Felly, we need to now move on to the next item of business, which is a debate on motion 1302 in the name of Jackie Baillie on taking action on the NHS and ambulance crisis. Again, I invite members who want to participate in the debate to press their request to speak buttons now or as soon as possible. Those joining us online to put an R in the chat function. I call on Jackie Baillie to speak to and move the motion. Ms Baillie, seven minutes please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Don't get sick, don't need an ambulance and don't need A and E in SNP run Scotland, because in each of these areas the Government is letting you down. NHS staff, nurses, doctors and paramedics are all doing their very best and they absolutely deserve our thanks, but they need more than warm words. They need action and the SNP is not listening to their very real and genuine concerns. For months now, the Cabinet Secretary has done nothing. Ambulance delays were raised as an issue in the press in June and in July and in August and where was the Cabinet Secretary in all that time? Posted missing, clearly hoping the problems would go away by themselves. But this is not new. Susan Donald from Aberdeenshire got in touch with me. Her father died on 1 January 2021, aged 81. He fell and broke his hip three days earlier. She called the GP practice at 6 pm, then she called 111 and finally she was put through to the ambulance service call centre at 9 pm. Despite that being an emergency, the ambulance did not arrive until almost 1 am the following day, seven hours after he fell. That is not a recent problem. That was happening nine months ago. Ms Donald raised issues quite rightly about co-ordination, about governance, but she is wondering why performance data available to senior management in health boards, in the ambulance service and the Scottish Government, did not raise flags about the problems months ago. Patients raised concerns, health professionals raised concerns, unite raised significant issues of concern. So did the GMB, a doctor described the service as third world. There were almost daily reports of problems. Where was the Cabinet Secretary? People had to die and for it to be on the front pages of national newspapers to shock this Government into action. That is shameful. Ambulance delays are the worst on record, but the ambulance delays have an underlying cause. The problem is patient flu through A&E and admissions to the hospital itself. If you want to fix problems with the ambulance service, you need to fix the blockage at A&E and create more beds. A&E waiting times are also the worst on record. The A&E waiting time target of four hours has not been met since it was introduced in 2012, nine years ago. In the country's flagship hospital, the Queen Elizabeth, in the Cabinet Secretary's own constituency, I believe, only 44 per cent of people were treated within that four-hour target. Ambulances are queued round the block, and the red cross has to provide humanitarian aid to the paramedics and their patients because they are waiting so long. Unite has suggested a turnaround time of 30 minutes for an ambulance to transfer a patient to A&E. We agree, and the Cabinet Secretary really must consider this seriously. It is not just Glasgow that there is a problem. There is a problem in Edinburgh, too, with only 52 per cent of people being seen in four hours. It is so bad at the Edinburgh royal infirmary that a doctor there has described to me the hospital as, I quote, a war zone, with elderly patients having intimate examinations carried out on trolleys in corridors without any privacy. Delayed discharge is also up by almost 50 per cent. With a significant number of Covid patients in hospital, there are simply not enough beds. There is a growing crisis in social care that means that care packages for people leaving hospital are just not available. Virtually every health board in Scotland has cancelled elective surgery. That is hundreds more people added to the almost 100,000 patients waiting for operations. They have even cancelled cancer surgery at the Glasgow royal infirmary, confirmed to me by a consultant this morning. All this is before winter pressures have even started. John Thompson of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said that the NHS needed another 1,000 beds to cope with the crisis. Jamie McNamey, Unite Convener, at the Scottish Ambulance Service, agrees. He went on to say that, if things are to improve, it must include field hospitals and other temporary admission units. That was entirely missing from the health secretary's statement yesterday. I urge the health secretary to urgently consider temporary wards. Please consider field hospitals. We need that extra capacity and we need to ask staff who have recently retired from the service to come back and to help out. Dr Sue Robertson of the BMA told the health committee that without any realistic plans to increase the workforce in the short term gives us the perfect storm. What urgent action is the Government taking to deal with the crisis in the short term? I know that the Government wants to blame all those problems on the pandemic. I agree that the pandemic has been really challenging for the NHS and for social care, but that is at best a partial excuse. This is what a paramedic had to say in the daily record this morning. I am fed up reading and hearing in the news that the pandemic is causing the problems with delays. It is true that it is a contributing factor, but that has been a disaster in the making for years. He is absolutely right. Since 2010, the SNP has cut 1,200 beds from the NHS in Scotland. In fact, it started cutting beds in 2007, the moment that Nicola Sturgeon became health minister. From 2007 to 2010, the SNP failed to pass on the money for health given to it by the UK Government. That would have resulted in one billion more in spending today on the NHS. Let me remind you that Nicola Sturgeon was the health secretary for that entire period. Yes, it was Nicola Sturgeon 2 who cut the number of training places for nurses and doctors, despite being warned about the problems with staffing. That is a disaster that has been in the making for the past 14 years. The NHS is entirely devolved, not the responsibility of Westminster. The NHS in Scotland is run by the Scottish Government. There is no grievance to be manufactured here. There is nowhere for the SNP to hide. This is a problem of their making. They need to listen to patients and staff, and they need to sort this now before it gets even worse over the winter. I move the motion in my name. I now call on Humza Yousaf to speak to and move amendment 1302.3 up to six minutes, cabinet secretary. I am pleased to move the motion in my name. The national health service is under more pressure than it has ever been in its entire 73-year history. There is simply no denying that we are getting away from that fact.  I suspect that none of us will ever witness it again in our lives. It took about six minutes for Ms Baillie to mention the fact that there has been the biggest shock to the NHS in its 73-year history. Alex Cole-Hamilton, I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for giving way. If he is so confident that the crisis in our ambulances and in our A&Es is entirely down to the pandemic, will he commit to a Government-led review of all deaths pertaining to the ambulance crisis, and will he publish the reviews of that so that the chamber can see them? I consider any good suggestion that comes from anywhere in this chamber. I have never said that this is entirely down to the pandemic. In fact, yesterday I said very clearly that, of course, there were challenges in our NHS and our ambulance service beforehand, but it would be charlish and it would be inaccurate to not recognise a severe shock of the pandemic on our NHS. It is not just about Covid patients. Covid patients, of course, at the moment, are taking up about 1,100 beds, but it is about the accumulative impact. As I thought Dr Beccy explained well on Good Morning Scotland today, it is about the accumulative impact of the pandemic—those chronic patients that have not been able to be seen in the past 18 months, therefore presenting with more complex issues and problems. To write a little bit of context to today's debate, yesterday's Scottish Ambulance Service received 2,226 emergency calls, of which 1,580 require a response from an ambulance, and over 19 per cent of those incidents were triaged as immediately life-threatening. Everyone involved at Scottish Ambulance Service is performing their duties under unprecedented pressure. I thank them once again for their continued efforts. Of course, I have set out a number of proposals to support and improve staff wellbeing. As many members will know, the Scottish Ambulance Service website includes published board papers. Performance statistics are included within those papers, but I note calls from across the chamber that more information should be provided. Now seems an appropriate time to announce that the Scottish Ambulance Service will begin work on publishing performance data by health board on a more accessible part of the website, and that will be available soon, and we will ensure that members are updated in that respect. Today's debate obviously comes in the heels of yesterday's announcement. I want to start by setting the record straight in relation to some of the other motions that have been brought forward, or amendments to the motions that have been brought forward. Not a single penny will be cut from the Scottish Ambulance Service's budget. In fact, we are increasing their budget by over 16 per cent in this year alone—a £44 million increase on last year. In terms of some of the commitments that I set out yesterday, I will just focus on two of them to give an update to the chamber. I can now confirm, Presiding Officer, that the deployment of army personnel to support the Scottish Ambulance Service will begin from Sunday with training commencing from Friday and will, in fact, total 114 personnel for ambulance driver support. The increase was agreed yesterday afternoon by the Ministry of Defence, which made the decision on final numbers to support operational deployment. That deployment will come in three tranches, the first of which will be 27 drivers and seven support staff. There will be further deployments on Monday and Wednesday, and all additional boots will be on the ground by the end of this month. I would formally like to place on record my thanks to our armed forces who, in typical fashion, have responded to our call with extreme urgency and pace. Yesterday, I announced an additional £20 million of funding for the Scottish Ambulance Service, and I can confirm that the money will be spent on a number of areas, including supporting our armed forces, as I have set out, supporting increased senior clinical decision making, facilitating additional community support, which we are appropriating in terms of the Red Cross, and facilitating additional student capacity for support services. All will be done when it is clinically safe. That is where I wanted to address one or two of the points that Ms Bailey has raised. I will take suggestions from wherever they come in the chamber. I do not dismiss entirely out of hand the suggestion for a field hospital, but it will be important that, first of all, those options are clinically safe. Secondly, of course, we have the workforce in order to be able to staff any such beds, but that is an option that is being explored. Of course, I am happy to give way. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for the intervention. He did create the NHS Louisa Jordan, so the staffing capacity must have been there for that. Cabinet Secretary? Of course, at the beginning of the pandemic, the NHS was not fully remobilised.  