 The next item of business is Topical Questions, and in order to get as many members in as possible, it would be helpful to have short and succinct questions and answers to match. I call question number one, Neil Bibby. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that decisions about the procurement of vessels 801 and 802 were rushed for political purposes. It is entirely wrong to suggest that the contract award was rushed for political reasons. The timetable does not support that notion, given that Ferguson's was publicly announced as the preferred bidder in August. Secondly, the contract was awarded in line with all of the procurement rules and practices in the normal way, as the Audit Scotland report confirms. Thirdly, contrary to what Jim McCall said this morning on the BBC, it was the chief executive of CMAL and Jim McCall himself who signed the contract. There's a man with a clear interest in shifting the blame on others when the root cause ultimately to the delays of these important vessels was the construction under FML. Neil Bibby. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. Yesterday the First Minister said she had no hesitation in answering any and all questions. I believe that Parliament must hear from the First Minister in detail this week. In the First Minister's absence, is Kate Forbes able to confirm whether the award of this contract, without a full refund guarantee, was discussed and agreed by the cabinet, if so were they made aware of CMAL's concerns? Or, if not, is the Scottish Government's position that the decision to ignore CMAL was made by Derek Mackay and Derek Mackay alone? There has been a debate on the subject, there has been a statement on the subject, I am answering questions on the subject and I have answered press queries on this subject. In terms of scrutiny, I think that the member will find that there has been significant scrutiny. In terms of the procurement process, as I said in my first answer, the procurement process was undertaken in good faith following appropriate due diligence. There were no concerns raised at the point of announcing the preferred bidder in August 2015. That is why the preferred bidder was announced, based on the advice of CMAL, FML clearly scoring the highest score overall. When concerns were raised, mitigations were put in place, that is all very well documented in the Audit Scotland report. That did not answer the question that I asked. It failed to answer the question that I asked. I think that it is evident that only the First Minister can clear up the questions about what has went wrong here and who was involved when. We need honesty and openness about this. We cannot afford secrecy and cover-up because taxpayers in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis are paying for the costs of this Government's failure. Audit Scotland has pointed to our lack of information about the decision-making process. That is very serious indeed. In order for the Audit Committee to do the job that it must now do, every piece of relevant information now needs to be published, including communications between ministers, special advisers, accountable officers and Government agencies regarding the award of this contract. Can Cape Forbes at least confirm today that this will happen? Cape Forbes has said today that there was no rush and no politics. I do not think that anyone thinks that that is credible. I can go further than that. It has already happened that there are reams of paperwork that has been published publicly available on the Scottish Government website. The fact is that the evidence about the lack of a full refund guarantee has been in the public domain since 2019, but it has taken Neil Bibby three years to come across that fact. If the member is serious about learning the lessons, if he is serious about analysis and facts, I would suggest that he goes back to the parliamentary inquiry as well as the Audit Scotland report to look at the facts. In terms of the First Minister, the First Minister stood here last week taking full responsibility for the decisions. We abide by collective responsibility, we have been open, we have been honest, we recognise where things have gone wrong, we are learning the lessons for the future and if the member would like to look at the facts, it is all publicly available. There are a number of members seeking to ask a supplementary, I will try to take as many as possible, but could I just suggest that if I am to do so it would perhaps be courteous if questions could be asked and then answers listened to. Audit Scotland report highlighted that the yard was being placed into liquidation and the only option was for the Scottish Government to step in and save it. No opposition to MSP has yet indicated whether they would have stepped in or let the yard go into liquidation. They are losing their jobs, shutting the yard and the vessels would have been finished elsewhere. However, I think that we must all agree on the importance of those vessels and that they must be in service as soon as possible so that it is vital that the Parliament remains abreast or progress at the yard. Can the cabinet secretary provide any further detail regarding how Parliament will continue to be updated going forward? The