Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 22 September 2021
I do not accept that characterisation. Local authorities have their own decisions to make and, as Mr O’Kane might be aware, the local authority in North Lanarkshire is made up of a Labour and Conservative coalition.
However, I was not trying to get into a political bun fight about what Labour might be doing in North Lanarkshire and what the SNP is doing at Holyrood; I was trying to say that things need to be looked at in the round. We need to take a whole-systems approach where everything interacts with everything else. I hope that the member agrees with that.
I whole-heartedly welcome the announcement yesterday of the additional £20 million that will be invested in the Ambulance Service. That will allow for extra personnel to ensure that services can continue to operate and, ultimately, that sick patients can be helped timeously. It is good to hear that we are pulling in resources from the military, paramedic students, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the British Red Cross, among others.
In relation to student paramedics, as Alex Cole-Hamilton said, the Scottish Government recently implemented the £10,000 bursary scheme. A lot of the credit for that goes to Liam McArthur, but I also want to give some credit to Hollie Carragher from my constituency, who lobbied me and the First Minister. I want Alex Cole-Hamilton to know that people from wider society successfully lobbied on that issue.