No, not everything has stopped. That would be an inaccurate suggestion from Ms Bailey from a sedentary position. We do not have that workforce. As she has rightly said, they are under pressure to take them out of core sites and put them into, for example, a temporary structure would have an impact. I am not ruling it out, I should say to Ms Bailey that there are implications and it is perhaps not as simple as Ms Bailey is suggesting. On the wider system pressure—I have spoken a lot about the Scottish Ambulance Service—I will return to the issues of wider pressures on the NHS, because Ms Bailey is absolutely correct, and our motion is correct to say that it is not just the Ambulance Service that is facing extreme challenges. The whole systems approach that we need to take and the Government will absolutely take. Our forthcoming winter plan will set out the measures that we and our partners will take to ensure that we can deliver high-quality, safe care in a sustainable way. That will look at increasing the capacity, absolutely, and we will do that through urgent discussion. We are having those urgent discussions with social care providers and local authorities. We will look at how we can increase our capacity in relation to the workforce immediately as best we possibly can. We will also, as Ms Bailey asked in her opening contribution, look at how we can create temporary wards, for example, by repurposing some hospital space. To conclude, as I said yesterday, our Ambulance Service and NHS have been there when we have needed them the most and, in turn, the Government will support our NHS during its greatest hour of need. I look forward to today's debate and move the motion in my name. Thank you, and I call on Sandish Gilhani to speak to and move amendment 1302.2. We all know the stats by now, the worst A&E waiting times on record, 1,000 acute beds short ahead of winter, the fire brigade, taxi drivers and our British army called in to help, the Louisa Jordan field hospital closed, all as our NHS faces its hardest winter in living memory. Yesterday, the SNP Green Government announced finally that they accepted our NHS and our Ambulance Service are in crisis. Today, we called for concerted, well-thought-out action. Cabinet Secretary, the days of knee-jerk responses must be over. Of course, at this late stage, the challenge is indeed huge, so today I want to help the cabinet secretary by providing some advice and also provide some of the key questions that I'll expect answers to when I read his forthcoming winter action plan. I'm not patronising when I say this, it's simply that our NHS and Ambulance Services are in crisis under the SNP's watch. Let's start with data. I welcome the cabinet secretary announcing just now ambulance response times, but please can we ensure that this is weekly? If this data is published weekly, it means we can keep track of what's happening on the ground and fine-tune the plans where necessary. Data also provides us with lessons, so planning and resourcing mistakes can be avoided in future. If you don't measure, you can't improve. I'm calling on this because I want to help, I want to advise, I don't want to see problems spinning out of control. Speaking as a doctor, we know that early intervention is key to treating a disease and the same goes for managing policy in a crisis. Our ambulance service is under enormous pressure. With regard to the valuable assistance of the police, the fire service, taxi firms and our British army, we also need transparency over the scale of the crisis support. From week to week we need to evaluate how much we depend on this support, how long will we need this support and what lessons we can learn to take forward for NHS planning. Processes and procedures are also important. What exactly is it that the Government is asking the fire department or taxi firms to do? Are the processes and pathways in place for this external support? Can we see these? How are the Scottish Government going to evaluate the work of the fire department, taxi firms, our British army and any police support? What are the Government's target response times for ambulance and taxis? As for taxis, how can the Cabinet Secretary ensure the safety of drivers and passenger patients? There is still a lot of Covid out there. Also, has the Scottish Government started the disclosure of Scotland process for these drivers yet? The action plan for the NHS and ambulance service also won't be a credible plan without joint-up thinking across services and departments regarding workforce planning. In order to help, we need to see this. In a crisis, plans may need to be adapted as the data informs us or the reality on the ground, but we need a well-thought-out blueprint in the first place. That requires details of clinical pathways. NHS staff and indeed Scottish people need to know the patient journey. Given the reality on the ground with staffing levels, patient waiting times, cancelled operations and winter fast-approaching, what can patients expect? How will the patient journey evolve? What will need to be changed? We need clarity over this and we need to communicate clearly with staff and patients. Finally, let's consider pop-up wards. Just as the failure to plan and maintain stocks of PPE over the years exposed clinical staff and patients to danger during the pandemic, the decision to close the Louise of Jordan field hospital is coming back to haunt us. What is an example of poor planning and waste? We need to act now to establish pop-up wards at hospitals, but a word of warning should not be used to fudge A&E waiting time stats. If patients are waiting in a ward to be seen, that's what's happening. They are waiting, of course. The member is in his last minute. Will the cabinet secretary commit to maintaining the four-hour A&E treatment target, regardless of the emergency care setting? Provide details on workforce planning, clinical pathways and temporary facilities. Provide weekly reports on external support provided to the NHS and ambulance service. Cabinet secretary, there have been five SNP ministers in charge of health, a straight line of cabinet secretaries since Nicola Sturgeon, who held a position from 2007 until 2012. We're in a crisis. Please act. I would like to move the amendment in my name and declaration of interest. I am a practicing doctor. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and I would like to thank the Labour Party for choosing to devote some of its parliamentary time to this issue. The Labour Party is correct in saying that the Government has failed because it has. It has failed Gerard Brown, Catherine White, Lillian Briggs and many others who have been forced to wait hours for help whilst in agonising pain, often unable to access food, water or even go to the toilet. For those who are not as directly involved in politics as all of us in this chamber, the stories that broke last week in the daily record will have come as a great shock. Sadly, however, this crisis has been on the cards for a long time. In the summer of 2016, a Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information request revealed figures that showed just how much pressure the ambulance service was under. In the year 1516, the Scottish Government target to respond to serious incidents in under eight minutes was missed over 51,000 times. In Glasgow, the number of patients facing waits of 20 minutes or more almost troubled from 80 to 233 in Aberdeen, the number rose from 16 to 40. The warning lights have literally been there for years, yet this Government still has the audacity to blame the pandemic in large part for their own failures. Two weeks ago, after I lodged an urgent question on A&E waiting times, the health secretary told me that I needed to ground myself in reality. Let me take this opportunity, Presiding Officer, to lay out for the health secretary what that reality looks like. The reality is this. It is one in patients in pain waiting over a year for treatment. It is nearly 8,000 patients waiting more than four hours to be seen in our A&E department. It is the 8,356 ambulance staff working days lost due to mental ill health related reasons in 2020 alone. It is Gerard Brown losing his life because he waited 40 hours for an ambulance. While the health secretary dances around scrutiny on that, berating anyone who dares to hold him and his Government to account, people are hurting and people are dying. Granular improvements are not good enough. The delays are not the result of the pandemic alone and are certainly not the fault of members of the public who call for emergency care in desperation. They are a symptom of an overrun and understaffed healthcare service, ignored for too long by a Government, putting priorities elsewhere. If resources are not offered up soon, staff will leave and the NHS will be in even more trouble. Last year, my colleague Liam McArthur led the campaign to pay student paramedics and in October 2020, when the former Minister of Public Health, Joe Fitzpatrick, said that he agreed with the principle but could not agree to a bursary. That was until the election when the polls indicated that the SNP had to do something. It is too little, too late. The ambulance waiting times crisis did not come out of nowhere. It is the result of failure after failure at the hands of this Government. The unimaginable pressure is scarring a generation of healthcare professionals. Staff are struggling and are fighting against impossible workloads. The health secretary failed to provide any light at the end of the tunnel with his NHS recovery plan. It was a bundle of repackaged announcements that most of which will not take effect until years down the line. Nothing in his statement yesterday reassured the public or this Parliament that things will get better. Staff, patients and their families do not just deserve more from this Government, their health actively depends on it. I close by reiterating my call to the Government. If the health secretary is content and confident that this is purely an aberration of the pandemic, then let him conduct a review into waiting times. Let him conduct into reviews like the death of Gerard Brown as to why those deaths happened. If he is confident in those statistics and those results, let him publish them to this chamber and to the public that are watching this ambulance waiting times crisis. We are happy to support the Labour Party this afternoon. Thank you. We now move to the open debate. I call Carol Mocken to be followed by Fulton MacGregor. We go through a lot of motions in this chamber thanking various workers and groups for their efforts. Although that has a place in what we should be doing here, the weight of the crisis affecting ambulance availability and the subsequent stress caused to patients and front-line workers should hold greater weight than usual. Although I applaud all our dedicated staff, I think that my time is better used trying to find out why this Government keeps letting them down. My standing here in telling paramedics, call responders and technicians how thankful we are for their work will make no difference if, in a year's time, I am back here doing exactly the same, while an unresponsive Government continues to make excuses for the problems. We cannot change processes, adjust targets and rebrand services and call that reform. It is not. It is a branding exercise and it is not responsible governance. The key to all of this is simple. The ambulance service is underfunded, understaffed and lacking in resources. Fix that and you fix the problem. I cannot stress enough to this Government that chasing targets and small headline improvements over proactive structural reform is not the way to run a health service, so it is disappointing that this week the health secretary should be wasting his time briefing the daily record on his statement before he informs the chamber, doing so only furthering grains this image that it is all about expectation management and public presentation. I do not want to manage the expectations of the woman who was left lying at the air town centre for four hours last month waiting on an ambulance. I want her to be treated and back home with her family. That is not even one of the most extreme examples. When