Chamber and committees

Good morning. Professor Leitch, I was glad that you mentioned The Lancet paper, which is a very interesting study that gives us quite a lot of reassurance about the choices that we have made about tackling Covid. Another interesting aspect of the paper is that it argues that there is no clear relationship between levels of excess mortality and the different levels of restrictions that have been applied; it puts the emphasis much more on vaccination. However, I suspect that we will have that debate later this morning.

I will go back to the committee’s inquiry. We have taken a lot of evidence over the past few weeks on reduced access to services. At the core of many of the issues is the fact that people have not been able to see their GP or access basic screening. Cabinet secretary, do you agree that that has had an impact on patient outcomes? Are there particular parts of the patient pathway, such as primary care, that have been the major cause of problems leading to the current level of excess deaths and that will cause future excess deaths?

Good morning, cabinet secretary and colleagues.

I have a couple of questions about the vaccination programme. Earlier, Professor Leitch mentioned the recent report in The Lancet, which was very significant in highlighting the importance of the programme in suppressing the virus. However, a report in The Scotsman this morning states that 27,000 doses of the vaccine were thrown away in February after fewer people than expected came forward to be vaccinated. Is that report accurate? If so, should we be concerned about it? Are we seeing a drop-off in the number of people coming forward for vaccination?

Thank you for that very helpful response. Going back to the question of GPs, as I said, I am a patient at that GP practice, although fortunately they do not see me very often—

We are both happy. [Laughter.]

One issue that has come out of our inquiry is access to GPs. We heard from Dr Andrew Buist from the British Medical Association, who pushes back really strongly on the notion that people have not been able to access GPs, but we still hear that anecdotally from constituents. Is the position with GPs now back to where it should be or are we still facing challenges?

I want to pick up on the issue of emergency medicine, which we have not touched on much this morning. Some of the most striking evidence that the committee heard was from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which told us that, in 2021, there were 500 excess deaths related to people accessing emergency treatment too late. That is 10 people per week dying because the ambulance does not turn up on time or because, although the ambulance turns up on time, when it gets to the hospital, it cannot get its patients out into the emergency ward in time. That was really striking.

The royal college highlighted the continuing lack of capacity in the workforce. On Friday, you announced a new national workforce strategy, and I was interested to see the comment that the royal college made to the press on that yesterday. Although it welcomed the strategy, it said that it was

“disappointed … not to have been consulted”

on it

“and by the limited mentions of Urgent and Emergency Care.”

Will you meet the royal college to discuss that and take on board its real concerns on the matter?

Will you give us a sense of where we are now on the delays with ambulances? Clearly, there is a lot of pressure on NHS emergency wards. Are those issues still happening?

The top line of the story in The Scotsman this morning was that fewer people than expected have come forward for vaccination. Is that correct?

I am a patient there.

I do not trouble it very much, to be fair.

Okay. I will write to you again. Thank you.

On the entirely different topic of care homes, restrictions on visiting care homes have been lifted, which is very welcome. A constituent contacted me to say that she has an elderly relative in a care home in which, if a member of staff tests positive, the entire care home is locked down and residents are not allowed to leave their rooms to go into common areas. That is very distressing for residents who have already had to put up with two years of isolation, and that happens with some frequency because of the high incidence of Covid. As far as I can tell, that approach is not set out in Government regulations, but it would be helpful if you could confirm that and say whether any advice is being offered to care home operators on such issues.