full Parliament will continue to be updated. The chief executive of Ferguson Marine provides a net zero energy and transport committee with a quarterly update and writes to inform the committee if additional issues arise. The system works well as proven by the most recent updates around the legacy cable issues. I am also in discussion with the chair and chief executive on an almost fortnightly basis about what further performance information should be made public on a more regular basis. Ultimately, I agree with Stuart McMillan, we need to make progress on those vessels, we need to learn the lesson but at the bottom line is if we were to pull the plug then it throws the vessels into jeopardy as well as the yard. Jim McColl will be surprised to hear that he has been accused of shifting the blame today. We need some straight answers to straight questions here. Was it Keith Brown who approved the contracts for the ferries? Why was the advice from Seymal not to go ahead ignored? Given that Jim McColl has said today that he would not have been preceded had he known of those concerns, should he not have told him? On the contrary to public statements that were made this morning, FML were crystal clear about the concerns that were raised about their inability to provide the required full refund guarantee. If you read the Audit Scotland report and I go back to the point that we like facts in this debate, the Audit Scotland report refers to the fact that when the announcement was made about the preferred bidder in the August, no concerns were raised. A number of weeks later concerns were flagged about the required refund guarantee. At that point, FML would have been fully involved in the discussions around the mitigations that were required because there was not a full refund guarantee in place. Audit Scotland has covered in detail the mitigations that were pursued as a result, including around the schedule of payments. At the point of the announcement in August, no concerns were raised that were signed off and, ultimately, Seymal and Mr McColl signed off on the contract. Is there a ministerial direction on the agreement of this ferry contract? Seymal and Mr McColl on behalf of FML signed the contract. The First Minister has repeatedly claimed that Audit Scotland found nothing untoward in the procurement of the contract. That is not true, is it? Audit Scotland said that the failure in the procurement process to provide a full refund guarantee and a lack of milestones when the international standard was not followed. The First Minister is just wrong. The procurement process was flawed and that led to the loss of millions of pounds and a five-year delay. Will the finance secretary put the record straight and agree to a public inquiry? I will go further right now and just quote the Audit Scotland report. The quote states that the high-level review into Seymal's procurement procedure found no material issues with the procurement. As I have set out already in terms of the timetable, when the preferred bidder was announced in the August, concerns had not been flagged. A number of weeks later, when concerns were flagged about the full refund guarantee, there were discussions about mitigations put in place. The procurement process is independent of ministerial intervention. That is a well-known and well-established fact when it comes to procurement processes. As the member has said, it followed an internationally recognised standard. Given that the yard is owned by the Scottish public, how many non-Seymal orders for shipbuilding is the yard currently actively engaged in, bidding for or likely to secure? If it becomes obvious that the future of the yard and its workforce is best served by returning it to the commercial sector, as the Government wants to do with Presswick Airport, is that something that the Government would be willing to do? The member is right to flag this point. Obviously, although concern and focus is on securing the two vessels, since the yard was nationalised, it has completed three other vessels. The yard is progressing with work. I say that point because I think that morale at the yard among the workers needs to be protected as far as possible considering the public debates. In terms of the yard pursuing other work opportunities, it is actively engaged in a number of commercial opportunities. Obviously, those need to progress, and time-tabling is key because it is at the point at which the 2801 and 802 are completed that it would be looking to pursue other work opportunities. If the contract had not been awarded at the time, it is highly likely that the shipyard would not have survived. I agree with the STUC's Ross Friar that the Scottish Government was 100 per cent correct to intervene, but she was also clear that we must not let the current issues distract from the need to build capacity in future orders. Can the cabinet secretary outline how the Scottish Government will work with the yard to improve its competitiveness and win new contracts? I welcome the member's support for the yard and echo those sentiments. I have set out priorities for the yard's management to finish building the two ferries currently under construction and to get the yard into shape to compete for new work. The best way to