you have reports of patients waiting over 40 hours for an ambulance, it creates anxiety and stress throughout many communities who are well aware of a delay in them making it to hospital could be the difference as we know between life and death. At least there is some positive news this week, perhaps Covid rates seemingly declining across Scotland and I believe that we should use any breathing space that allows us to focus all our efforts on preparing the NHS for the coming winter and alleviating pressure on the worst impacted parts of our hostels. Yet, instead of doing that, we may have to pick up the pieces of the missteps that have been taken over the last couple of years. As my party colleagues and others have mentioned, there is a concerning clinical backlog that needs to be addressed right now and it requires new field hospitals to tackle that, then that is exactly what we should be doing. I understand and have heard that the health secretary has not ruled that out and I would certainly support any steps to achieve that goal, regardless of how it is reported. It is important for patients and the communities. Before I close, let me reiterate that all of those problems—cures of ambulances, lack of beds, overworked staff—are all deeply interconnected and we cannot tackle them without addressing the problem of underfunding. The Government has committed a billion of investment over the next five years to the NHS and some of that has gone towards training and recruiting new staff, but that will take almost a decade to be a fruit. Nearly all of the funding was already earmarked before May, with a fair amount of previous commitments already shelved. That is not going to be enough. The NHS needs emergency measures now to cope and I think that we can see from the feelings in this chamber that reports coming back from our constituents suggest that the public need action too. After that, we need to address the problem of long-term planning and failing to bring in the resources that the NHS requires well ahead of time. This chamber should be dealing with the difficult issues and whatever works for the NHS, we should be pursuing. That is reflected in the strength of the Scottish Labour's motion and I hope that it will be supported in that spirit. Fulton MacGregor, to be followed by Megan Gallacher. I want to start by reiterating that the Scottish Anglin service is a heartbeat for NHS. There is no service like it, providing emergency care for the public 24 hours a day, every day. Our ambulance service has a unique and challenging job and I want to place and record my thanks to paramedics and others who make sure that this service is available to those who need it, not just during this dreadful pandemic but always. As the cabinet secretary said, there is no way of ignoring the strain that the pandemic has put on our services in a crisis and, despite restrictions lifting in some aspects of daily life, feeling a little more normal for many of us, that strain on the NHS is still very much there. Covid has not gone away and there is no denying that the ambulance service is under immense pressure with demand unusually high. Our emergency departments are busier than ever with complex cases and just last month there were over 10,000 life-threatening incidents responded to double that of in 2018. Yes, as others from other benches in the chamber have said, we have to accept that the pressure on the ambulance service predates the pandemic. The fact that anyone is having to wait these reported amount of times for an ambulance is completely unacceptable. I, too, have had contact from constituents facing unacceptable waits and have taken up their cases where appropriate, as MSPs from all parties, Government parties and Opposition parties would be expected to do. I welcome the announcement from the cabinet secretary yesterday in his statement, and I am glad that we have recognised that this unacceptable place that we are in and that we are now taking swift and appropriate action to help ease the pressure. I think that the pressure needs to be looked at on the round. I think that a lot of the debate today has been about a criticism of the Government and the Government only, but I think that back to a case that was pre-pandemic where an individual in my constituency waited for a long time for an ambulance. I cannot remember the number of hours, but it was certainly hours. It was because she had slipped on the ice because of cutbacks to gritting, so I think that we need to look at all those things in the round, how can Government improve the situation, how can local authorities improve the situation and what I think people in the public would not expect is for us to be speaking constructively about that. I am not going to have time, unless I would get time back, Presiding Officer. There is about two minutes in hand to the end of the debate, but, as you are not in your last minute, it is up to you, Mr McGregor. I thank the member for giving away. He is making a speech that acknowledges the scale of the crisis and the issues that existed pre-pandemic. He made the point about the issue with the ice, but would he accept that cutting local government funding and budgets contributes to the wider problems that we have in the health service and that that has a knock-on effect? We have to appropriately fund local governments to deliver those services. I do not accept the characterisation that local governments have their own decisions to make. The local government in North Lanarkshire, as the member might be aware, is a Labour and Conservative coalition, so they have those decisions to make. The point that I was trying to make to the member was not to get a political bunfight about what Labour might be doing in North Lanarkshire and what the SNP is doing at Holyrood. It was to say that those things need to be looked at on the round. It is a systems approach, and I would hope that the member would agree with that, that we need a systems approach so that everything interacts with each other. I wholeheartedly welcome the additional £20 million that will be invested into the ambulance service that was announced yesterday, Presiding Officer. I believe that that will allow extra personnel to ensure that our services continue to operate and ultimately ensure that sick patients are able to be met with and helped in a time-less manner. It is good to hear that we are pulling resources from our military, paramedic students, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, British Red Cross among others. On the issue of student paramedics, of course, the Scottish Government, as Alex Cole-Hamilton has mentioned, has recently implemented the £10,000 bursary scheme, which a lot of the work and credit goes to Liam McArthur. I also went to give some credit to Holly Carriger, from my constituency, who personally lobbied me and the First Minister on the issue. If you could please find out, Mr Mcgregor, why does society also successfully lobbied on this issue? I am sorry, Presiding Officer. I thought that I could get two minutes back. No, it is four minutes this afternoon. All right. I am sorry, I have picked you up wrong. In that case, I will then say that I support the Government amendment today. Yesterday, the First Minister finally admitted that our NHS is in crisis. That was only after growing pressures from NHS health boards, healthcare professionals, unions and MSPs who warned this Government that, if they did not act, they would push our NHS beyond breaking point. The Scottish Conservatives have repeatedly warned the Government that our NHS was at breaking point long before the First Minister's admission. A and E waiting times, ambulance waiting times, the cervical cancer screening scandal, waiting lists for vital diagnostic tests, CAMHS waiting lists. Those are just some of the issues that have been raised in this chamber, and it is clear that, after 13 years in Government, the SNP does not have the willingness or the ability to fix the problems that they have created. Presiding Officer, it is clear that the crisis is one that was entirely preventable. However, due to the length of time taken for the SNP to act, those long-standing pre-Covid issues have now been exacerbated by the impact of the pandemic. Further to the announcement from the cabinet secretary yesterday, more than 100 military personnel will be drafted in, providing much-needed assistance to our hard-working NHS staff. Now, as we have heard this morning, taxi drivers will be recruited to help transport patients to hospitals for appointments. That is the same taxi drivers that were left hung out to dry during lockdown by the SNP Government. In my own region, NHS Lanarkshire will benefit from the services provided by staff being deployed by the British Army, Fire Brigade and Taxi Services. That assistance will provide a welcomed relief to my constituents and front-line staff at NHS Lanarkshire. However, we should never have ended up in this position in the first place. We have heard the devastating news over the last few weeks of people dying due to the length of time they have had to wait to receive urgent care. We have heard of elderly people who lay on the floor in agony, whilst hoping that someone would come and help them. We have had people waiting for hours on end at A&E and others turning up to health A hospitals because they cannot see their GP face-to-face as they are so overworked and so overwhelmed. Cabinet secretary, all of those situations took place under your watch, and it can never be allowed to happen again. The Scottish Government had every opportunity to intervene to fix those issues, but instead we had the health secretary telling people to think twice before calling an ambulance. Will the cabinet secretary finally apologise for that, or will he continue to dismiss the notion that what he said was reckless and irresponsible? The amendments that are submitted by the SNP do not even begin to address the amendments that our heroic NHS staff have had to endure, and quite frankly, they should be ashamed. The Scottish Conservatives will vote against this amendment today, and instead will vote for a position that will force the SNP to declare a major incident status within our ambulance service, halt planned efficiency savings by the SNP Government, maintain the four-hour A&E treatment target and for the Government to publish a weekly ambulance response time data so that progress can be measured in every region. I agree with the points raised in the Labour motion, especially the recognition that it gives to the wonderful Scottish Ambulance Service paramedics, technicians, call handlers and other front-line workers who have been failed by this Government. It is only right that we continue to support our NHS heroes who are always on hand to respond to an emergency. I therefore urge Labour to vote for our amendment to its motion tonight to recognise our hard-working NHS staff, but to also ensure that the Scottish Government is held to account over the NHS crisis that it has created. Firstly, like everybody else, I would like to pay tribute to the incredible hard-working staff of the Scottish Ambulance Service. They are without a doubt the people at the sharp end of a health service provision and deal with some of the most serious situations that they will face in life, in a professional and in caring manner. They see things that would make most of us blansh and they still save countless lives each and every day as part of their jobs. However, I think that it is important that our admiration for the work that they do is not tarnished by the negative attention that they have been receiving lately, including this afternoon from media and politicians alike. You may prefix your attack by telling them how much you admire them, but what the NHS worker hears when you continually criticise the part of the service that they are working in is your hopeless. We all know that so unfair and untrue, and I am sure that that is not what you want them to think. Now, I understand that it is the job