 The next item of business is a member's debate on motion 1177 in the name of Craig Hoy on Earrington hospital. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I would ask members who want to participate to press the request-to-speak buttons now or as soon as possible, or place an hour on the chat function. I call on Craig Hoy to open the debate for around seven minutes, Mr Hoy. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Local health services are a vital part of local communities. That is why it is an honour to be able to open this debate today, because the Earrington hospital is at the heart of North Berwick, one of the communities that I am proud to represent. However, the cottage hospital's inpatient beds and its minor injuries clinic are currently closed. Deputy Presiding Officer, from the outset, I want to stress that I understand the pressures that our NHS is under. In fairness, we need to understand that those pressures are not new and that not all of them are Covid-related. Healthcare staff across NHS Lothian and the East Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership are dedicated, but they are overstretched. They want to do the right thing by patients, and I want to thank them for everything that they do. Across Scotland, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to local healthcare provision. The Earrington hospital is a well-used, well-loved service at the heart of our community. For over 100 years, it has served the people of North Berwick and East Lothian. The hospital, constructed thanks to a bequest by Ms Elizabeth Earrington, is operated by NHS Lothian and supported by the Friends of the Earrington hospital, and prior to Covid and its closure, the hospital had nine beds and provided medical care for a range of chronic conditions, mobility problems, rest-bite and end-of-life care. The hospital was staffed by 10 nursing staff, eight clinical support staff and four domestic staff. Fundamentally, the voice of patients has to be heard even during a pandemic, but with no local consultation, on 1 September this year, NHS Lothian announced the closure of the Earrington hospital due to staffing constraints at other facilities. Only last week, it was announced that those services will stay closed for at least another month, with every possibility of its closure being extended further. Six in-patient beds and the staff who supported them have been temporarily relocated from the Earrington to the East Lothian community hospital in Harington. NHS Lothian says that it provides additional nursing capacity and has allowed them to keep 14 beds open at the community hospital in Harington. However, NHS Lothian does not tell the whole story. Writing in the Scotsman, local community practice GP Claire Doldam said that the Earrington was, I quote, a mainstay of local patient care. She added that it allowed us to manage patients closer to home without admission to an already stretched hospital sector. After the hospital closed, I took the decision to undertake a community survey to gauge the views of local residents. I secured the views of 1,929 people and 77 per cent said that they had personal experience with the hospital. 97 per cent of those who were surveyed were opposed to the closure. The community voice is clear. They want the hospital services reopened, and I hope that the minister today will add the Government's voice to the call. The value of the Earrington hospital cannot be measured by NHS managers or ministers on spreadsheets. The hospital provides—I will give way to Mr Woodfield—Maren Woodfield. I'm very grateful to Craig Hall giving way in bringing this very important debate into this chamber today. Would you agree with me that the nuance of the benefit of the Earrington hospital doesn't seem to be able to be reflected in any NHS assessments of the value, which just bases it on number of beds? Craig Hoy. Precisely, and I think that's exactly why so many local residents have been in touch with all members, both from South Scotland and East Lothian, in respect of this, because the hospital provides much-needed high-quality levels of care. Jane from North Berwick told me that my mother spent her final days there. She was so well looked after and, as a former nurse, was happy to be there, unlike her stays at the Royal Infirmary or the Western General. Local resident Linda said, I have used the Earrington since my son was small. The Earrington looks after the community from scrapes to scratches through to respite and end-of-life care. It is our beating heart. Deputy Presiding Officer, East Lothian is the second fastest-growing area in Scotland. Midlothian and West Lothian are growing fast, too, yet health services across the Lothians have not kept pace. Many of the pressures that we see were there before Covid. Had the SNP invested the same levels as the UK Government funding was given to Scotland during Nicola Sturgeon's time as health secretary, an additional £1 billion per year would be being spent in our NHS. Had the Government built sufficient workforce capacity when the sun was shining, the system would not have hit breaking point when the Covid storm hit. In NHS Lothian alone, there are presently 1,011 vacancies for nursing and midwifery and 5,761 across Scotland as a whole. When the minister speaks, it would be good if he can say how the Government intends to plug that gap. Local GPs are also concerned about the closure of the hospital and the manner in which it was closed. Dr Andrew Smith is a GP in Gullen with 25 years' experience admitting to and looking after patients in the Earrington. He says, I was not informed directly of the decision. I contacted the director and received a second hand apology. The community council, the local area partnership and the friends of the Ennington hospital say that they have been left in the dark. Responses to their freedom of information requests are sketchy, redacted or outstanding. They