secure the yard's future order book is to make the yard as efficient, as competitive as possible and to win contracts on merit. We engage regularly with the new chief executive and a shareholder to continue to support the yard in achieving their goals in any way that we can. That is what Audit Scotland recommended in its report to focus on completing the vessels and turning the yard around. To ask the Scottish Government what urgent action it will undertake to resolve waiting-time delays in A and E following recent reported estimates from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine that the delays had contributed to 240 avoidable deaths this year. We have always recognised the relationship between long waits in A and E and increased harm, of which we remain committed to delivering improved A and E performance. However, there is simply no doubt that the pressures of the pandemic are clearly impacting on said performance. We have a range of actions under way to help to reduce pressure in A and E and maximise capacity, including our record, £300 million of new investment to help the service deal with system pressures over the winter, our £1 billion NHS recovery plan, which aims to drive the recovery of the NHS. To reduce long waits is to improve flow by reducing occupancy levels. We are delivering this capacity through a range of actions, including our enhanced hospital at home service and by avoiding admissions and shortening the length of stay. Ultimately, the single most important factor in easing A and E pressure is controlling Covid transmission. Finally, we will continue to work collaboratively with the RCEM to understand how we can improve long delays in patient care. I am very grateful to the cabinet secretary for that reply, but I am afraid that it is just not good enough. We learned today that waiting times are the very worst on record. Official statistics for the weekend in March 20 shows 2,615 patients waited more than eight hours to be seen and over 1,000 waited more than 12. Under this Government, this crisis has rumbled on for years. This is not just about Covid, with no respite for staff and no redress for patients. We continue to see the mishandling of this crisis by ministers plum new depths. It is clear for all to see that they have simply lost control of the situation. My party has long been calling for an inquiry into avoidable deaths caused by waits in emergency care. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that we now need one urgently? I want to say to Alex Cole-Hamilton that he makes a passing, almost a fleeting reference to the pandemic, but I do not think that anybody can suggest that it is anything other than the pressures of the pandemic that are causing the significant drop in A and E performance that we have seen. We are just not comparable to the figures that we had pre-pandemic. That is true of the current figures that we have. We are seeing the highest level of infection, record numbers on our hospitals with Covid, and on top of that, huge numbers of staff absences because of those who are testing positive due to Covid. In fact, they have doubled over the last four weeks. Those cumulative pressures are undoubtedly causing that dip in A and E performance. We will take action where we can. Today, of course, the Scottish Ambulance Service has announced a record recruitment in a single year—514-year recruits in a single year, which is positive. We will continue to invest in his questions. He knows that there is a public inquiry in relation to Covid, and it will be up to the chair of that inquiry to look at whatever issues she sees fit in this regard. One of the first questions that I ever asked in the chamber of his predecessor was about exactly this ambulance waiting times. For the cabinet secretary to dismiss this as being an aberration caused by Covid does a disservice to staff and to patients. 15 years of SNP mismanagement of our healthcare system, and we have reached a new low. So many staff are at breaking point, suffering from severe burnout and even trauma in some cases. Just a few months ago, an FOI submitted by the Scottish Liberal Democrats revealed that staff absences within the Scottish Ambulance Service alone shot up by 300 per cent. Due to workforce planning and a lack of vision and relief from the SNP, some are even considering leaving the workforce altogether. The SNP Green Government voted down our party's call for a staff burnout prevention strategy and dismissed calls for a staff and staff. Time is moving on to the detriment of other members who also want to shot. What is he waiting for? Nobody is waiting. That is why we have invested £300 million in our NHS to cope with those winter pressures. That is why we have invested in the recruitment of 1,000 healthcare support workers. That is why we have invested additional monies in the Scottish Ambulance Service, who now have recruited record numbers over the last financial year. Nobody is waiting around. Where there are good ideas for members of the Opposition, I promise them that I will engage with them. Instead of a burnout strategy, instead of a bit of paper lying on the shelf, we are investing £12 million in staff wellbeing. We are taking action. In 15 years of the SNP, I remind Alex