of politicians to raise the concern of their constituents and oppose the Government that the Conservative debate last week in GPs and the Labour-wined today in the Scottish Ambulance Service is beginning to look like a co-ordinated political attack on our health service, as it tries to deal with the effects of both a pandemic that none of us saw coming and a Brexit that slashed the number of workers on the health and social care. Still, at least with Jackie Baillie, she is always pretty upfront. She will use any chance to have a go at the SNP, health secretary and the First Minister. I am pretty sure that the official record will show that she mentioned the FM more often than she mentioned the pandemic. Today we have heard two debates from Labour on two very important issues, rail and ambulance, Labour's solution to both. It appears to be to spend money that we simply just don't have. There is no money to be out in the parliamentary garden and that is not real politics. That is student politics. There are real issues to be dealt with here and they must be dealt with, but this unwillingness by any of our opponents to accept that a serious factor in all this is a pandemic doesn't serve anybody any good. I was pleased by the announcement yesterday by the cabinet secretary for health that the volunteer drivers from the Scottish fire and rescue service will be drafted in to assist the ambulance service and that from this weekend the army will be helping or, as the Conservatives continue to call it, the British army will be helping in order to take some of the pressure off. That is very welcome news and I am hopeful that this will at least begin to address some of the problems we have experienced. The 100 trainee paramedics who will be tasked with call handling will help to elevate some of the backlog that an increased level of calls is calling. It is a difficult situation and it is one that is obviously working to the public and one that is not easily resolved, but remember that this is a situation without president in Scotland or the UK and we are not alone in dealing with these problems. Four out of the ten ambulance trusts in England are using army personnel to help to deal with the situation. I echo the appeals of the health secretary and I agree with him wholeheartedly about that. Members of the public should only ask for an ambulance if they believe that the situation is life-threatening. Particularly just now, in all other circumstances, please phone NHS 24 and 111. If they believe that an ambulance is necessary after talking to you about the situation, one will still be dispatched even though you have not called 999. I know this because it has happened in my own house. This advice has been given all over the UK as well in Scotland and it is important that it be adhered to it in order to reduce the waiting time for the most serious cases. I am not sure that there is a quick fix to this and I know that it is not for the want of trying in the part of our dedicated health professionals across the ambulance service and NHS in social care in Scotland. Remember that Brexit has stopped a lot of the workers who used to work in social care in Scotland from coming over here and that is having a huge impact on the ability to get the beds emptied in the hospital and get people back in at the community. I appeal to my colleagues from all parties across the chamber to pull together and give all of our support to those people who are working so hard to battle the pandemic and to keep our citizens alive in the most demanding of circumstances and to stop seeing them as a weapon to be used in a political battle that deserves much more than that. I thank our ambulance crews and all those working in emergency care and the wider NHS for continuing to work extremely hard in very difficult conditions. The stories of extremely long waiting times for ambulances make for distressing reading and I cannot imagine the distress felt by the people who have faced these agonising waits. I am grateful for the measures set out yesterday by the cabinet secretary and I hope they begin to make an impact quickly. Ambulance crews are working incredibly hard to reach people who need help as quickly as possible but demand is simply outstripping supply. The pandemic has meant that staff have been working flat out for 18 months with no respite and I am extremely concerned about the impact on their mental and physical health. There have been disturbing reports of crews being able to access food, water or rest for whole shifts. How can we expect them to care for us when they have no time to care for themselves? We need to protect ambulance service staff as people will come—we need to protect ambulance service staff as people will come frustrated with long waits staff will inevitably bear the brunt of that. I welcome that the Scottish Government has announced additional wellbeing support but we also need strong messaging that abuse or intimidation of ambulance crews is not acceptable. There have also been reports of call handlers receiving abuse due to long waits and I would be grateful if the cabinet secretary could confirm whether there will be additional wellbeing support put in place extended to ambulance crews and other staff. Extra clinical capacity will no doubt relieve some of the pressure being placed on teams and I am extremely grateful to the 100 second-year students who will be working across the ambulance service while carrying out their studies. They should rightfully be applauded. I do have concerns however about the impact that this will have on their studies and the potential risk of burnout and I ask the cabinet secretary to confirm that no students will be academically disadvantaged and that they will receive wellbeing support. The demand for ambulances will undoubtedly place pressure on other emergency and out-of-hours services and I am concerned about the secondary impact of long waits on NHS 24 and out-of-hours general practice. We must ensure that they are properly supported to meet a potential surge in demand. Likewise, delayed discharge is placing pressure on hospital wards, A&E departments and the ambulance service as patients occupying hospital beds cannot be discharged without a care package. We need to take a whole system approach when looking at how we can relieve pressure and Dr Daniel Becket, an acute care consultant, has spoken in the media today about the fact that if we are able to meet patients' social care needs then patients can move out of hospitals which would in turn reduce crowding in wards and emergency departments as well as reduce ambulance delays. The national care service is of course the long-term goal of this Parliament but social care needs support now. I have previously spoken about the need for a social care recovery plan and I urge the Government to give serious consideration to that. While a whole system approach is vital, we must also respond to acute pressure points in the system. NHS 4th valley within my region is currently the worst performing health board in terms of the four-hour A&E target. Nationally, 71.5 per cent of patients are being seen within four hours while in 4th valley it is just 53.4 per cent. That is a significant difference and I would be grateful to hear from the Cabinet Secretary if there are targeted interventions for 4th valley. In conclusion, we must prioritise staff welfare. Our dedicated NHS workers continually go above and beyond, but that should never be taken for granted. Clapping on the doorsteps is not enough when paramedics cannot access food and water throughout a 12-hour shift. Many calls this afternoon. I want to add my thanks to those working in our health services, in our emergency services and our Scottish Ambulance Service paramedics technicians, call-handers and other front-line workers. They are under a significant stress and we know what the pressures are at the moment. However, I am somewhat disappointed to be returning to a debate this afternoon, which seems to be based on arbitrary requests and not really looking at the systemic issues and supporting the Government in what they are trying to do to tackle those issues. Last week in the year we had a call for GP services to return to normal and a quote normal face-to-face at a set date. No, thank you. At set date in time it was an arbitrary request and it will do nothing to help the situation that we are in at the moment. Despite Jackie Baillie very well talking about the issues and the systemic issues and all the points at which there are pressures in our health services at the moment, including in social care and getting people into social care and out of hospitals. The motion before us, the ask is that we set a 30-minute maximum turnaround time for ambulances arriving at the hospital again. Words won't really address this problem at all, just arbitrary words for the debate. No, thank you. The tone of the debate is about everything that rests on this Government and the management of the health service on this Government alone. If we look to Wales, the BBC reported today that the morale of the Ambulance Service in Wales is at rock bottom, 50% and 57% increase in calls in July this year. Mark Drakeford requested support and administered from the army because of the pressures that are up. Our treatment times are under pressure and areas outside hospitals again are under pressure as well. That is why what I have heard from the health service is not a denial of where we are, not a denial that there are problems, not a denial that anyone who has lost their lives has had to wait for an unacceptable time. They have never said that that is acceptable. It is not, but what I do hear from them is that we have to do something to work on those areas, those pinch points, such as investigating whether they can open up more admission wards in hospitals, whether they can look at a pop-up solution. To say that this is just on this Government is completely ignoring the situation in the wider UK where all Governments are under the same pressures. We have talked about the shortage in doctors. Ms Adamson, can I have just one minute, please? There are a lot of sedentary comments coming from across the chamber. I would be very grateful if we could hear Ms Adamson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I have obviously touched a raw nerve that people do not want to hear that this is a broader issue than just Scotland. Hundreds of paramedic students will now receive a bursary, as was mentioned by my colleague Fulton MacGregor. The Daily Mail recorded that there are 50,000 vacancies for doctors in England in the health service. Those are pressures that we are all experiencing. That is why, today, I want to highlight what this Government is doing. We should all get behind them to help our health service. The additional investments announced that £20 million has been invested in the Scottish ambulance service to improve response times, alleviate pressures and improve staff wellbeing. We need to get behind them. We need to train more paramedics. I am very glad that we have paid double the bursary that they do in England to our paramedics and nurses training. We need to get behind the work that the cabinet secretary is doing. We are listening to the Scottish ambulance service. We are listening to those calls. We are investigating where the pressures are. With the Government, with fair whack at its heart, we know that it will look into the wellbeing of our workforce. Thank you, Presiding Officer. My constituents, Susanna Jackson, who had previously suffered a stroke, had a bad fall at home. An ambulance was called at 5.30pm. It did not arrive until 10.30 that evening. She was worried and in pain. She was taken to Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary, where she had to wait in the corridor on a trolley before finally being seen at 5.45pm the next morning. The staff said that Monday nights are always bad. That is no isolated incident. My elderly constituent, Helen Fraser, is a local community champion. She