say that hard data is proving hard to find. So today my principal ask of the minister is that you encourage NHS Lothian to consult fully and to engage better with our communities. Can you help to ensure that data about bed use, the minor injuries clinic numbers and the knock-on effects on other services are put into the public domain as quickly as possible? Will you bring forward the date that you plan to meet with local campaigners so that you can hear firsthand their urgent concerns? The on-going closure of the minor injuries clinic is also adding to the pressure at A&E at the Royal Infirmary. The expectation that those injured should be able to make their own way to Edinburgh to receive treatment is unreasonable for many. Furthermore, we were told that moving nurses to hospital whether there were significant pressures would reduce those workforce pressures. Rather than move hospitals, at least one experienced nurse from the Earrington has chosen to leave the NHS. The decision to close respite and palliative care has put pressure on other facilities in East Lothian, including hospices. In her Scotsman piece, Dr Doden said that closing the hospital has been counterproductive. She says that there has been a knock-on effect on central patient services and a loss of more personalised services and associated high staff turnover. So whether it is on staffing levels, on pressure on the care sector, on respite services, on palliative care, the closure of the Earrington hospital is likely to have had a negative impact. All the while, beds that could be being put to good use lie empty and a minor injuries clinic is closed. There is cross-community, cross-party support for the rapid reopening of the Earrington hospital. I hope that ministers will listen. I hope that they will agree to work with me and parliamentary colleagues to meet urgently with local campaigners and to work to tackle the underlying issues in our NHS, so that the Earrington hospital is reopened and its future is assured. Thank you very much. Mr Hoy, could I remind members that the only EU in the chamber is the Presiding Officer and that comments should come through the chair? I call Paul MacLennan, who will be followed by Martin Whitfield for around four minutes. I thank Craig Hoy for bringing forward the debate this afternoon. Four minutes is not enough to talk about the hospital itself, but I will try to cover as many points as I can. First of all, I thank all the NHS and care staff in East Lothian and across the country for their efforts now and in the past 21 months. It has been an incredibly difficult time. The Earrington hospital in North Berwick is an integral part of the psyche of North Berwick. It has been a consistent and lifetime of everyone in the town. There will not be many people, as Craig Hoy said, who have not used the facility, be that the mine and injuries clinic, step up or step down care or end of life care for loved ones. The friend of Earrington group, led by Murray Duncanson, has been a fantastic support for the hospital over a number of years. When the announcement of the time to close of the hospital came through, it came as a surprise and as a shock to us all. At that time, as a constituency MSP, I pulled together a steering group, which consisted of myself, Craig Hoy, Martin Whitfield and all local councillors, friends of Earrington, North Berwick Community Council and North Berwick Health and Partnership. Well-well, we have been grouped local GPs in a local area of partnership. That has worked really well. The cross-party agency has met fortnightly to discuss options to push for the hospital to be opened as safe as clinically possible. At that time, we have the unprecedented pressures of the new Omicron variant and what is the most challenging moment that we have faced in the pandemic. I want to give thanks to all involved to have been quickly opened up the drop-in vaccine centre at the Cormac Strange in Earrington. That was incredibly well put together, and it has opened up today. I know that there has been cues at that already. Of course, we all recognise the reasoning behind the temporary closure. The pressures on NHSs are unprecedented, and Edinburgh, the Royal and Firmoy and Western General are under incredible pressures. The East Lothian community hospital in Earrington subsequently has seen this pressure pass down the line. Only this week, East Lothian Council communicated its issues around social care recruitment and pressures on delivering care packages. Of course, the push for mass vaccinations has had a demand for staff. That pull of staff at NHS carers and mass vaccination staff is being stretched and is incredibly difficult to balance. Last week, as both Mr Roy and Mr Wightfield were aware of, we were told that delayed discharges in the NHS Lothian were around about 400, the vast majority in Edinburgh. The main reason for the closure, of course, was given the overall staffing pressures in NHS Lothian estate. More beds would be available to residents in East Lothian if they were provided at East Lothian community hospital rather than Earrington. I think that it was mentioned about the 14 at the community hospital as against nine at Earrington. However, there is that nuanced debate that has been mentioned by my colleagues in regard to what are the other things that are impacting on there. It is the pressures on hospices and pressures on—there are empty care beds, for example, in East Lothian as well that could be used, and I think that it takes that more detailed look to do that. We were also told of recruitment issues for the community hospital in Earrington, which leads me to an ask of the cabinet secretary. The Friends of Earrington, as well as local MSPs, have asked for staffing figures, staff shortages and criteria for reopening the hospital in terms of the staff establishment. We have all been told that this information is only available through FOI. That