The First Minister:

I do not agree with that. I agree that these are extremely challenging times for GPs and everybody who works in our national health service. The target for GP recruitment is for 2027, and we will of course have to focus and work to meet that.

I say, with the greatest respect to Audit Scotland—I take everything that it says very seriously—that I am not sure that anybody can look to 2027 and predict what is going to happen. It rightly points out that meeting the target will be challenging, but it is important that we remain on track.

The GP head count has already increased by 277, and the head count among the wider multidisciplinary teams has increased by more than 3,000. Of course, that is increasingly important, because GPs rely on other health professionals to help them to do the excellent job that they do.

To come back to the final point that I made in response to the previous question, we have more GPs, proportionately, than other parts of the UK do. Earlier, I mentioned England; we also have more GPs per head of population than Labour-run Wales does and more than Northern Ireland does. Therefore, there is much work to do in Scotland, but we do it from a position of relative strength.