recently led a street-to-street campaign against the builders' merchants in a residential area of Harrington. Against the odds, she won. Helen is a fighter. She is not one to complain. Last week, she sent me this email about her husband's treatment in the hands of the SNP Government. The letter opened. Dear Craig, as you know, Ian is terminally ill. Over the weekend, he developed a further problem, which caused great pain. Our GP attended to him at home yesterday. The doctor said that Ian needed an x-ray and arranged for an ambulance to the western general. The GP mentioned the current ongoing delays of hours and said that if things get worse, dial 999. Helen reports that the ambulance service logged the instruction on Monday at 1.45pm. Around 6pm, she got a call saying that Ian was in the system to apologise for the delay. However, the operator could not indicate when an ambulance might arrive. A further call came at 9pm, again with the same message. Another call on Tuesday morning at 1.15pm, then 3.15pm and another at roughly 6am. Helen says that the calls were all the same apart from one with a nurse who asked more questions. On the last call, Helen asked if she could change to 999. She was told that the wait for emergency vehicles was bad. It would take hours. Ian would have to be triaged again and that they simply did not have enough vehicles. Helen said that it was impossible to sleep. She finally decided that she would use a taxi and tried to cancel the ambulance by using the incoming number, but that would not accept incoming calls. She called the western general hospital and asked for a message to be passed to say that she and Ian were still coming in. Helen asked if the ambulance could be cancelled, but the person that she spoke to said that she would not be able to do that. When the receptionist at the hospital finally booked Ian into the western, she agreed to cancel the ambulance. Helen says that, after she got home later in the day, a neighbour mentioned that an ambulance had been at the door at 8.30am, 19 hours after it had first been ordered. Helen adds, I really hope that no one thinks that we left home without consideration of the consequences. In her email, Helen Fraser speaks for many. She says that the NHS is in a complete shambles. Helen says, and I quote, that there is no blame whatsoever to be attached to the hardworking staff and our medics and our nurses. The problem lies squarely with the incompetence of the Scottish Government. No amount of blaming Westminster, she says, or Boris Johnson or Covid can cover up those statistics. Our, says Helen, is just one case, but how many other patients are being caught up in this on-going catastrophe? Ian Fraser deserved to be treated with dignity, but under this SNP Government, his urgent needs were disregarded. For Helen and Ian Fraser's sake and the sake of thousands of Scots caught up in this on-going catastrophe, the minister must now get a grip of this crisis. I'm sorry, Presiding Officer. That's just caught me a bit there, because I've welled up a bit with that. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. We've heard today how our ambulance service is at breaking point, and there can be no doubt that the Scottish NHS is in crisis, and the SNP are to blame, not the pandemic. The SNP have ignored the warning signs for years, and, as Jackie Baillie outlined earlier, all the stakeholders' concerns have been ignored. Unions, patients, healthcare professionals are resulting in unnecessary deaths. Those systemic failures are not pinch points, as Clare Adamson pointed out. I would like to reiterate that. The SNP have dithered and have taken far too long to respond to this crisis. Action must be taken. The Scottish Conservatives are calling on the SNP to provide an emergency funding package and publish a detailed strategy to maximise the use of military staff to tackle the crisis. Every day, we read about cases of long waits for ambulances, sometimes leading to needless deaths and some heartbreaking stories that we've heard just then from my colleague Craig Hoy. The Scottish Government has requested support from the British Army—yes, the British Army—in tackling Scotland's ambulance crisis. While we welcome the request being made, it should have happened already, and it just exposes the SNP's shambolic handling of Scotland's health service. In addition, firefighters and taxi services have now been drafted in to help the Scottish Ambulance Service. However, even after Humza Yousaf's statement to Parliament yesterday, the United Union warned that drafting in the Army and firefighters as drivers will not be enough to cope with the crisis. My colleague Megan Gallher highlighted the hypocrisy from the cabinet secretary that taxi drivers will now be recruited to help transport patients to hospital for their appointments. Those very same taxi drivers that were left hung out to dry during lockdown. The pandemic has exposed the many weaknesses that are deep-rooted. They've all existed in our health service for some very long time due to the SNP's mismanagement, long before we heard of Covid. The deep-rooted workforce crisis was mentioned by Mr Cole-Hamilton in his contribution today. Our healthcare professionals have worked in these extreme conditions for years, juggling staff and equipment shortages just to keep patient services going. While there has rightly been a focus on tackling Covid within our health service, other illnesses and diseases cannot simply be forgotten about. The number of excess deaths that are occurring in Scotland are tragic, and my thoughts are with those who have lost a loved one. Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon finally admitted that the NHS is in crisis, yet Mr Sturgeon and Mr Hussaf would not confirm when an NHS winter plan would be published. It should have formed an integral part of any NHS Scotland remobilisation plan, yet it has not. We are calling on the SNP Green Government to shelve the plans for £15 million in efficiency savings. That's not the same as cuts, they've been requested to make efficiency savings, and instead announce a series of actions to tackle the crisis, including an emergency funding package that focuses on saving lives. The SNP needs to develop a real plan of action to fully remobilise our NHS, fund our ambulance service properly and bring waiting times back under control. Although that will be a challenge for the SNP, as it's about time that we've got some detail and not just sound bites, the Scottish Conservatives will vote against the SNP amendment today. I urge Labour to vote for our amendment that lays down some of the questions that we need answers to and to be asked by the Scottish Government. We need to further strengthen the original motion presented by Jackie Baillie this afternoon. Thank you. I call on Humza Yousaf up to five minutes, cabinet secretary. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Sometimes in these debates you can often be more heat than light, but I'm pleased that I have been some helpful suggestions, not everything, of course, that they said. I would agree with that, but I'm going to try to take as many of the member's contributions and questions that were asked as possible. We've heard a number of calls today to thank Scottish Ambulance Service staff. We've heard a number of calls to provide additional investment, to get support from the armed services, to protect staff, welfare, to increase the workforce by encouraging recently retired workers to temporarily return to the NHS. Government has delivered on all of those asks and it's set out over the course of yesterday and indeed today. That's why the Government motion includes all of those asks from the original Labour motion as well. A number of people have spoken, I think, quite passionately about constituency cases that have come in to them. Once again, as I did yesterday, anybody who has not received the standard of service that they should have, I apologise, absolutely unreservedly for that. We also heard a number of other asks at the current time that this Government can't support, but we will, of course, continue to look at. Pop-up tents to support A&E. We have real concerns about the clinical safety or the lack of that. That was mentioned by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, as well as a statement that they put out. I know that there has been a lot being said by Jackie Baillie and others around mandating a 30-minute maximum turnaround time at hospitals. What I can give an absolute guarantee is that we want turnaround times to be as quick as they possibly can. We must monitor that as part of a wider drive towards system improvement. We all want to see turnaround times as quickly as possible, but simply mandating it doesn't make it so. Of course, I will give way to Jackie Baillie. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary. Would he agree with me that this is not a random request, as was suggested by Claire Adamson, but that this came from ambulance staff themselves? It was unite and their ambulance workers who were saying that this would be part of the solution to the problem. Would he agree with that? I know that it was an ask from your net, I spoke to your net yesterday and they were welcoming of the statement that I had made, but obviously they were pushing the Government to go further. I accept what Ms Baillie says, that she is doing this out of, I am sure, sincerity. I give her an absolute guarantee that we want to see turnaround times at our hospitals as quickly as possible. A number of members also mentioned flow at hospitals and rightly made the point, as I hope that I reflected in my opening statement, that this is not just about the ambulance service but a whole systems approach. I hope that the announcement that I made yesterday about almost doubling the number of halos at hospital ambulance liaison officers in our hospitals, particularly at our busiest sites, and that goes back to the point that Gillian Mackay made about interventions at one of our worst performing sites. That will hopefully help with the patient not just discharge from the ambulance but also their flow through the hospital site in its entirety. If I may touch upon some of the other member contributions that were made, I thought Karen Watkins spoke quite passionately about staff. She was right, staff do not need warm words, so I am sure that they will welcome those warm words, but they need more than warm words. That is why I am pleased that this Government has recognised our staff by making sure that they are the best paid in the UK. They recently implemented 4 per cent pay rise, being the single largest pay rise in the history of devolution. I should have remiss of me not to welcome him to the front bench role that he has. I also wish Annie Wells the very best in her recovery. My private messaging to her, I know that she hopes to be back, recovered and back on the front bench soon. In her absence, I am sure that Dr Gohani will do a good job at the front bench. He asked a number of questions around data. I think that I have answered a lot of them, but I will take back some of the suggestions. He asked for a commitment that we will not scrap the four hour target in terms of any. I give an absolute commitment and absolute assurance that we will not do that. I should say in May, of course, that the UK Government intends to scrap that target. I do not know if it has followed through with it, but we certainly will not be doing that. We will be committing to that target, regardless of whatever temporary admission words and so on are created. Gillian Mackay asked a number of questions about additional wellbeing support. Yes, that was part of the package that was announced yesterday, about £500,000 of the funding that was announced yesterday will be for targeted wellbeing. I think that she makes a good point about ensuring students, second-year students and paramedic students that are helping us, particularly in control centres, are disadvantaged academically. That, of course, is