needs to be shared and needs to be transparent and openly shared within the group. That is key and fundamental. It is one of the key asks that we have had from the steering group, which met only last night. The steering group has also asked for information on the impact of the closure of the minor injuries clinic. Has that presented additional pressures on A&E facilities in Edinburgh? Again, we were told that we would need to submit an FOI request. We heard from Claire Dalden, who, as I said, is mentioned about the pressures on local GPs. Again, that needs to be taken into the debate and discussed. At a recent meeting of MSPs and MPs, the Earrington hospital was discussed. We managed to secure reviews that would be monthly instead of quarterly, and at NHS, below the chief executive executive, Calm Campbell, would meet the steering group in the new year to explain the clinical reasoning of the temporary closure and answer any questions. In the short time that we all have in this debate, I want to conclude with another ask of the cabinet secretary. Can he give the people of North Berwick the reassurance that there are no plans to close the Earrington on a permanent basis? The Earrington has provided care for many in North Berwick, and he has sold it in one many years. I hope that we can see it open as soon as clinically safe. I am in the unique position, I think, of agreeing with all of the statements from across this chamber that have already been said. That speaks to the heart of what the community feel the crisis over the Earrington has been, but also speaks to a way of resolving this. The Earrington hospital has sat at the heart of every living person in North Berwick having been opened in 1913, becoming part of the NHS in 1948, described then as a cottage hospital. A small hospital where people who were in crisis had a panic, were sent by their GP, could attend to get any service from potentially getting a splinter out of their finger all the way through to dealing with a broken leg. It is in that versatility that the value of the Earrington hospital has warmed its way into the love of the community, a love that is shown by the thousands that have signed the petition, the love that is shown by the hundreds that turned up on a quite cold Sunday to make a heart in the park for their Earrington, to those people who will gather hopefully Covid permitting to celebrate a Christmas carols over the Earrington. I say this not because it's a community that is a hospital that they just love and don't need. The Earrington is a hospital that they need, and it serves a myriad of purposes. From, as we've heard, the nine beds, that when it was moved was six beds but had nine beds in it, but also the minor injuries unit, a hospital that both of those facilities were provided by the same staff, those facilities that allowed people to avoid having to take a train or buses to the nearest hospital that could deal with them or indeed stand outside of their pharmacy to try and get help there. It was a location that people could trust and when they were told at that location they needed to go elsewhere, they took that advice with confidence. The challenge that has occurred over this closure due to Covid is that the way that it has been announced, the way it has been handled has flown in the face of the community's experience of their NHS through the Earrington hospital. They have had to fight to get answers to questions and even at this time of crisis that is unacceptable. They have had to fight for people to come and speak to them to explain, even at this time of crisis that is unacceptable because through this hospital people are making choices about the way they face the Covid disaster that looms in front of us and they need to have confidence in their NHS and for them their NHS is a cottage hospital in part where they can go to with the smallest of complaints or the biggest of complaints with people who live in their community that work at their local hospital and with all respect I do not think any of their asks have been unreasonable. There is an economic model at a time of crisis that says you bring all your resources together but there is another one that if that hospital was supported so much pressure would have been taken off the larger hospital units and the other areas that perhaps the way through this Covid crisis could have been a different way. I know that you have heard of the asks from today about the agreement to meet the freedom of information data which is crucially important because it is their data. It is the data of the people who are asking this and for them to understand the decisions that are being made they need to see this and have it explained. I welcome the agreement of NHS Lothian to meet with the steering group and those people that have petitioned for this and I welcome the secretary's agreement to meet them I hope as soon as possible. So this is an opportunity to say sorry to a community for the way something happened and to start to make roads to make it better but we need to fill those thousand vacancies across NHS Lothian. Thank you Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you very much Mr Workfield and I call Sue Webber to be followed by Jackie Baillie four minutes please Ms Webber. Thank you Deputy Presiding Officer. I believe that local health services are a vital part of local communities. The Eddington hospital opened in 1913 and has served the people of North Berwick and East Lothian successfully since then up until now. Prior to Covid and its closure the hospital had nine beds and provided medical care for a range of chronic conditions, mobility problems, respite and end-of-life care. I wrote to Marie Todd on 9 November after raising the closure of the Eddington hospital with her at health, social care and sports committee following a visit I had to North Berwick attending the hands-around of the Eddington rally. In my letter I voiced