Thank you. That concludes general questions. The next item of business is First Minister's

questions.

At question number one, I call Douglas Ross.

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. This week's health stats show that almost two

and three patients attending accident and emergency at Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University

Hospital were not seen within the target

time. In just one week, more than a thousand people at the Queen Elizabeth alone were

not treated within four hours. All over Scotland, the number of people waiting beyond the

target time was over 9,500. It is the worst

ever performance in Scotland's A&E departments. So what specific actions is the First

Minister taking to prevent people waiting hours on end at accident and emergency departments

over Christmas? First Minister.

First Minister, specifically in relation to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow,

obviously it faces the same challenges as other hospital sites do.

And the performance there, as it is, in hospitals across Scotland,

is not where we want

it to be, and certainly not where patients have a right to expect it to be.

That said, the most recent statistics show that performance at the Queen Elizabeth had

improved.

However, we know performance will fluctuate, and indeed for the national picture, as well

as for individual sites, the monthly figures give a clearer depiction of performance.

In terms of the Queen Elizabeth specifically through the overall unscheduled care collaborative,

...