 The next item of business is consideration of business motion 2933 in the name of George Adam on behalf of the parliamentary bureau setting out revisions to this week's business. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press the request to speak button now or enter R in the chat function. I call on George Adam to move the motion. Thank you minister. No member has asked to speak on the motion. The question is that motion 2933 be agreed. Are we all agreed? Yes. The motion is therefore agreed. The next item of business is topical questions in order to get in as many questions as possible. I'd appreciate short and succinct questions and responses. I call it question number one, Beatrice Wishart. To ask the Scottish Government what action it will take in response to reports of the women's health plan study finding that endometriosis clinical care is failing to beat the base level of care. Minister Marie Todd. I know that the diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis must improve and that's why we've made it a priority in the women's health plan. We're the only country in the UK with a women's health plan. We want to improve access for women to appropriate support, diagnosis and the best possible treatment for endometriosis. That is also the reason why the Scottish Government funded the report from Endometriosis UK. This important research will help us in our goal to make a meaningful difference to women whose lives are blighted by endometriosis. We welcome the four key recommendations in the report and progress is already underway to implement those. The first meeting of the women's health plan implementation programme will take place this month and will ensure progress of the women's health plan is achieved at pace. We'll also publish an implementation plan by spring 22, which will set out more detail around how the actions will be implemented. Beatrice Wishart. I thank the minister for that answer. Endometriosis, as the minister is well aware, is wrecking people's lives right now. Not only is this painful condition damaging people physically, it's also severely affecting mental health. In a position of wanting to work but signed off with this debilitating condition, unable to study or care for family, and people are turning to private care even though they can't afford it, can the minister indicate when surgeries will start again for patients who have had an endo diagnosis? There's work going on across the country to speed up access to surgery. The member will understand the impact that the Covid pandemic has had on all elective surgeries. The elective surgeries aren't those surgeries that people choose to have. The name is slightly misleading. They are those surgeries that are needed but aren't urgent or emergency. There's been an impact on elective surgery right across the board because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but I assure you that surgery has gone on, and it will continue to go on. We have a strong plan in place to recover the NHS post-pandemic, and those women will benefit from that increased level of access to surgical capacity as soon as we can possibly deliver it. Sexism rears its ugly head again in this debate. If the same amount of men were affected by an equivalent painful medical condition, there would not be the lengthy waits and acceptance of pain. What measures will the Scottish Government take to increase public awareness and improve menstrual education in schools? I absolutely don't disagree with the member that there is an aspect of sexism to the way that this illness is treated. That's right across the board with the issues that we raised in the women's health plan. The challenges that women face accessing healthcare and the inequalities that we face. We have got an awful lot of work going on already in endometriosis, so the modernising patient pathways programme for care of endometriosis will improve the way that people work together with primary and secondary care. We're exploring opportunities to partner with Endometriosis UK, who did this piece of research that we're discussing today for us, and others to sponsor projects that will raise awareness and support the diverse needs of people living with the condition. We have recently funded them to help raise awareness for those waiting diagnosis. We've also been working with NHS Inform to ensure that people right across Scotland can find accurate and up-to-date information on endometriosis and on the support that's available to them, and that will be live next month. I'd like to take more questions, if I may, so at this point I'll take Carol Mocken. Endometriosis is a painful and often debilitating condition that requires high standards of care and treatment. Commitments in the women's health plan are, of course, very welcome, but can the minister outline what investment the Scottish Government will be making in endometriosis research? Will she commit to regularly updating this Parliament on the progress, given that we know just how crucial research will be in better understanding the causes that are developing better treatments and ultimately finding a cure for endometriosis? Absolutely, I'm more than happy to keep updating this Parliament. We are committed to commissioning further endometriosis research into the underlying causes, the diagnosis, the prevention, the disease-modifying treatments and the care pathways leading to the development of better treatment and management options and a cure. We want to make sure that we get the balance right so that women can get access to appropriate treatment and care with a working diagnosis, avoiding invasive procedures when they're not required, so that work on the diagnosis will be absolutely key as part of our priorities and research. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that two million calls to police Scotland have gone unanswered since 2018. Cabinet Secretary Keith Brown. As Police Scotland have made clear, they have taken all the necessary steps to protect the critical emergency 999 and non-emergency 101 services throughout the pandemic and have recently issued guidance to the public on the different ways to contact the police for emergencies and for non-emergencies. With a total budget of £1.4 billion in 2022-23, we continue to protect real terms funding for Police Scotland and that supports further investment in our 999 and 101 services through plans to introduce a new digital contact platform, which will further strengthen the capabilities in this area. Jamie Greene. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. Last year, I raised the issue of one-on-one calls to the police being abandoned in light of the awful tragedy of the Lamarra bell case. The cabinet secretary assured me back then that the Government was, I quote, looking to learn lessons from such a failure, but last year more calls to 101 were abandoned than were answered by staggering half a million calls in just one year. Since 2018, nearly two million calls were abandoned after a two-minute wait. The current waiting time is averaging nearly four minutes. What lessons have been learned in light of the latest and shocking statistics? I mentioned in a previous answer to Jamie Greene about the digital platform that Police Scotland is seeking to take forward. It is worth understanding why some of the calls are abandoned and those are the reasons that have been given by the police, who also last year introduced a range of measures to boost both the services. They receive more than three million public contacts each year, and the officers and staff continue to prioritise 999 as they should do emergency calls. Although they prioritise them through the coronavirus pandemic, we have maintained the 101 service despite high levels of absence and restrictions due to physical distancing. Many of the discontinued calls, which I refer to, will be cases in which callers have been instructed to hang up in dial 999, or they have decided to redial and select another option from a pre-recorded menu. They have opted to contact them sometimes through the website, or they have realised that they should be calling another agency. In addition, a significant number of both 999 and 101 calls are mistyled. Callers realise that and hang up. Therefore, there are improvements in training. I have mentioned the digital platform. Of course, it is right that they should improve. We will be keeping an eye on that. It is an operational responsibility for the police through the SPA. Our responsibility is to make sure that the police are funded to make those improvements, and we are doing just that. It is right that there are a number of reasons why callers hang up, but there are clearly some people who hang up because their call has simply not been answered. That is an indication of staffing problems and staffing levels in the call handling system. There is clearly a police who has been struggling to meet the demand over the last two years, so it begs the question of what additional resource was promised or, indeed, given to them by the Government to deal with those inevitable staffing pressures. It only takes one missed call, cabinet secretary, for a tragedy to occur. We know that. We have learned that the hard way. This year's draft budget offers Police Scotland a £45.5 million capital budget. That is essentially a real-terms year-in-year cut. It is far, far short of what they themselves say is needed for vital IT and infrastructure upgrades. Is it really worth risking another tragedy? Why are police simply not being given what they ask for and, judging by those statistics, what they clearly need? It is worth putting some context behind the figures that Jamie Greene has mentioned. First of all, the independent Scottish Fiscal Commission state that the Scottish budget has reduced in real terms this year by 5.2 per cent. The Scottish budget is reduced by 5.2 per cent. We have increased the budget to the police by over 3 per cent to £1.4 billion, as I mentioned. We have maintained the capital programme where there are further cuts from Westminster. It is simply not enough to simply say that you want more money spent on education, on justice and on environment right across the board without identifying where that money comes from. You know that the Government that is used to supporting Westminster is cutting the funding to this Government. We have got to make those difficult choices. I am very pleased that, despite that grim background from Westminster, we have increased funding in terms of the resource budget for the police. We have allowed them to have an increase in salary, which has not happened down south. We have also maintained their capital budget, so we are taking the action necessary to ensure that those services are maintained. The 2022-23 budget maintains the Scottish Government commitment to protect the police resource budget, improve service delivery and enhance safety and security in communities across Scotland. The Scottish Government has exceeded, for example, the Conservative demand for an additional £62 million for justice, as we will invest an additional £188 million in 2022-23. Remember, there is no money for Covid recovery from the UK Government. We have got to find that money from our current budgets, and the justice budget has benefited from the work of the Cabinet Secretary for Finance in this regard. The policing budget is almost £1.4 billion in the coming year. We have maintained the Police Scotland's capital budget, which stands at £45.5 million, more than double what it was in 2017-18. All that will support continued investment in police estate, fleet, specialist equipment and ICT, ensuring that officers, as the member suggests, have the tools that they need to do their jobs effectively and spend more time in their communities.