concerns about fears the hospital which provides the palliative care to local residents will be shut down for good and asked if she would contact NHS Lothian and reverse the closure of the inpatient palliative care beds at the Eddington hospital. She replied to say that the East Lothian health and social care partnership and the IJB are agreeing criteria for the safe reopening of the Eddington hospital and are ensuring that staff are engaged and informed and also fulfil engagement and consultation with local communities, community groups, staff and elected members. She also said that the cabinet secretary who is here today will be meeting with the community hospital campaign group soon to discuss their concerns and future plans for that hospital. As my colleague Craig Hoy has said, I think that it is vital that this meeting between Humza Yousaf and the community hospital campaign group takes place as soon as possible. Sadly, NHS Lothian's gold command group met last week to review the decision to temporarily amuse staff from Eddington to East Lothian community hospital in Haddington. The decision was taken to keep North Berwick's Eddington hospital closed. Ultimately, the decision centres around workforce pressures are simply not enough staff. I have been calling for resilient and robust workforce planning, not just a plan but real action, to address the long-term issues with our workforce. They have long predated Covid. Those can be attributed directly to decisions taken by the SNP Government from as far back in 2007 when Nicola Sturgeon cut the number of nurse training places when she was health minister. There is cross-community support and cross-party support for the rapid reopening of the Eddington, as we have heard across the chamber this afternoon. If the Government cared about community hospitals as much as the rest of us, it would have done something about it. There was, after all, no consultation, nothing. Everything that we have faced over the past 18 months should be clear that if we had more services in communities, we could have and would have managed things better. To decide now to close a community service makes no sense. We need to have more services in the heart of our communities. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you, Ms Webber. I now call Jackie Baillie to be followed by Karl Mock in four minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Can I congratulate Craig Hoy on securing the debate and, indeed, to all the speakers so far for the content of their speeches? I was very pleased to join members of the Eddington hospital campaign in North Berwick to hear first hand how much they love and value their local hospital. Eddington is, as we have heard more than 100 years old, has been serving the community of North Berwick and its many visitors of which I have been one year after year. The community hospital offers a range of services, whether it is palliative care, whether it is out of hours, but the critical thing for me is supported by GPs, allied health professionals and nurses, and it provides much-valued and safe local healthcare. I am a complete fan of local services. I make no secret of that, but especially so when it is a well-run, sustainable service that the Eddington hospital is. Let us review what happened. We are, of course, alive to the fact that there is a pandemic, but the decision to transfer services away from the Eddington hospital was apparently based on staff shortages. Let us be perfectly clear that it was staff shortages elsewhere in NHS Lothian and not staff shortages at the Eddington hospital. NHS Lothian took the decision on 25 August. It consulted the Scottish Government on the same day. A press release was sent out on 1 September, securing the knowledge that agreement had been reached with the Scottish Government. Six beds and staff were transferred away from the Eddington hospital. Those were to be temporary changes. There was to be a review after three months, which was promised. I wrote to the health board and the cabinet secretary. I asked who was doing the review. Will the local community be involved as they were not the first time around? What are the criteria for the review? I had a response from the health and social care partnership. I have still received a response from the health board or the cabinet secretary. I have to say that there was nothing there about the current review. It is genuinely appalling that there is so little transparency and that local people and local clinicians are not consulted. That simply cannot happen again. Information must be shared with the local community and local clinicians. However, what was interesting is the health and social care partnerships response, because it tells me that there is a work programme to review the long-term model and provision around two care homes and the Bellhaven hospital and the Eddington hospital sites. My goodness, there is even a change board set up to do that. All that I can say to local people in that area is that I have seen some of that before in my own area. You need to engage now, because every instinct of the NHS board will be to centralise services and there is a real danger that more services will be lost. However, the changes that have already been made will have had an impact. Others have described it, but let me just take the minor injuries unit as one example, because many people will have ended up going to the front door of A&E needlessly when they could have been seen locally contributing to the crisis at A&E and in our hospitals. I will not go on, Presiding Officer. I have three asks of the cabinet secretary. First, meet with the campaign group, local people and clinicians to understand how much they value this local provision. Ensure that the health board and the health and social care partnership are transparent and share data without the need for game-playing and FOIs. Please can you today give a long-term commitment to the hospital so that services that are appropriately delivered locally are not centralised and remain in North Berwick? Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I also thank Craig Hoy for bringing this debate to the chamber. I also commend my colleague Martin Whitfield for the work that he has done on this issue and for standing so strongly beside the North Berwick community. Deputy Presiding Officer, when a petition gains thousands of signatures from local residents who care deeply about their hospital and their community, it is often a call for health boards and for government to listen. Clearly, those calls have not been listened to, and the views of the public have been ignored with the continued closure of the community ward at Eddington hospital. I know that the pandemic has put restrictions on the way we have lived our lives, but consulting with the public is something that decision makers are still able to do using different types of consultation, using virtual meetings and other platforms. The fact that the decision has been made without any real consultation as we have heard with the public should be a concern to us all, and I hope that the cabinet secretary recognises that that simply should not have happened. Health services are at their best when they are local, when people are familiar with the settings and environment and have a connection to it. Closing a hospital that has provided over 100 years of good care and service to its local community will undoubtedly have adverse impacts on the community that it has served for so long. In the aftermath of a pandemic, people will and the Scottish Government and the health board should recognise the importance of local community care, but its importance is heightened a bit more when the building in which the care is provided has been a stability of the community for so long, where generations are brought up knowing it and linking many personal memories to it. It is hospitals such as Eddington that should be doing all we can to protect not to close. Deputy Presiding Officer, we all understand the severe pressures that NHS is under, and we know that staffing is an issue in some areas, but, as we have heard, not at Eddington hospital, it is incumbent on the Scottish Government to provide the resources to create new posts and to address staff shortages wherever they are, but it is very important that, locally, people know that their services are valued. The NHS has carried us through this pandemic. It is the very best of our country and our proudest possession, but underfunding and undervaluing of health services by Government has led us to a situation where staff and community care facilities have been moved to centralised health hubs. That should not always be the case. Deputy Presiding Officer, let me be clear that the Scottish Government's underfunding and undervaluing of the health service long predates the pandemic. Lessons need to be and should have been learned long before now. The people of North Berwick understandably feel as though a big part of their community has been torn away from them. They are understandably unhappy at the lack of consultation and they are understandably concerned about the future of their local hospital. They have not been communicated with. I hope that the cabinet secretary can give them some reassurance today that the Scottish Government is doing all it can to secure the future of this hospital and to communicate with the public. I will reiterate a point that I have made throughout this debate, that health services are best when they are delivered locally, easily accessible and serve local communities. That this local hospital has such a history in connection to the people that it serves is an added benefit that should be preserved for as long as possible. The people of North Berwick deserve first-class local services at their doorstep and they deserve to be part of the consultation and listen to. Thank you to Craig Hoy for bringing the debate and thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you very much, Ms Mocken. I call on the cabinet secretary to respond to the debate for around seven minutes, cabinet secretary. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. After being slightly mean to Craig Hoy yesterday, can I attempt some redemption by thanking him for—he says he will buy me a box of chocolate. That is exactly a way to the cabinet secretary for health's heart. Can I thank him for securing this debate? It is an important debate. If this was a parliamentary motion that we were voting for, I would vote for Craig Hoy's motion. I say nothing in it that causes me any difficulty. I think that he and all members today spoke well. I do not disagree with every single word that was said, but I will come to that. I think that they spoke well. The core themes of each of their debates are issues that I wish to pick up on. For what I thought was an excellent speech by Martin Whitfield, he really got to the heart of why hospitals are so important to our communities, but particularly community hospitals. They are there from, literally, birth often to death. Everything that goes in between some of our life's most difficult moments have been surrounded by nurses, doctors and hospitals. They have often and always usually shown great compassion and care. Again, in a community like North Berwick—a tight-knock community like North Berwick—Eddington hospital, no doubt, has been a central feature in many of those moments. Of course, they celebrate with us—enjoy. There are many moments that I will not forget in my life—the top of those moments when my daughter was born and I got to hold her for the first time—and again supported by the doctors, nurses and the other theatre staff who were there at that time. I think that every member here recognises the importance of Eddington hospital in the heart of the local community, and I want to reiterate that I understand