and how apps would fit into the service such as the good Sam that is mentioned within the motion today. Similarly, before I conclude, I wanted to recognise the comments of Liz Smith, who also paid correct tribute to the Jamie Skinner Foundation for the awareness raising work that they do, and she also paid tribute to the Mountain Rescue for the selfless work and effort that they do to keep people safe on our mountains and to enjoy Scotland's great outdoors safely. I also agree with the tribute that she made to the Air Ambulance Service, which is at Perth Airport, which is actually really closer to the village of Bulbeggy, which is near where I grew up, and certainly a facility that I know well. Their efforts were very recently recognised in the recent daily record in NHS Scotland health awards and rightly so for the phenomenal work that they do to keep people safe across Scotland. I also wanted to recognise the comments that Tom Arthur made about the long-term financial sustainability that is so important to help to keep people who are volunteering involved in this important work, and I am happy to listen and engage with him on those suggestions as they develop. Similarly, Clare Baker talked correctly and rightly about the inequalities about how we need to do more preventative work to stop poor health happening in the first place, and recognising that that requires work to address inequalities across a whole range of fronts, whether that is social security, housing, education and employability, not just health, but certainly if we do those works upstream, that would help to prevent people from having poor health in the first place, and it is right that we link that preventative agenda into today's debate. Finally, I am delighted to have been part of this debate to recognise the role that all of our community first responders have in helping to save lives, including those in the East New Coffife. Those people, volunteers across the whole of Scotland deserve our congratulations and our recognition, and I sincerely thank Willie Rennie for the opportunity to do so. Thank you. That concludes the debate, and I suspend the meeting until half past two.