the intention, but I will go back and look at that issue a little bit further. She was right to make the points that other members did in and around social care as well. Clare Adamson, I am not sure why members were getting so anxious about her contribution. She was right to say that those are shared challenges right across the UK. That does not absolve the Scottish Government from responsibility here, not at all. That is our responsibility. That is my responsibility, but those are shared challenges. The fact that our A&E record times are challenging, absolutely, I accept that, of course, but we are still the best performing A&E in the entire UK. So we have set out a package of £20 million additional investment for the ambulance service. I will, of course, update Parliament on our winter plan forthcoming. I am pleased to move the motion of my name and I say that the NHS will always have this Government's full and entire support. There can be no doubt that ambulance services and, more widely, a NHS in Scotland are in crisis. Each of us in the chamber today will have had correspondence from constituents who have told us of having to wait hours for help to come. We have heard very powerfully a number of members speak of those today. We have seen ambulances queuing at our hospitals, and we know that waiting times at A&E are at their worst levels since records began. Tragically, people have died. We have heard today about Susan Donald and her father from Aberdeenshire by Jackie Baillie and, indeed, Gerard Brown, as we have all heard from Glasgow, who passed away after waiting 40 years for an ambulance. Families are broken-hearted and they are asking why, because it did not have to happen. We have heard the calls from paramedics, doctors, nurses and healthcare staff for immediate help to support a workforce that is exhausted, undervalued and overwhelmed. Those are the words of a whistleblowing paramedic who does not want to be identified because she fears for her job. She goes on to say that, in all the years I have been a paramedic, I have never seen the job as bad as I do now. Of course, we are living through unprecedented times. Nobody is denying that, but we know that things have been worsening for years before the pandemic. Services were struggling to keep up with demand, and there was a growing backlog of care. The pandemic has exacerbated a bad situation. Another paramedic whistleblower, based in Glasgow, said that—we have heard this already, but I think that it is important to hear it again—I am fed up reading and hearing the news that the pandemic is causing the problem with delays. It is true that it is a contributing factor, but that has been a disaster in the making for years. That is not me saying that, it is not Jackie Baillie saying that, it is not any other politician saying that. It is a paramedic working on the front line. The Cabinet Secretary and the Government cannot ignore the words, and as much as James Dornan might want to make it about the staff, the hard-working staff versus opposition politicians, those words cannot be ignored. The Cabinet Secretary must explain to the hard-working staff and to the bereaved families why he has been missing action, and if he listens to that point, why he has been missing action, as my colleague Jackie Baillie and Carol Mawkin pointed out, until he went to the daily record to give that interview. The reality is that the crisis did not start 18 months ago with a global pandemic. It has been consistently building, and the warning signs have been there year after year. In 2019, we know that there was a shocking increase of 634.4 per cent compared with 2014 and turnaround in dealing with the availability of ambulances to respond to emergency calls, and those trends continued into 2021. We know that last week Unite the Union claimed that life has been put at risk as the average 999 ambulance waiting time has increased to six hours across Scotland. We have heard others today in this debate speak about the problems with acute bed capacity, staffing and retention, and the problems with delayed discharge. The Scottish Government has been forced into taking remedial action to alleviate the pressures that our ambulance service is facing, as has been evidenced in the debate, and the Government is finding itself playing catch-up. Scottish Labour's priority is to give our ambulance service the urgent support that needs to save lives. As such, we welcome the Government's decision to request help from the army, but the Government must go further and explore the potential of calling on recently retired ambulance staff to help during the crisis. We must acknowledge what has been said to us by the trade unions about the army's role and how much help that will be in practical front-line roles. Scottish Labour also supports the call from Unite for the introduction of a 30-minute maximum turnaround time for ambulances from arrival at hospital, which will release paramedics to answer other calls. The reality is that, as Jackie Baillie outlined, that is not a random request. It has not come, we did not make it up, we spoke to Unite the Union and they are representing the staff on the ground to say that that would make a real difference. In addition, temporary words and field talks at hospitals must be looked at, and I appreciate what the cabinet secretary has said, but I would ask him to work closely with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and others to look at those options thoroughly. We also recognise the issues raised by Dr Sandis Gohanni around reporting and more regular reporting in response times. We are in agreement that that has to happen, and I note what the cabinet secretary has said about improving the data that is available, and, as such, we will support Dr Gohanni's amendment. Excuse me a second please, Mr O'Kane. Can I ask colleagues to please not indulge in conversations in the chamber while business is on going? Thank you. We have heard a lot of chat this afternoon about warm words, and I want to just point out some of the words that have been used in the past by this Government about the NHS. They say that it is our most cherished public service. They said that they are going to protect and nurture it, and they have said that shorter waiting times and treatment that continues to improve is their core priority for it. Those are all quotes from SNP manifestos over the years. The reality is that patients and hard-working staff of the Ambulance Service and the wider NHS are facing the consequences of 14 years of Government inaction on those issues. Staff are upset, they are distressed, they are angry and they fear for the winter ahead. That is why I want to speak about staff wellbeing, because it is fundamentally important to supporting the workforce on the front line. I acknowledge what the cabinet secretary has said around the wellbeing fund, but the reality is that there needs to go further and deeper to make a difference. The unions are telling us that, the Royal College is telling us that, the BMA yesterday told us that in committee. Mr O'Kane, if you could please wind up. Certainly. What we need to do is ensure, as Gillian Mackay said, that we have better support for staff who are working on the front line. To conclude, the reality is that we must put staff and patients first, they deserve better, and I support the motion, Jackie Baillie's name. That concludes the debate on taking action on the NHS and ambulance crisis, and it is now time to move on to the next item of business.


Hi! Good morning everyone! Happy Saturday! So we've got a question of the week which was any indigenous indigenous people in your family tree. The profiles of the week this week are which Australian convict are you most closely connected to? Your turn to share a tip and which sort of coincides with October it's perfect because October is the month of a Hacktoberfest. A photo theme for this month is family. What is happening around WikiTree in October 2023?


to Healthy Planet, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet on the ThinkTech livestreaming network series. I'm your host, Dr. Grace O'Neill. Joining me today is Hansen of Level V 808. Today we're going to talk about Hansen's vegan journey and how we started Level V 808. So Hansen, tell us how you became vegan. So let's see 2017 I think was the first my vegan anniversary really. It started my other half my girlfriend at the time was pescatarian and I was trying to do some research to convince her to start eating meat with me again. So that's literally how it started. So after you know going over you know through research I'm a science-based guy so I was going through the research and I told her I think I just told myself I need to stop eating meat. So that's that's literally how the journey began. So I you know I started doing a lot of research a lot of you know a lot of the documentary I read the China study I did a whole bunch of self-reading I guess you could say and then yeah I just kind of made the decision I was like you know I'm gonna try it and that's what got me to you know start being vegan and then I think what kept me vegan because I think there's two different things like I think what kept me vegan I went to a animal safe a safe a safe movement and I got to experience you know the emotions that go into the animal industry and then honestly after that I was pretty much changed. I was in I kind of made up my mind never to go eating meat again to be honest. So yeah I came for the health and I stayed for the animals. And then I mean how about how did your family and your friends react like I'm sure your girlfriend she was probably on board with becoming vegan? Yeah so I went a couple days after I decided to go vegan she became vegan and then it's tough because I think growing up in Hawaii or growing up with any you know family has cultures and the culture kind of revolves around food so it's kind of a culture shock you know and my dad is an immigrant from Vietnam so he doesn't understand the concept of veganism I guess when there's an abundance of food and part of the things here in the United States. He kind of saw it as more of a like a Buddhist monk journey so there's a lot of Buddhist monks in but I told him no nothing like that I just you know want to eat healthier and I had a son so I have a son and I want to be around for as long as possible so I told him I told my dad who's kind of the harder of my both parents to kind of convince I told him you know just for my health journey and I want to be around around a long time for my son really and then my mom is a caring mom she's just yeah you do you and I'll support you and that helps and I mean growing up in an Asian culture I guess you could say we didn't eat much meat anyway so it was kind of easier but I guess when it comes to family gatherings it was a little difficult but the good thing is that a year or two after becoming vegan I took my son to um Edgfest and I let him kind of roam around when I was waiting in line and he came back he said I watched a video I think I'm gonna try it and he's been vegan since for the last four years now so how old is he he is now a junior in high school so he started when he was a seventh grader seventh grader in high school nice yeah so for his friends reacting you know better than I thought you know I think um they come in an age where bullying is a bad thing you know so um they're more interested and they're every time he he brought his lunch out he would um they would all kind of like see what he's gonna eat you know and that was kind of my motivation to kind of start cooking better I guess you could say I always enjoyed cooking but I think I put a little more focus into um local style foods so my son would never miss out on anything that his other friends would enjoy so that's kind of how I started all my different recipes and things like that just just to make sure that my son wouldn't feel left out really yeah so tell us about how you began your business then how did that start so um my