Cole-Hamilton that, for the fourth time, the people of Scotland have voted for my party to ensure that we have stewardship over the NHS while he languishes in the Opposition. Behind those truly shocking statistics are real people. People like those waiting at the REH in Paisley, in my region that the cabinet secretary visited a few weeks ago. Did the cabinet secretary listen to what staff told him about the pressures that they are facing? Did he bother to talk to patients in Paisley who could have told him about waiting for hours, often in pain, in the back of an ambulance? Did he listen to Dr John Thomson, vice-president of the RCEM in Scotland, who said, and I quote, The rhetoric of it's bad, but we're not as bad as elsewhere, is no longer applicable. When will the cabinet secretary accept that people across the country are fed up of excuses? Indeed, pre-pandemic A&E targets have not been met for two years, and when will he accept that people want an NHS that works? Not one where over a thousand patients are waiting 12 hours to be seen in A&E. In all the questions that he asked, I met staff at the REH. Of course, I've spoken to patients up and down the country. I'm somebody who uses the health service and my family use the health service ourselves. I should say that I'm grateful to every single member of our NHS and social care for the incredible heroic efforts that they've shown over the course of the pandemic. I would say to Paul O'Kane that nobody is suggesting—neither me, nor when the First Minister has stood at First Minister's Questions—nobody has denied the fact that there were issues and challenges pre-pandemic. I would hope that Paul O'Kane would recognise the reason for the scale of the challenge. The reason that we're seeing this level of pressure is because of the pressures of the pandemic. You cannot have record levels of infection, record levels of hospital occupancy with Covid, high numbers of staff absences due to Covid and think that that is not having a severe impact. Those last two years have frankly been the most difficult of the NHS's almost 74-year existence. We will continue to invest in the health service and of course our record investment of £18 billion is well known. I will continue to engage with the RCM on its final point with Dr John Thomson, as I have done during the course of my time as health secretary. Cabinet Secretary, we've heard that new statistics this week revealed the worst A&E waiting times on record. Almost two in five not seen within four hours, while shamefully over 1,000 people spent more than 12 hours in A&E department. It's tragic but abundantly clear that hundreds more people will die in A&E if the SNP Government do not wake up and smell the coffee. Have the families of those who have died in preventable circumstances been informed of the reason their loved one has died? What urgent action is the SNP Government taking to curb and eliminate all and every unavoidable death in our NHS? Of course, whenever any patient passes away, there are detailed notes that are passed on to family next of kin of why that individual has sadly passed on. Of course, where that can, for example, I know there have been cases that have been raised where communication could have been better on that front, then I expect health boards to ensure that there is appropriate communication in that respect. I understand, of course, the important job of opposition to scrutinise and ask questions on this front, and I'm happy to continue to keep answering those questions. What I would say is that there are no easy solutions, no easy answers to this. The single biggest thing that we can do is control Covid transmission. That is the single biggest thing to help us to ease some of the A&E pressures that we're facing. If I had listened to the Conservatives about lifting of regulations and lifting of protective measures, then I think that the situation would be far worse than it is at the moment. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. This unprecedented pressure will have undoubtedly added a further burden to an already tired workforce, both in A&E and in GP out of hours. Reports of deaths due to A&E waits will have been really hard reading for staff who have been under pressure for quite some time. Given that further pressure, what further measures can the Scottish Government take to support this vital workforce? I think that ensuring that our staff are well treated and well taken care of both in terms of their mental well being in a reference of the investment that we've made in that regard. Ensuring that they are well paid and they are, of course, the best paid in the entire UK. Ensuring that we are growing that workforce as per our national workforce strategy that was recently launched means that, of course, as we recover and we build, we will be vital to that recovery effort. The conversations that we have and have been having for many months with health boards up and down the country are that we know that this will not be the last wave of Covid that we will experience, unfortunately. It is therefore vital for us to do our best to try to insulate unscheduled care and planned care from future shops. We hope to be announcing some changes to IPC guidance in the very near future.