To ask the Scottish Government what action is being taken to reduce ambulance turnaround times at hospitals, in light of figures showing that so far in 2025 more than half of conveyances recorded a turnaround time of longer than 45 minutes. (S6T-02591)

Improving access to urgent care services is a key priority for the Scottish Government. On 31 March 2025, we published the NHS Scotland operational improvement plan, which sets out how we plan to improve access to treatment, including in urgent care settings. As part of our wider £21.7 billion investment in health and social care services, the plan includes an additional £200 million to reduce waiting times and improve patient flow through hospitals, which will lead to a reduction in ambulance turnaround times and in delayed discharges. We are supporting boards to strengthen facilities such as flow navigation centres, so that they are able to refer patients to more services and avoid their unnecessary conveyance to hospital in ambulances.

The cabinet secretary will agree that, although our paramedics do a wonderful job, they simply cannot cope with the scale of the challenge. This is the fifth recovery plan that has been published in the past four years, and none of them has worked so far. For example, in Aberdeen, an ambulance waited for more than 15 hours outside a hospital. In Ayrshire and Arran, one waited for 15 hours. In Glasgow, an ambulance waited for nearly 10 hours outside the Queen Elizabeth hospital. All of that is happening because our accident and emergency departments are bursting at the seams. Does the cabinet secretary agree that that is simply not acceptable? Will he set a maximum time by which ambulance patients must be admitted to hospital rather than queuing outside?

I agree with Jackie Baillie on a number of those points. The incredible work that our Scottish Ambulance Service staff do is well recognised by me, and my gratitude goes to them. They go to remarkable, incredible lengths in serving the people whom we also seek to serve.

On Ms Baillie’s point about accident and emergency bursting at the seams, I say that what we are seeing is the pressure in the whole system contributing to pressures in particular parts of it, of which the Scottish Ambulance Service is one. That is why the operational improvement plan is focused not just on one area but on social care, general practice and primary care, on addressing delayed discharge and on providing additional capacity through frailty services adjacent to accident and emergency, as well as on providing additional capacity to reduce delayed discharge, where progress is happening.

I agree with the member that any undue delay to people being able to access services is unacceptable. That is why we are making a concerted effort to reduce the pressures that we are seeing across the system.

The cabinet secretary should tell that to the almost 2,000 people who are stuck in a hospital due to delayed discharge.

Not only are ambulances unable to attend calls, doctors cannot get jobs, despite record-high waiting lists for treatment, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists is reporting a £240 million shortfall in the face of a mental health emergency. The Scottish National Party has been in power for 18 years now. It has presided over this crisis. If it had an idea of how to fix it, surely we would have seen it by now.

On the ambulance turnaround times that we are seeing, the investments that we are making in relation to all the aspects that Jackie Baillie speaks to are having an impact, including a substantial reduction in delayed discharge from the 2,000 figure that she quotes—delayed discharge was at its peak around Christmas time, but it is below that position now.

Of course, we must support our general practitioners and we must support our wider system. That is the very point that I was making when I said that we need to support our ambulance service to respond. The performance of our ambulance service is robust in terms of the response times of ambulance service colleagues. The median purple incident response time is at 6 minutes 45 seconds, and we are seeing an improvement in that picture.

I will do everything that I can to make sure that the whole system responds to lessen the pressure on our ambulance service, for exactly the reasons that Jackie Baillie sets out.

I receive regular reports of ambulances queued for a long time outside Victoria hospital in Kirkcaldy. The Government wasted endless amounts of time and energy on the centralisation of the care service, but it neglected the reform that the sector requires. That is the central problem. We do not have the flow through the hospital into social care. Where is the brand-new plan to sort out social care in Scotland?

I have already referenced a significant amount of intervention. The operational improvement plan, which was published earlier this year, will address some of the concerns that Mr Rennie is highlighting. It will increase the capacity of hospital at home and social care services, and it will ensure that we have call-before-you-convey services for our ambulance service. It will make sure that we have a whole-system response that looks after the individual patient, as opposed to the other way around.

There is already significant investment going on, and, in relation to oversight, we now have a national social care advisory board, which is ensuring that we respond to the needs of the social care system, because it is integral to the performance of our health service.

There are enormous disparities in turnaround times between health boards, yet we know that delayed discharge is endemic across all the health boards.

On the cabinet secretary’s assessment, why are the turnaround times in some health boards significantly lower than in others? Are there lessons or practices that are not being shared across the health boards that would improve the situation? Someone, somewhere is getting it right but, in other places, it is not happening.

The member is absolutely right that the variance in delayed discharge performance among our health and social care partnerships is far too wide. The First Minister has said that on countless occasions, as have I. That is why the new Minister for Social Care and Mental Wellbeing and I have a regular meeting with the health and social care partnerships, so that we can ensure that best practice is learned across the system.

We are working with our health boards to improve the clinical pathways to ensure that patients who can be moved through the system quickly are discharged quickly. We do not see the picture that the member paints of delayed discharge being endemic across all parts of the system, because there is good performance in some parts of it. I want to learn from those best-performing areas to ensure that we can take that best practice to the areas that are most challenged. We are providing financial and practical support in order to do just that.