 Thank you, our next item of business is topical questions. We start with number one from Alex Cole-Hamilton. To ask the Scottish Government what its responses to claims that staff at the Queen Elizabeth University hospital are incredibly stressed and that the hospital is very short staffed. Cabinet Secretary, Shona Robison. I want to pay tribute to the unstinting professionalism and dedication exhibited by the staff at the Queen Elizabeth University hospital in Glasgow, as seen in last night's BBC documentary. All NHS boards, including NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, have a statutory responsibility to carry out and actively monitor workforce planning. That ensures that high-quality services continue to be delivered safely while boards remain responsive to the needs of staff, at least through effective partnerships with their professional and union representatives. Under the Government, the number of staff in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is up 3.7 per cent to 34,385 whole-time equivalent, with consultants up 38.4 per cent and qualified nurses and midwives up by 5.5 per cent. Although the number of doctors and nurses is up, I recognise that there is increasing demand on services, which, of course, has an impact on staff. That is why it is so important for health boards to continuously improve their workforce planning, and this Government is providing them with the tools to do so. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer and absolutely share her sentiment about the staff. Watching the BBC documentary last night, the dedication of those staff absolutely shone through. You couldn't fail to be impressed by their expertise and the care that they provide, and the facilities are evidently first-class. However, the Royal College of Nurses has said that the pressure that staff are under because there are too few of them makes it, in their words, really hard to deliver care. It added that there is real strain on services. So can the cabinet secretary tell the staff and patients at the Queen Elizabeth when they will see a material improvement and what plans there are to increase the number of staff at that hospital specifically? Of course, I did see the RCN's comments. We engage very closely with the RCN at a national level, and we would expect Greater Glasgow and Clyde to engage with the RCN at a local level as well. In terms of making sure that there are appropriate staffing levels, they are reviewed at the hospital's daily safety huddle, where staff are absence or post or vacant. Additional staff are sought, and it is very important that that happens. The board has also assured me that the whole regular meeting with the staff-side partners to ensure that any concerns raised with them are addressed. We, as I said in my initial answer, have seen an increase in staff across the NHS in Scotland, including qualified nurses and midwives up in Greater Glasgow and Clyde by 5.5 per cent. We are going further in terms of the workforce planning tools, which are very, very good indeed and, in fact, have been replicated elsewhere by other health systems, but we want to go further than that. That is why we have committed to enshrining safe staffing in law, placing the nursing and midwifery workforce planning tools on a statutory footing. The member might be aware that a consultation on the legislative proposals was launched on 12 April, and it is going to run to 5 July in order to make sure that we gather the views of staff, including those that are represented by the RCN. Alex Cole-Hamilton It is not just the Queen Elizabeth that is under pressure. The Edinburgh royal infirmary serves thousands of my constituents. The Scotsman reports today that a memo from 2ERI staff sent last week described it as being in extremis. It stated that 36 patients waited up to 17 hours in A&E for admission to a bed, and it stated that the potential safety implications for patients, their families and scheduled surgery are serious. Can the cabinet secretary tell me how often such warnings and requests to repatriate patients to other health boards occur? What I can say to the member is that, occasionally, particular A&E departments will experience a surge in demand. That will occasionally happen for a variety of reasons. At the RIE, the issue was a post-easter surge in demand with high levels of attendances on Thursday 20 April. What they then do is what any emergency department will do. They ask for beds to be released as quickly as possible, because it is for the whole hospital to address any issues in A&E departments, not just for the staff working in A&E to manage that themselves. There is nothing unusual about taking a whole hospital approach. What I can say to the member is that NHS Lothian's performance returned to normal within a few hours of that surge, and performance against the four-hour target at the RIE in the preceding day was 96.7 per cent. The performance of that hospital in a steady state has been a very good one, but it experienced the surge in demand. That was managed appropriately and it returned to a steady state very quickly after that. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport mentioned and replied to Alex Cole-Hamilton's workforce planning. Can I ask the cabinet secretary what steps the Scottish Government is taking to support nurse and midwifery workforce planning? Workforce planning tools in Scotland are very good indeed. I had a visit recently to Forth Valley hospital, where I saw the deployment of the workforce planning tools. Of course, in that hospital, not dissimilar to the Queen Elizabeth hospital, you had a number of sites coming into one site and some of the challenges associated with that. The good thing about the workforce planning tools, which, as I say, have been recognised elsewhere, is that it is not just about the numbers of patients and the numbers of staff. It is also about the acuity of illness of those patients and being able to adjust the tool in order to bring staff in, additional staff in, if required, because of a heightened level of acuity of illness. As I said in my initial answer, and I can say to Sandra White, we want to go further than that. Our proposals to enshrine safe staffing and law have been widely welcomed by the RCN and others in putting that on to statutory footing. I would encourage many of you, as possible, to put into the consultation, which runs until 5 July. There will be a number of regional events across Scotland during that consultation period to enable people to give their views. Donald Cameron, cabinet secretary, will be aware of recent comments by GMB Scotland, who stated that, due to staff shortages and extra demands, many hard-working hospital staff are struggling to cope and, sadly, for many of them, they need to take time off to recover. Given the level of vacancies among consultants, nursing and midwifery services, what action will the Government take not only to ensure that those gaps are filled but that existing staff receive the support that is required to carry out their jobs without undue stress? Of course, it is important that staff are supported and that they are given support in the workplace. As I said in my initial answer, we have seen record levels of posts across Scotland. We have seen an increase in consultant posts and in nursing and midwifery posts. Sometimes, though, vacancies are harder to fill, particularly in those specialties that are harder to fill, not just here in Scotland but elsewhere. It is important that boards manage that, ensuring that they do