 I will return to the member momentarily before we move on to the next item of business. I wish to address an issue that occurred at the equality, human rights and civil justice committee this morning, which members may be aware of and which members have raised with me. At that meeting, a visitor to the public gallery was asked to remove a purple, green and white scarf. Having declined to do so, the visitor was informed that she would not be able to return to the gallery. This request was made by officials in connection with the Parliament's code of conduct for visitors, which sets out that the display of banners, flags or political slogans, including on clothing and accessories, is forbidden. Let me make one thing crystal clear. Suffrage colours are not and never have been banned at the Scottish Parliament. We actively support and promote universal suffrage in a number of ways at Holyrood and we will continue to do so. I would like to advise the chamber that the action taken this morning was not prompted by any members of the committee. The action taken was an error and I would like to apologise on behalf of the Parliament. The wearing of a scarf in those colours does not in itself breach the visitor code of conduct. The Parliament wishes people to engage with the democratic process, including observing elected representatives' debate and to make the law of the country. Rachael Hamilton. I thank the Presiding Officer for making it clear that no breach had occurred within the Equalities Committee this morning. I had planned to make a point of order regarding this particular issue. I think that it is important that you have confirmed that MSPs are treated exactly the same way as the members of the public and the suffrage colours were not in breach of the guidelines set by this Parliament. I thank you for your intervention and for sharing that with Parliament and being clear regarding that. I seek your guidance on comments on the Minister for Higher Education, Further Education, Youth Employment and Training, Jamie Hepburn MSP, made in this chamber which do not appear to have any resemblance to accuracy. On 27 October in this chamber Mr Hepburn said, There is no freeze on apprenticeships this year. There are still many places available to be taken up in the contracts that have been awarded and they should be fulfilled. Let us be clear, he said. There is no freeze on apprenticeship places this year. Training providers have been in contact with many of us in this chamber to make it clear that they have been told something very different by Skills Development Scotland. At the start of the financial year, training providers were told that they could utilise the process for requesting additional starts as long as they met their key performance indicators, as has been the standard practice in many previous years. However, last month, despite meeting all their key performance indicators, training providers were told that, as a result of John Swinney's announcements, Skills Development Scotland were unable to process any further requests for additional volume or value to provide modern apprenticeship qualifications. That removes the ability of the training providers to respond to the training needs of our businesses and provide opportunities for our young people. The practice has always been that training providers can apply for additional places halfway through the year to allow flexibility in the labour market. They had received assurances to the effect that that would continue. I know that Mr Hepburn has received the same correspondence that I and many other members have received from training providers. The normal practice has ended, and the number of places on apprenticeships has frozen, yet Mr Hepburn said that there was no freeze on apprenticeships. That feels more than a little misleading. What options exist for members to have Mr Hepburn come to the chamber to explain what he meant by, there is no freeze on apprenticeships this year, when there clearly is a freeze on apprenticeships. If he has inadvertently misled Parliament, he should put the record straight. What sanctions exist? If there has been a change since the minister spoke just a few days ago in relative terms, would it not be normal practice for the minister to come to Parliament and inform Parliament? I thank Mr Kerr for his point of order. It is of paramount importance that members, including ministers, give accurate information to the Parliament, correcting any inadvertent errors at the earliest opportunity. If any member has a question about the factual accuracy of another member's contribution, they should raise it with that member. I am sure that all members here are aware that the Parliament has a corrections procedure and how that mechanism operates. I have not received a request to make a statement. If a member considers that a statement should be made, they should raise that directly with the relevant member. If a request to make a statement was received, I would notify the Parliamentary Bureau so that time could be scheduled set aside. The points that I am making reflect the procedures and the practices that have been agreed by this Parliament, but if anyone considers that they should be revised, they can raise that matter with the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. We will now move on to the next item of business, which is topical questions. