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Christina is the best of us. She was a force of nature, a warrior for those she served and a rock for those she loved.

Christina gave a great hug. They were indeed powerful, and I will cherish the memory of our last hug. Christina gave more than just physical hugs, though. The way that she built relationships with her staff, her friends, and those she met as an MSP and a minister was by metaphorically putting her arms around you and pulling you in.

Rachael Patterson, Christina’s most recent private secretary, shared the following with me:

“from the moment I met Christina, I felt a warmth and noticed she was like this with everyone she came across—it didn’t matter who you were. She taught me so much in the time we spent together.

I will visit the bench in St Andrew’s Harbour that you told me your Mum loved and I hope you will be sitting right beside me.”

Rachael is right: Christina was always there. I have heard so many stories of people Christina quietly supported through their cancer journey while she was going through her own. Christina lifted those around her—friend or stranger—with her love, her kindness and her generosity. She drove those of us around her with her wit, her fire and her principled determination.

I will very much treasure Christina’s messages of encouragement and pride when I joined her in government. She put her arms around me and built me up. Her long-time office manager, Martha McAllister, told me that that was the way she was with her staff, too. She made sure to surround herself, as Martha put it, with similarly bolshie, trade union-trained staff. Christina was clear in the way that people should be treated.

I am so sorry to all those across Government, her constituency and civic Scotland, who will miss her dearly. Most of all, my heart truly breaks for Keith, Jack and Lewis and Christina’s family: while we have lost one in a million, you have lost your world. I hope that they can take comfort in the wave of messages and tributes that have been paid to Christina—all testament to her ability to build and forge relationships.

A perfect example of that is from a member of the Gypsy Traveller community, who wrote the most beautiful poem about Christina. This paragraph encapsulates what I mean:

“A Gypsy man once lost, unheard,
Found strength in her promise, her every word.
She showed me I mattered. She taught me to stand
With wisdom, with laughter, with a gentle hand.”

That came to Christina instinctively through who she was—her generosity, her gallusness and her graft for people.

Christina is the best of us. While we will not see her again or get that hug, Christina’s legacy lives on in all those she sought to serve. She gave them hope and she left the world better than she found it. Thank you, Christina. We will miss you desperately. [Applause.]

I recognise the concerns that were expressed by the Lothian Local Medical Committee, which I met, alongside Paul McLennan in his constituency capacity, last week. We had a very good conversation about how we can sustain and improve the position for general practice.

I recognise the financial challenges, which have been exacerbated by the increased employer national insurance contributions that have been meted out by the United Kingdom Government. In spite of that, we will do all that we can to make sure that the resource is allocated to increase the number of GPs and wider practice staff and to support their role in the primary care system to deliver for the people of Scotland.

Keep up.

I recognise the challenges that general practice faces at this time. I regularly engage with the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association. Indeed, I met the chair of the GP committee of the BMA, Iain Morrison, last week and I met the entirety of the BMA committee this morning in order to understand its concerns.

We have invested an additional £73 million in general practice this financial year. That includes the investment of £13.6 million to support GPs to retain and recruit key staff. The increases in national insurance contributions that the United Kingdom Government introduced in its autumn statement have created additional costs for practices that impact on their ability to recruit. In November last year, I published our plan to improve GP recruitment and retention, including by retaining our newly qualified GPs in Scotland. I will continue to engage with the RCGP, the BMA and the local medical committees to ensure that we have a thriving GP community.

As I said at the outset, it is a matter for individual boards, as it is for all employing organisations, to ensure that they comply with the law. We will continue to interact with boards to ensure that the guidance that the Equality and Human Rights Commission produced is being maintained. We will keep Parliament updated on that progress.

I pointed Tess White to the picture of the funding that we have put forward in the budget in relation to the share of funding that goes to primary care, but I recognise Willie Rennie’s concern about the demands on general practice. My vision for what general practice can do for us, which is shared by the Royal College of General Practitioners and the BMA, is to have a sustainable, preventative health service. I will continue to work with them and I will commit the resource that I am able to commit in order to see continued stabilisation, sustainability and onward growth.

The Scottish Government expects all relevant organisations, in their role as employers, to comply with the requirements of the 2010 act and other legislation that Carol Mochan references, such as the requirements of the law on health and safety in workplaces, as outlined in the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. The expectation to follow the rule of law is clear, and we would expect boards and other public organisations to adhere to it.

Since April 2022, health boards have been responsible for delivering vaccines. The vast majority of adult vaccinations, including the flu, Covid, respiratory syncytial virus, shingles and pneumococcal vaccines, are visible to GPs via their general practice information technology system. Currently, childhood and non-routine vaccinations do not automatically flow into GP IT from the separate systems that record them, but that predates the move from GP to health board delivery, as Fergus Ewing outlined.

Some health boards may have data-sharing arrangements in place with general practices that allow health board vaccination teams direct access to patient records to add vaccination history without GPs being required to do that manually. That should be explored locally wherever possible. Any associated patient risk is mitigated by health boards providing GPs with a list of childhood and non-routine vaccines that they have administered. The Scottish Government funds GPs to manually input those into their GP systems.

I believe that the new NHS app and the digital front door will allow a greater expansion of that. I am pleased that NHS Lanarkshire will start the roll-out of that later this year.

The system is very much based on the Covid-19 pandemic new vaccine recording system that was built and the vaccine management tool, as well as the national clinical data store, which stores the information that is collected via the vaccine management tool. That gives us a good platform on which to build the very system that Brian Whittle is asking for.

Christina is the best of us. She was a force of nature, a warrior for those she served and a rock for those she loved.

Christina gave a great hug. They were indeed powerful, and I will cherish the memory of our last hug. Christina gave more than just physical hugs, though. The way that she built relationships with her staff, her friends, and those she met as an MSP and a minister was by metaphorically putting her arms around you and pulling you in.

Rachael Patterson, Christina’s most recent private secretary, shared the following with me:

“From the moment I met Christina, I felt a warmth and noticed she was like this with everyone she came across. It didn’t matter who you were. She taught me so much in the time we spent together. I will visit the bench in St Andrews Harbour that you told me your mum loved, and I hope you will be sitting right beside me.”

Rachael is right: Christina was always there. I have heard so many stories of people Christina quietly supported through their cancer journey while she was going through her own. Christina lifted those around her—friend or stranger—with her love, her kindness and her generosity. She drove those of us around her with her wit, her fire and her principled determination.

I will very much treasure Christina’s messages of encouragement and pride when I joined her in government. She put her arms around me and built me up. Her long-time office manager, Martha McAllister, told me that that was the way she was with her staff, too. She made sure to surround herself, as Martha put it, with similarly bolshie, trade union-trained staff. Christina was clear in the way that people should be treated.

I am so sorry to all those across Government, her constituency and civic Scotland, who will miss her dearly. Most of all, my heart truly breaks for Keith, Jack and Lewis and Christina’s family: while we have lost one in a million, you have lost your world. I hope that they can take comfort in the wave of messages and tributes that have been paid to Christina—all testament to her ability to build and forge relationships.

A perfect example of that is from a member of the Gypsy Traveller community, who wrote the most beautiful poem about Christina. This paragraph encapsulates what I mean:

“A Gypsy man once lost, unheard,
Found strength in her promise, her every word.
She showed me I mattered. She taught me to stand
With wisdom, with laughter, with a gentle hand.”

That came to Christina instinctively through who she was—her generosity, her gallusness and her graft for people.

Christina is the best of us. While we will not see her again or get that hug, Christina’s legacy lives on in all those she sought to serve. She gave them hope and she left the world better than she found it. Thank you, Christina. We will miss you desperately. [Applause.]