that. I know NHS Lothian and understand that too. A few points that other members have raised that I would like to touch upon and reiterate and give some assurance if I can. I think that there have been three really key themes. If I have missed anything out, members can more than welcome to intervene on me, but the three key themes that I think that people have been asking for assurance on is consultation, transparency and then the long-term future of the hospital. On consultation, of course, in this pandemic in particular, and I think that everybody recognises it, we cannot expect health boards to do the full level of consultation that they necessarily did. I will address the point that Craig Hoy is making from a cemetery position shortly. That is why I emphasised that we could not do the full consultation or the health boards could not do the full consultation. I do not think that a full eight to 12-week consultation is something that can be done in the midst of a pandemic, given the nature of the rise in cases that we have seen through various different variants at the moment, the Omicron variant. However, members are suggesting that perhaps some consultation could have been done. I think that that is a fair ask. It is a fair request. It is a fair issue for the health board to reflect on. I do not think that anybody, even within the community, would have expected an extended consultation, but they would have expected some discussion to be had with them. Equally, having met NHS Lothian, the chief exec and the chair on a regular basis, I know just how rapidly they have had to make extremely difficult decisions. However, I think that the points when consultation are well made are not ones that I am going to dispute here. If I look to the present day before I look forward, a number of members, Paul MacLennan raised that point in particular well. He raised it with me when I met him and he raised the issue of Eddington hospital a number of months ago with me, the issue of transparency and data. I think that it is again not an unreasonable ask for the local community and for the representatives to ask for transparency in the decision-making process. That is not always as clear as a matrix. We can use matrix on paper, we can use spreadsheets, we can analyse the numbers, but we also have to take into account, as many members have said, the experiences of the local community. Those qualitative experiences can be as important as the quantitative data analysis that we do. The request that many people have made on me in terms of can NHS Lothian release that data as opposed to it being FOI, I certainly will take that issue up with NHS Lothian. I would like to understand the reasons why they are taking that approach, if there are reasons in particular that are reasonable, but if they are not, then I will certainly ask NHS Lothian to engage with full transparency, because the last thing that we need is for people to mistrust NHS Lothian for the intention of why they are doing what they are doing. I think that they have done what they have done for a very good and important reason in this pandemic. The third is the question of the long-term future, which again a number of members, Paul McLean and Craig Hoy, Jackie Baillie and others, asked about. I have said very clearly in written communication that there are no plans to permanently close Earrington hospital. I reiterate that again today. In terms of what services will be available in the long-term future, I hope that members will understand that at this moment, in the midst of the pandemic that we are in, it may be difficult to answer that question. More than happy to hear. Craig Hoy. Just in case he completes his remarks without answering this one ask that was made, he is due to meet with the campaigners at the end of January, which will be after the next review period. I understand that he was in East Lothian recently visiting the community hospital, but he did not inform either Mr Whitfield or myself and he did not inform Mr McLean, who knows was slightly out of joint, I think. Next time he comes, the kettle will be on, the chocolates will be out and we are very happy to meet with him. Could he please just meet that core ask of the campaign groups, which is to meet them before the next review, so that he can get fully appraised of their concerns? I am afraid that the current pressures that I am under dealing with the immediacy of not just the Omicron variant but the booster campaign, of which, of course, the First Minister took a number of questions. Today, his colleague, the Leader of the Opposition, highlighted just how important that booster campaign is. Those are my immediate priorities. Therefore, what is in the diary for a meeting early in the new year, of course, is a date that I will stick to. I hope that he would understand notwithstanding the importance of this issue and I hope that I have reassured him and the community how important the issue is, but notwithstanding that I have some immediate pressures, which, of course, I have to fulfil. However, I will meet him in terms of going to East Lodian. Of course, if he and other regional members—indeed, the constituency member—were not informed, I do, of course, apologise and regret that. As I say, I do plan—and I will conclude in this planning also—to meet Northbury community council. I intend for local members to be there as well. I hope that, at that point, we will have a clearer picture of where we are at. However, given the difficulties that we are facing with Omicron in particular, I am not necessarily envisaging that much will change, but let us see and let the review do the job that it needs to do. I conclude by saying that I understand the importance of this issue to the local community and look forward to meeting them in the new year. Thank you very much indeed, cabinet secretary. That concludes the debate, and I suspend this meeting of Parliament until 2.30.