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that its claim that Scotland has 25 per cent of Europe's offshore wind potential lacks evidence and that it knew there was no basis for it. Minister Lorna Slater. The figure relating to Scotland having 25 per cent of Europe's offshore wind potential was first set out back in a 2010 publication. It is now out of date. However, this does not change the fact that Scotland already has an important offshore wind sector and we have huge potential to grow this and become a global leader with over 40 gigawatts of potential offshore wind developments already in the pipeline. I thank the minister for that answer, but I'm afraid the minister has completely missed a point. Presiding Officer, everyone wants the renewables industry to succeed, but this will not be achieved by ministers putting out dodgy data. Only a couple of weeks ago, I made a point of order, as the First Minister had misrepresented Scotland's energy consumption from renewables. Instead of doing the honourable thing and publicly admitting her mistake, she quietly amended the official record. It seems that the misrepresentation and misuse of data might be endemic within this Government. The civil service apparently knew the data was not true several years ago. When did ministers first become aware that what they were using or that they were using a figure that, to quote Scottish Government officials, hadn't been properly sourced? Minister became aware of the issue on Tuesday, 8 November, ahead of the publication of the report by these islands. What does not change about the statistic is the amount of renewable energy potential that Scotland has, which is still significant and is part of our future energy provision in Scotland now and as an independent country, with over 40 gigawatts. That is in the pipeline already, presuming planning decisions and finding a route to market, which is the equivalent of producing enough electricity to power every home in Scotland for 17 years. Once again, she has completely missed the point that the claim was that Scotland has 25 per cent of the potential, and the bogus statistic, which civil servants and ministers knew was wrong, has been repeated ad nauseam. The chamber has heard it, either here or in the course of their duties, from First Minister Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister Swinney, Minister Todd, Minister Macpherson, Minister Robertson, Minister Matheson and Minister Slater. Minister, the ministerial code at section 1.3c says that it is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to the Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead the Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the First Minister. As the Presiding Officer just asked us to do, what action is the minister taking to ensure that the ministerial code is always complied with? Scottish ministers understood that the statistic was accurate at the time that they cited it. Now that it has come to our attention that it is not, we are working to update statistics on how our offshore wind potential compares to other countries. We will update Parliament once this is done, and at that point we will consider how any legacy documents may need to be updated. The key point is that Scotland's enormous potential for offshore wind has not changed. In fact, we have made big progress in recent years, with, as I have said, 40 gigawatts now in the pipeline. We know that the claim that Scotland had 25 per cent of Europe's offshore wind was always untrue, just as the claim that nearly 100 per cent of the electricity that we consume comes from renewables is not true. Let's turn to another figure. The Scottish Government promised that there would be 120,000 renewable jobs per year by 2020. Was that target reached? Is that still the target? Just how many of those supply chain jobs from the off-shoreing of the Scotland leases will be created in Scottish businesses, not foreign-owned businesses? We are, of course, all keen to ensure that the development of the offshore wind industry benefits Scotland's businesses and our economy. Initial supply chain commitments around Scotland indicate an average of £1.4 billion of investment in Scotland per project, which equates to £28 billion of investment across the 20 projects. I hope that all of us here are here in order not to play politics about the past but to propel progress in future. To that end, can I reflect that, when I was energy minister, one of the most frustrating experiences was that it could take 12 years to get consents for, say, a wind farm onshore, which it took 12 months to construct? Therefore, can I make the suggestion to the minister that the Scottish Government review the processes for obtaining permissions, licences and consents, for on and offshore developments and subsea cables, and particularly grid connections, with the view to simplifying, shortening and streamlining them, and that the Scottish Government should, in order to achieve success throughout these islands, engage with the UK Government in order to try to identify those issues? One lead body that can guide this process. Otherwise, I fear that many of the projects that we all wish to see may be thwarted and jeopardised through delay. I thank the member for his question. However, it does not bear relation to the substantive question on the paper. Therefore, I will ask that the minister does not respond. I go to Liam McArthur. Thank you. Now that the Scottish Government has admitted to cooking the books, something that did the renewable sector no favours, does the minister believe that it is advisable for SNP MPs to double down on the statistic that has been admitted to be not true in the House of Commons earlier on this afternoon? Does she not believe that this will simply spread further fake news about the state of the sector? I welcome, of course, my Liberal Democrats colleagues' new-found interest in statistical rigor, which I am sure he will bring to any future election materials as well. I repeat that Scottish ministers understood that the statistic was accurate at the time that they cited it. Now that it has come to our attention that it is not, we are working to update the statistics on how our offshore wind potential compares to other countries. What has not changed is that potential, merely how we report it in comparison to other countries, which we will update in due course. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to Baroness Helena Kennedy's final report of the independent commission of inquiry into asylum provision in Scotland published on Friday, which highlights avoidable failings in the provision of care to new Scots during the Covid-19 pandemic. I thank Baroness Kennedy and the Asylum Inquiry Scotland for its work. The inquiry report is a shocking indictment of the UK's broken asylum system. It highlights the need for fundamental change so that the UK upholds its responsibility to recognise and protect people who have been forced to flee persecution and treats them with compassion, dignity and human decency at all times. The Scottish Government will respond to the inquiry report and the social justice cabinet secretary has written to the Home Secretary seeking an urgent meeting to discuss the inquiry's findings in the asylum system. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. Of course, the tragic death of Badreddon Abdullah Adam and the injuries he caused to others were preventable. He had called the Home Office and two of their contractors 72 times seeking help. The use of institutional accommodation such as hotels is clearly not enabling the right support to get to people in a timely way. What more can the Scottish Government do while people are here to ensure that vulnerable adults and children, including survivors of trafficking, are not left in grossly inadequate institutional style accommodation for indefinite periods of time without the vital specialist mental health support they need? I thank Maggie Chapman for her follow-up question. As she knows, asylum is a matter reserved to the UK Parliament. The UK Home Office is responsible for the provision of asylum accommodation and support to people awaiting a decision on their asylum application. People seeking asylum should be accommodated within communities with access to the support and services that they need to rebuild their lives. The Scottish Government will continue to raise concerns and press for improvements to the UK asylum system. It is clear that, here in Scotland, we are trying to do better than appears to be the case south of the border. The hostile environment rhetoric of invasions and deportation flights to Rwanda is not replicated by our Government. But there is still more to do and things we can do here. Helena Kennedy's inquiry report has some clear recommendations for Scotland to act upon. Will the cabinet secretary and perhaps even the First Minister agree to meet refugees for justice, the survivors of the park in tragedy and Baroness Kennedy to discuss immediate actions and future strategies that will better secure the rights of refugees? The Social Justice Cabinet Secretary met with Baroness Kennedy last week and has also previously met with representatives of refugees for justice. The Scottish Government and our partners at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Refugee Council are preparing to undertake engagement to inform the refresh of our new Scots refugee integration strategy, which we intend to publish next year. At the new Scots national conference last Friday, we asked people with lived experience and support services how we can enable people, communities and organisations to participate in engagement to shape that strategy. The new Scots refugee integration strategy will continue to set out our partnership-led approach to supporting refugees, seeking asylum and our communities from day 1 of arrival. To see for Glasgow Kelvin where those unfortunate tragedies that were avoidable referred to by the commission took place, I was also able to attend the launch of the final report last Friday at Merchant's House. I asked the Scottish Government if it will join me in pursuing recommendation 6 that calls on asylum accommodation support and care providers that they should immediately ring fence a fund of £5 million per month. To our anum for asylum seeker wellbeing, mental, emotional, health, support and trauma, there should be no profiteering from pain. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me on that? By commending co-cab assured as the constituency member of the Scottish Parliament for her dogged pursuit of justice in this question. Just to reiterate the point, the Scottish Government is still to respond to the inquiry and will do that in good time, but I will make sure that my cabinet secretary colleague who has ministerial responsibility for this area looks very closely at the points that she makes. If not in that inquiry response that she writes to the member to update her on the position of the Scottish Government and the priorities that she is calling to her attention. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that nursing staff at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital in Glasgow are routinely left in charge of up to 30 patients and are forced to conduct 5am bed washes due to staff shortages. Cabinet secretary, Humza Yousaf. The Scottish Government expects health boards ensure that at all times there are sufficiently suitable qualified staff to support the provision of high quality care. This includes reviewing staffing levels daily with decisions regarding real time staffing being made right throughout the day. It is my understanding that Greater Glasgow and Clyde does not ask nursing staff to carry out any non-essential care for patients in the night time hours or indeed in the early morning. This is not their policy and that remains the case. The board also supplements wards with healthcare support workers to ensure that tasks can be supported at appropriate times as part of that wider care team. The cabinet secretary will be well aware of the wider problems facing our national health service. Spiralling waiting times, missed targets and indeed impending strike action due to the low pay have been routinely discussed in the chamber and our common knowledge. Just last week, a whistleblower contacted me to express their grave concerns about the conditions that nurses and patients are facing at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. They explained that nurses are, and I quote, frequently left in charge of up to 30 patients and how they are being forced, despite raising those concerns with management, to conduct deeply inhumane 5am bed washes of vulnerable patients due to severe understaffing. Was the cabinet secretary aware of that prior to the press reports on Sunday, and if he was, does he think that either scenario here is acceptable? I say to Paul Swinley that I am aware and the Government is aware of the extreme pressures right across our acute sites, including the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. Having heard the allegations that have been made, we saw immediate assurance from Greater Glasgow and Clyde who are saying to us, and I will repeat what they have said, that the policy remains, of course, that they do not ask nurses to carry out any non-essential care for patients that includes bed washes during the night or early morning. That