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Thank you.

In response to Tess White, you spoke about preventative medicine and, obviously, as a GP, I will come on to talk about that. We must transform the way in which we think about and deliver healthcare. We cannot keep focusing on health in the way in which we do just now. We cannot treat the NHS as if it were a bike repair shop where people just come in to get repaired. We need to get them better beforehand. Organisations such as the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine are advocating for such a preventative agenda. You mentioned it earlier, but I would like you to expand on what you said and give us some tangible examples of where we could implement preventative spend and the things that we could do within healthcare budgets to achieve that.

I could not agree more with what you said about GPs. It is so important that, when I am doing my job as a GP, I am sure that I am helping people’s health and not focusing on their social issues, because there are probably other people who are better placed to do that.

You mentioned community link workers. In Glasgow, we are going to see deep cuts made to their numbers. I have received a lot of correspondence from community link workers. I have also spoken to deep-end practices and to GPs—GPs are stopping me in the street to talk about this. The good that community link workers do is huge, and the worry that a lot of them communicate in correspondence is that, if they are cut, they will have to go from working in one practice to working in three practices. They will have maybe a day a week in each practice, which will significantly hinder the work that they will be able to do for the community. What value should we place on community link workers, especially in our most deprived areas?

I am aware that other people want to come in. This is my last question—I am sorry, but I am sticking with Philip Whyte.

About 80 to 90 per cent of all patient contacts happen in primary care; that is where people access healthcare. You are right that we are not quite there when it comes to resourcing, which is dominated by secondary care. We saw a £65 million cut in the primary care budget last year. With that happening, how are we expecting our GPs to provide a service that enables the preventative agenda? How can we give our GPs the time to ask about things such as alcohol or cigarettes or other questions, as opposed to only the thing that brings the patient through the door? Do you have any ways in which we could do that?

My second question is for Carmen Martinez. Social care is often seen as a Cinderella service, whose sole job is to prop up the NHS, allow speedy discharges and allow hospitals to work more efficiently, but it needs to be seen as a vital part of the care that we provide. When it comes to looking at how social care data is used to see how we can make improvements, do you think that we have adequate data? If not, what is missing?

Thank you.

My last question is for Philip Whyte. As a taxpayer, when money is spent, I think that it is important that we know where it is spent and that there is an audit trail of that spending. When it comes to health, is it too simplistic to want to know where our money is being spent and how?

As you were working on them, could you to send them to us?

A constituent of mine, Stuart McGrow, is a dentist who lost his associate during the Covid pandemic. He stepped up to perform more than double his workload to serve patients in his community. However, the funding model did not recognise his individual case, which has meant that he has had to move in with his parents while he tries to keep his practice afloat. Are you willing to consider his case and help him?

I have a question on alcohol. The Turning Point Scotland 218 service in Glasgow, which supports female offenders to rebuild their lives after drug and alcohol use, is facing £850,000 in cuts. The 218 service is primarily funded by the Scottish Government. Can you explain the rationale for cutting that vital service, and can you commit to restoring funding for it?

Thank you very much. I want to follow up what Gillian Mackay asked about vaping. My real concern, which is huge, is about the number of kids who vape. They openly vape—it is not like having a cigarette behind the bike shed. They vape walking down the street and in schools. Toilets are like vaping rooms, and kids hide the vapes in the lights, which is hugely worrying.

I know that you said that work is under way, but when will we hear about concrete things that can be put into place to stop under-18s buying vapes? It is illegal already, but trading standards simply cannot cope. We really need something to be done.