business is a result of the pandemic you know so I had to pivot um I'm in the event industry so I have two companies one in the marketing of nightlife and concerts and my other company is a production company we do soundstage lighting special effects um we do weddings and you know school proms and things like that so once pandemic happened it all you know stopped really so I had to find out another way to source income from my son's tuition he's over at marinal right now so you know you know business stops but tuition doesn't so that's for sure so I wanted to find out um another way to have an income and it started off as a fundraiser I wanted to you know make tuition so I I made a um I happened to make a vegan beef stew that pretty much tastes like regular beef stew and um I kind of put it out there just for my family and friends more so than the vegan community and I posted it up online and then um my friends posted it up online and then all the other the people outside of my circle all the vegans started to give me up and it became a thing so I was making started off with you know 10 plates and 15 plates and 20 plates and 30 plates it started growing from there and then um I realized it's sustainable the business model is sustainable because I think um there's a a niche in local style vegan food I guess you could say not many people doing it at the time yeah yeah I don't think I don't know anybody else who's doing it really I don't decide who are there other people yeah there's a there's a small handful I know um that ass burgers makes plates I know um yeah Umeke Market does one or two plates but I was trying to like I was just trying to recreate all the recipes I was making for my son to take home you know to take home lunch to for to school I mean will you offer like the drink and um I don't know if you have any pictures um Eric but uh yeah the last beef stew picture yeah and then there's like a rice on the side yeah I wanted it to be like a regular plate lunch so it comes with two scoops of rice your potato max salad which is 100% vegan and I also include the drink for the package deal is um it comes with your 100% of vitamin vitamin b12 because yeah it's so hard to remember taking b12 you know pills and I tell um and my son too is he's a active teenager so he never remembers so I kind of wanted to incorporate it in the meal so you get your daily dose every time you eat with a bovee yeah I mean so what do you what kind of what do you use for the meat I mean like when there's beef stew what are you using for the beef yeah so yeah so a lot of it's it's mock meats um the beef stew is um a garden mock meat so I pre-treat everything it's all marinated and smoked and then as well as the um as well as I use um a beyond patty um the famous one is the katsu and it's just actually portobello mushrooms so that looks really good I wish it's the best seller I mean it is the best seller I mean that looks delicious this is delicious no yeah it's it's crazy I you know I'm one of my favorite things was chicken katsu so that was the recipe I was trying to hone in perfect and um it's way easier now there's so much like um replacement meats and you know um mock meats that it's um it's really easy easier nowadays to kind of make certain dishes but I found out that the portobello mushroom just locks in that juiciness so it when you when you fry it it just comes out perfect yeah that's awesome I mean you know I always have trouble I don't know do you deep fry it or how do you get the the um little panko to stick on it yeah so I use an egg replacer so I use a um especially modified egg replacer so I use it just like an egg batter except you just got to work with the consistency to make it yeah right the right batter that is the hardest thing is the getting the panko to stick without making it turn into cake I had so many trial and errors about I was eating like mushroom cakes it was for a little while yeah yeah but I mean how do you like get it you know deep like how do you get it to look like that it's just yeah so this is just regular um I grew up eating you know katsu in tempura so it's it's in a wok like it's oil oil fried wok you know oh yes yes yes yes you put it in a little so it's a huge yeah I I try to keep things as original as possible so it comes out as you know as similar as possible to um the original recipe and then you know there are a few things that you have to kind of tweak just because it is a mock meat or is an actual you know actual meat so yeah so did you find that after you became vegan did you feel any changes in your body yourself yeah a hundred percent I mean you when you first go vegan you kind of get that initial rush you know you you feel more energetic you sleep better at night um and I guess honestly I think it's a piece of mine too you know you have a you have a better understanding of passion for other people so your your mind is a little more free and I think that makes that takes a a big relief off your shoulders and you sleep better to be honest so yeah definitely yeah have you been able to um get any of your friends to follow your path or your family yeah I mean I I mean I would say the majority of my businesses are non-vegans they they I mean to me I that's how I pat myself in the back if I can get vegan vegan food and not think it's vegan food and the stigmatism of vegan food I think I already won the battle you know so I think it's um my one extra step in uh in my uh my my vegan campaign for to push the agenda but um yeah yeah I mean there are a few people that that definitely eat less meat um I think people have are on the way um but getting my son to go be you honestly made the world to me that's that's awesome you know yeah I mean it's gonna be great for his health and you know it's just it's just 100% knowing that your family member is able to do that that's great you know no definitely definitely I think um when I was right before I was vegan I was starting to get the pre-syntoms of gout and I had gout runs in my family you know so um it's debilitating to my dad sometimes terrible yeah it's bad so I once I you know started eating all plant-based 100% vegan you know the that whole worry is gone I can eat a little more freely I can have you know a piece of mind without getting a flare up you know things like that so that definitely changed definitely and honestly the biggest thing too is um I remember when I took my son into the doctor for the first time for his physical and then um he he he dropped on the notes that my son became vegan and then by his second follow-up he you know he he was really astounded that he like uh his weight index went up his height index went up like oh it's weird I thought you get you lose you know so much weight because you're not eating meat and I was telling him like you know it's it's completely different than you think I know he doesn't know I mean that's great that you're teaching him even though I'm a doctor myself a lot of doctors even my my own colleagues they don't know they think that you know the same thing that people are going to be malnourished and actually the thing is when you become vegan you're better nourished you know because not taking up your diet was something that doesn't doesn't have any besides protein and we get too much of it anyway no exactly exactly that's great yeah we watch this for themselves I'm sorry go ahead yeah oh no they just have to see it for themselves you know they won't believe it until they see it you know yeah but that's that's great I mean that's just phenomenal that you're teaching your doctor's things yeah my son is doing it I mean his scorecard is doing it yeah that's awesome his height and index yeah because he was really worried about you know high growth and bone index and all that stuff and as soon as he you could see us you know definitely raising everything oh that's wonderful it is it is yeah so tell us about the you know I know right now you just do Fridays for lunch but is there potential that you're going to expand to other weekdays you know definitely um but the man is out there so um I'm kind of like burning the can on both ends out because business is booming like every all the event business it's all back you know double because everyone's going to make up from last year but man it's like um I started doing catering gigs and getting um uh also um offers to do different pop-ups and things like that so I mean the the angle was either always going to be either a permanent spot or a food truck or something to that effect but the market is so crazy right now so I'm thinking I'm going to stick to just you know pop-ups on different days and um yeah first you come into um other restaurant spaces during their off time oh you totally should do that I think um there's that one that's um a bar you know what I'm talking about they're very vegan friendly it's an um kind of like mccully yeah um also yummy oh so yummy yeah well definitely I am yeah I know a couple of people do um the pop-ups there well the pop-ups there so no definitely yeah I'm good friends with the guys and also yummy I try to support every vegan thing possible as soon as it pops up I'm there sampling it post yes yes me too like if something's at Costco because the problem with Costco is they'll have something vegan yeah and then they'll take it away because not enough people buy it or something exactly that's right yeah like when they had kale chips yeah yeah so I mean I'm wondering how about catering at the events do you think you could run the event and then also I don't know what was that to me but I think that was a couple offers there was a couple offers you know the um shucks it's just that the production level like it's it's just me and my mom really you know I do most of the cooking if it's the katsu because there's so many orders my mom helps out but other than that um it's so it's just really tough for at that at this point right now but you know I had to turn away um I was supposed to cater HP use a welcome ceremony that's like thousands of students and oh my gosh so each of you has a lot of international students and there's a lot of our RV that would have been awesome I know so I had an event somewhere else that day and I was just trying to organize it and I I told them unfortunately there's no way I can do the amount of orders you want oh my god here there's things like that where I'm just trying to get to the point where I can accept those kind of things you know and vegan weddings there's a bunch of vegan weddings coming that day maybe you could hire somebody like events like that like you know just per diem for now right they could help you out or you could like um you know go with another pop-up into something like that and then right right right options you know I mean I don't know I'm just thinking about it's such a shame for yeah I know expose all those people to exactly something that could be you know really good for that yeah exactly I think a few students tried it and they went to their counselor said hey this is the things we want you know and they kind of wanted a local field they want they're here visiting from all these other places they wanted something local so yeah that's definitely in the works I'm trying to work with different and also yummy is one of the kitchens I actually offered too so they're super supportive of the vegan community so I'm just trying to find out a way where I can get to that level where the production can be that at that level yeah so um tell me about the name level v 808 yes 808 well the the v is for vegan um my my my marketing company is was level h um and then when I be when I became vegan I wanted to do a vegan business it just made sense to be level v for the vegan and the level is just always progressing but that's that's that's the um foresight that I want to have is just make sure I'm always moving forward and looking you know to the next level instead of being stagnant where I am I mean I tried to google it and there was something online about level v or level five being like the