is not the policy now. That being said, clearly, if Paul Swinley has details of these allegations, I am happy to speak to him, happy to speak to the whistleblower, indeed, off-table in a confidential space. I should also say that whistleblowing is important. I have met the whistleblowing champion in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Charles Vincent and reiterated to him the importance that I attached to whistleblowing. If those issues have been raised to senior management and have not been rectified, that would give me concern. However, as I said, I have sought those assurances from Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and they have told me that that is not routine practice. Paul Swinley, I appreciate that the cabinet secretary might have been unaware prior to the press reports of that practice, but I would urge him to investigate this further. I welcome his offer to meet me and potentially with the whistleblower should they be interested in doing so. Since the publication of that story in the Sunday Times, current and former NHS staff have contacted me to say that this practice has been on-going for years and is not exclusive to the Queen Elizabeth University hospital, the reality is that nurse staffing levels across Scotland's health and social care services are dangerously low and patient care is suffering as a result. That is not my words. Those are the words of the director of the Royal College of Nursing in Scotland, Colin Pullman. The cabinet secretary, while acknowledging that this is an immediate issue that requires investigation, except with some humility, the decisions that his Government has taken over the last 14 years in power have resulted in staff being demoralised and overstretched to the point of industrial action. I have left us with a system in our health service where staffing levels are so low that staff are being forced to conduct those inhumane practices despite the fact that it risks impeding a patient's recovery. I say that if you look over the course of the last 10 years, we have seen nursing admit with free student intake numbers increase consecutively over that decade. In fact, they are almost double over that decade. In terms of staffing and nursing staffing in particular in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, I would acknowledge that staffing has been a problem and continues to be an issue. That is why I was really pleased to see that in Greater Glasgow and Clyde nearly 600 newly qualified nurses and midwives were welcomed to the health board and started their jobs in the last few weeks. That has helped to reduce that vacancy level. We have the highest record levels of staffing in the NHS under this Government best paid staff, of course, anywhere in comparison to the UK. I would say to Paul Sweeney that nobody, certainly not myself or anybody else in the Government, is complacent about those staffing challenges that exist. That is why I will get back around the table, as you would expect with our trade unions and our staff side representatives, to make sure that we can do everything in our power to avoid strike action, which I know would be catastrophic for the NHS in the course of this winter. Nurses are doing their best in trying to deliver care at the Queen Elizabeth University hospital, but they are breaking point with overtime up and the Scottish Government is responsible. The Scottish Government does not have their backs and any semblance of trust that Cabinet Secretary had has been evaporated from staff and patients. Working conditions in the NHS are so bad that 70 per cent of nurses felt their last shift was compromised, patient care and was unsafe. With an NHS winter crisis fast approaching, this seems unlikely to improve. My question is what specific action will the Cabinet Secretary announce today, an action not a willy announcement, that he can guarantee will improve the working condition of nurses and thus patient safety, which was woeful before Covid with record 6,000 vacancies. I would reiterate that I do not have any complacency in that there is a Government around the challenges that are facing our NHS staff. That is a problem that is faced by health services right across the UK, but it is worth noting that we have more qualified nurses and midwives per thousand of the population In England, for example, we have 8.3 qualified nurses and midwives here in Scotland compared to six in England. We also have higher staffing per head than other parts of the UK. Notwithstanding that, the rate of vacancies is too high. That is why I stood in this chamber a number of weeks ago and committed additional funding towards international recruitment of 750 overseas nurses, midwives and AAHPs. I would say to Senator Scohani that, if he had any influence whatsoever, it would be better if he was demanding that his party provide additional funding to the Scottish Government because, due to their economic incompetence, my budget is worth £650 million less. Emma Harper The NHS across the four nations faces recruitment challenges in the current climate in attracting people with the right skills from outwith the UK. Does the health secretary agree that comments such as those of Mr Sweeney's UK leader, Keir Starmer, do not reflect the welcome and nature of Scotland's NHS and that Brexit, which Labour now clearly backs, is a further barrier to recruitment in our NHS? I would say that, in fairness, knowing Paul Sweeney and Scottish Labour, I do not think that those remarks from Keir Starmer reflect their position. I know from having spoken to many Scottish Labour members that they are pro-immigration. That is why I think that they would share my disappointment and Emma Harper's disappointment about Keir Starmer's very divisive rhetoric. There are three elements to helping our staffing crisis. One is increasing the pipeline of graduates, and I have spoken about that already. The second is domestic recruitment. The third prong, which is really important, is overseas recruitment. I want to make it clear from my behalf, from behalf of the Scottish Government, that if you are an overseas worker working at NHS, your contribution is greatly valued. That concludes topical questions. There will be a brief pause before we begin the next item of business.