everything possible to fill those vacancies and support staff in the meantime. We are also looking at doing things differently. If you look at the reforms on the east side of Scotland boards working together to address some of the radiology shortages by bringing those staff together in a network to provide support, I think that that shows a very positive and imaginative way forward in order to address shortages in that particular specialty. For almost a year now, the cabinet secretary has been coming to the chamber and saying that she is addressing workforce issues. In that time, vacancies have gone up and private agency spend has gone up, too. The reality is that our NHS staff are overworked, undervalued and under-resourced by the Scottish National Party Government. The result—todd, yet again, the Queen Elizabeth university hospital remains the poorest performing A&E in the whole of Scotland. Is not the truth that this mismanagement is now having a direct impact on our staff, but it is also having a direct impact on our services and patient care, too? Isn't it a shame that Anasawa couldn't find it in himself to welcome the very positive documentary that the BBC showed last night about the hard-working staff within our Queen Elizabeth university hospital? You know what was really interesting if he looks at social media, which I am sure he does, as I did, was how many staff were saying how nice it was to have some positive portrayal of their efforts at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital, instead of the eternal talking-down of their efforts that we hear too often emanating from some quarters within the chamber. Anasawa will be well aware of the efforts that are going on within the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. Tim Park, the A&E consultant at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital reported that, despite some of the difficulties, the service at the new hospital is better than before and work is going on to make the service improvements even more. I would say to the staff at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital that we absolutely value the efforts of every single one of you and we will work with the board to make the further improvements as we have done over the last year. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to a poverty-aligned survey that suggests that 1 in 3 people in Scotland on low-income are struggling to afford food. It is a depressing, absolutely depressing reason that people in a country as rich as Scotland are struggling to afford to feed themselves. Sadly, those figures do not come as a surprise considering the UK Government's failed austerity and continuing barrage of welfare cuts. We continue to do all that we can to support people on low income and to tackle the underlying causes of poverty. Our fairer Scotland action plan sets out 50 concrete actions to tackle poverty and inequality in Scotland, backed by £29 million fund for local communities. That is alongside the more than £100 million a year that we spend on welfare mitigation measures and resources that could instead be invested in lifting people out of poverty. Instead, we are having to invest that in offsetting the very worst of Tory welfare cuts. In addition, we believe that access to sufficient nutritious food is a basic human right, which is why our £1 million a year fair food fund supports approaches that help people affected by food poverty in a dignified way. I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that the Scottish Government's promotion of the poverty alliance accredited living wage, which includes ensuring that it is paid to all NHS staff and adult social care workers, is yet another clear action that has protected Scotland's people from Tory austerity? Can she outline what further plans there are to increase the living wage in Scotland? We have allocated a further £250 million from the NHS to integration authorities to protect and grow our social care services and deliver our shared priorities, including paying the living wage to care workers supporting vulnerable adults. That will give up to 40,000 people, mainly women, doing some of the most valuable work in Scotland—a pay rise. We will also provide up to £50 million of additional revenue to extend payment of the living wage to all childcare staff, delivering the funded element in private and third sector nurseries by the end of this Parliament. We also continue to support the living wage accreditation scheme. As a result, in 2016, Scotland remained the best-performing of all four UK countries, with the highest proportion of employees paid the living wage or more. George Adam. As the right-wing Tory Government and Westminster continues its attack on the poorest in our society, is the cabinet secretary, like me, appalled but, sadly, not surprised that the Trussel Trust research out this morning shows that food bank use is at an all-time high? What advice would she give to the good people of Paisley and all of Scotland who seek to avoid this continued attack and the risk of Tory austerity? Briefly, cabinet secretary. The Tories are turning their back on the poorest people in this country, and, in return, I believe that the people will turn their backs on the Tories. Like many in this chamber, I am appalled but not surprised that there is a 9 per cent increase in those accessing three-day emergency food parcels. According to the Trussel Trust, a quarter of those referrals are driven by low income, and almost half of those referrals are driven by the UK Government benefits regime. The Trussel Trust and the Poverty Alliance are providing strong evidence that there are more and more people in this country going hungry and having to make impossible decisions—a shocking trend that will have to stop. The Trussel Trust and others have shown that the overwhelming majority of people using a food bank do so because of an acute shortage of money rather than because of any more sustained cause. Indeed, the Trussel Trust told me that 80 per cent of Scots using one of their food banks do so only once. Now, I think that there is a real issue— Order, please. Sorry, Mr Tomkins. Please order. We have heard everything else in silence. Please hear Mr Tomkins in silence too, Mr Tomkins. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I think that there is a real issue, cabinet secretary, to be debated around the extent to which we want to see food banks becoming more closely allied with our taxpayer-funded welfare system. That is an issue that I have talked about with the minister privately before. However, what steps, if any, has the Scottish Government taken to ensure that people using food banks in Scotland are at least aware of the support from the Scottish welfare fund and other devolved sources that might be available to them? Of course, the real question is why people have low incomes in the first place. That is either because they are in work on poor pay, and that is why this Government is absolutely committed to doing everything that we can promote and support the living wage, unlike the UK Government south of the border, who, of course, have the powers over minimal wage legislation. It is somewhat ironic that, in the face of more and more people in this country going hungry, struggling to feed their kids, Mr Tomkins comes to this chamber and points to the Scottish welfare fund. The Scottish welfare fund assists 241,000 individuals, individuals that have been forced to access the welfare fund as a result of Tory cuts and Tory austerity and draconian welfare cuts.