greatest thing to attain as a vegan I guess being like a perfect vegan I was like is that what it's about or why level v 808 that's great I didn't know I didn't know there was anything out there you know yeah I mean there was something out there like that I found it on a website but I didn't know wow oh wow maybe that too then no yeah no yeah it was just a it's a playoff of my production company my uh prevents events company mm-hmm yeah well I mean it would be great if you could you know just kind of marry both of them and no definitely that's I mean you can offer like not doing it and doing it together so you have people who work for your events company no yep no definitely um you know definitely we're uh so maybe you could hire I mean I don't know if it's it might be a different business but it'd be great if you could hire I'm sure there's people interested I mean I know the restaurant business isn't easy but yeah restaurant business tough hours yeah yeah yeah I don't know how I mean I'm such as at a beginner level uh with production wise I don't know how some of these bigger restaurants do and it's it's time consuming so I applaud all the restaurant tiers out there man they're they're working hard behind the scenes just to make yeah just to make ends meet you know exactly exactly yeah I'm out of go ahead yeah so I think I'm how I'm gonna make them to merge is that I'm in the works of planning a vegan night market so I'm in the I'm in the nightlife business I'm in the production company business and so I'm trying to I kind of visited a bunch out there I visited LA I went to um Portland a few times I've been you should completely do that yeah they have one in East Hollywood it's awesome yeah I've been to the money is Hollywood I made friends with them and I kind of figured out their business model and I got to sit down with them for a little while so I kind of want to bring that to Hawaii because we have such a huge eclectic market of vegans in Hawaii and everyone's kind of you know a little segment here and there I kind of want to just bring them out for a nightlife because there is nothing like that really yeah no that would be great have music have different pop-ups have exactly new vegan desserts and exactly you know you know exactly that's exactly what I mean when I went out there it's like it's so fun to go to these because on the other places you get to sit down have a drink eat your meal amongst other people and just listen to music and yeah it's a great it's a great event so I kind of want to absolutely do that I'll be you'll have to tell me the first day I'll be there definitely I got some vendors that normally aren't in town to possibly come in town for for some of these yeah I mean even maybe people from the big island or Maui would be willing to do that oh definitely I mean I went to the one in East LA as a trip as a trip so I think oh it's amazing yeah yeah no it's amazing you know I mean because I don't know like right now the woman who plans veg fest she's over in Maui so we haven't had anything like that for a while right right if you want to take on that but that's kind of in your purview yeah we'd love to have another Oahu veg fest and then bring people in you know from elsewhere I guess right right but I mean even just to have all the vegan vendors together in one place would be amazing no definitely yeah so that would be great um what else was I gonna say I think um I guess with this business and everything um it looks like you're also using compostable items it's all you had some can you show the pictures yeah so that's great I mean I don't know if it probably costs more but it's very good it does I mean my price point I'm not gonna lie I appreciate every single person that bought a plate because um it's price is high because from when I started I already had an a vision of what I want to do so I I did 100% compostable before I was mandated by the state so my price hasn't changed I wanted to include that drink so I wanted to make sure it's B12 friendly and the yeah everything is plant-based uh it's compostable plant-based 100% you know put in the earth compostable not going to a factory so I sourced um I mean now that there's easier options because of the new mandate to go compostable it's great um I sourced up that moxie bag out of Brazil 100 yeah it's it's it costs money to bring in but I feel it's worth it you know yeah I know it's absolutely worth it and I I priced all of that into when I first started so the good thing is that I don't have to change my prices if everything is as is and I think um when I was watching uh other other vendors and also other restaurateurs they were saying that most people just want it all inclusive just give me everything you know instead of little things you know instead of like you know adding little things yeah they said I'll pay the price if it's worth it I'll pay their price I rather just pay it all at once yeah yeah absolutely I like that I appreciate that and I for me when I go to other places I like to save the sauces because it's hard to get vegan like fish sauce you're vegan yeah yeah I kind of do the same you know I get like 12 ounces of gravy like a soda can worth the gravy because you can use it for whatever dish you want later on it'll save you time for the next meal I just want to make it easy for people to stay vegan and become vegan as best as possible yeah and you know those compostable containers you use they really are compostable because sometimes I'll put them in my garden like I'll put the little container I'll plant stuff in it or and then or I'll put it in my worm bucket and it really does compost a lot easier than those um sometimes people have cups and they have a little liner inside and that liner is not compostable no yeah exactly those other products are now the only thing I guess is the vitamin water has that plastic bottle yeah yes I'm trying to find something other than vital water that has a hundred percent b12 in it but that's that's no it's it's definitely a challenge it is I mean I guess if you had something with nutritional yeast that doesn't have a hundred percent though you know but it would be like some kind of b12 right right right yeah no that is a challenge because the plastic too is a problem um but I appreciate your efforts to find something compostable like that because there's a lot of places that are vegan but they're the packaging is not as funny but I will say that places that are vegan their package is generally friendlier than places that are not because people are more aware of this problem that we have you know that is true the environment everything so tell us about how you got your kitchen certified do you go somewhere else to cook or is it like did you have to certify your kitchen there or yeah so I I have a support kitchen in Chinatown um a family friend that's we rent their kitchen and I make everything there before they open for business and then I I have a catering license so I bring it back to my house and I put everything together here and I serve it here yeah when I first went down to the the the food board or food department or health department I was like I need a license to do like like fundraiser yeah it was just as a fundraiser I was like you know how people like sell like lao lao out of their house I just want to do the same to make money to pay for my sense yeah yeah and then she's like oh you need to get a catering license so then I mean I'm so new to the I mean I worked in front of the house never behind the house so they're like oh you need a support kitchen I was like what's the support kitchen I had to like start from scratch but you know it's worth it I think um it makes you uh a more business savvy and I guess also you kind of because you put so much effort into the the the product is that much more special to me that when I put it out there for everybody oh yeah no that's awesome um who else was I gonna say so your location is a very unique location I mean it's very convenient except sometimes it's hard to get out of the location but it is to get out but it's a beautiful little house in the middle of like a ton of buildings you know yeah tell us about the location and how you acquired that location yeah I mean it's uh I mean it's uh the house was built over 100 years ago it's like a small little queen house um yeah I mean I grew up in this house really it's um they they tried to buy bought my father's stuff right they tried to buy out the land to build all the high rises around us and he just held out he they were like surrounded by these but that's awesome it's so cool that you still have that one house because you know I used to pass by all the time before I knew about you and I was like that's a really cool little house by all these terrible buildings you know and then now I mean then I went I was like oh I guess like these people must I didn't know if you rented or owned it or whatever that's so cool you know I mean it's it's such a cool little house yeah yeah yeah yeah I moved here um so I could ride my bike went to put a hole so I ride my bike to school every day so we moved to town so I could just my parents work two jobs growing up so I had to kind of we got me closer second right my bike to school but no I love it here it's like a they call it a gingerbread parents called the gingerbread house it looks like a gingerbread house but it's so convenient for everything honestly it is it's right in the middle town and um my mom becomes the uh traffic controller trying to get everyone in and out of the driveway when it's yeah no right that's always something else yeah you guys are very organized over there I will say it's very try to be we try to make it as convenient as possible for everybody yeah and you have a little garden in the park as well yeah we have a side garden and um my other half um has a garden at her spot so all of our um our food waste goes to compostable to go goes to compost yeah I see that's great I like I like that a lot yeah so every year we um we give out sprouts to um people I think we had um cantaloupe sprouts last year so all the food waste and all the um voxings and whatever can be um it's broken down um there's our natural worms in there and then uh we grow cantaloupe and bell peppers and I think the first year we gave away cantaloupe sprouts and the second year we gave our bell pepper sprouts away yeah you'll have to incorporate those uh the cantaloupe maybe into your into the dish you have like fruit afterward you know I don't know whatever and have the fruit at the end will be like you know nothing better than organic cantaloupe you know exactly exactly um and you could do like a tofu scramble with the bell peppers the sky's a little bit right so but I really love your idea I'm so glad you got started and really serving the community because I think a lot of people do think when they become vegan they can't get this local kind of food so I think that's awesome you know definitely yeah it definitely started out of a necessity yeah no that's that's I mean that's wonderful it's a beautiful story um so we're out of time um so we have to wrap it up but I'm Dr. Grace Moneal this is Healthy Planet on the ThinkTech Livestream Network Series we've been talking with Hanson of Level V808 thanks to Karak our broadcast engineer and the rest of the crew at ThinkTech for hosting our show and thanks to you our listeners for listening I'll see you on September 30th for more of Healthy Planet on ThinkTech the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet my special guest will be Dr. Saini Leesh Rao we will be talking about climate change if you have ideas for the show or questions for my future guests please contact me at healthyplanethinktech at gmail.com check out my website at graceandhawai.com or instagram at gracefulliving365 for more information on my projects including future show guests I'm Dr. Grace Moneal Paloha everyone thank you so much for watching ThinkTech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at thinktech hawaii.com Mahalo