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That is a very fair question. As NHS Forth Valley is taking forward the pilot, I have no information on when it will be complete or when we will get the report. However, your questions are all on the record. Martin Macdonald is here with me today and we will converse with the health board to understand what it is doing, where it is in the pilot and when we can expect the report.

Absolutely—it is a great idea.

I appreciate the questions and it is important for us to get the right healthcare results for Scotland. Robust questions are fine, Mr Ewing, and if I cannot answer them, I am happy to respond in writing.

I will take away what you have just said about reviewing the evidence from Italy. I believe that the work in Denmark was also highlighted to the committee. I am content to have a look at that and respond to the committee with our thoughts. If you will allow me, I will gather some clinical views on that, too.

Extrasensory perception, and all that.

At the start of this evidence session, we talked about the importance of community engagement and ensuring that the community has guardians—that is how Steven Short and others described it. That ensures that, in the community, there is continual refreshment of skills. As I said earlier, when someone is on the phone to the call handler, they will get prompts to tell them what to do.

I would suggest that, if you fancy refreshing those skills, there are a lot of events happening around Scotland. I highlighted the walking football event that I was at. St John Ambulance was there, giving support alongside the Stroke Association—I think, although it might have been Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland. At a lot of events, and certainly a lot of the agricultural shows in Argyll and Bute that I go around, there is an opportunity for people to get refresher training. There are also good online resources on the Save a Life for Scotland website.

I was very disappointed to read the statistics that came out recently on the stroke bundles. I agree that improvement has to be made.

Just last week, I chaired a round table of all the stroke leads from the health boards across Scotland, at which we talked specifically about door-to-needle time as a major concern. We have considered how health board staff are configured and we have helped boards to introduce nurses who will specifically support people who could be presenting with stroke symptoms. I think that I am right in saying that NHS Lanarkshire has made really good improvements there. At the meeting last week, it was great to hear about what NHS Lanarkshire has been able to do. The other health boards heard about that and they can consider the changes that they could make. The Scottish Government has provided some funding to allow additional training for nurses across the health boards.

As you will know, the Scottish Government provides funding to health boards directly. The total health budget is about £21 billion. Of that, about £15 billion goes directly to health boards, and it is for them to make their decisions on how to allocate that among the various conditions that they have to support.

Having met the Bundy family and representatives of the Stroke Association and Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, I felt very strongly that it was important for each health board to have a stroke lead and for me to meet them regularly. We also have a stroke specialist in the Scottish Government, who is part of the chief medical officer’s team. He engages regularly with the stroke leads to ensure that we can improve, because that is what we have to do. You are absolutely right that we have to improve the statistics.

I would just like to say thank you. I appreciate the evidence that you gathered in your previous evidence session.

As you know, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and I have written to the UK NCS, which is an independent body, and we understand that, over the next three years, it will be reviewing evidence. The evidence must be robust and peer reviewed, so we are pleased that that is part of the screening committee’s work programme.

We are already considering what we can do once the UK NCS makes a decision. It was clear, when Kym Kestell answered a question on screening, that it is not just about screening; we need to ensure that we have the pathways in the various health boards to ensure that they can support people who are screened and might have a condition. We do that work regularly with health boards.

With regard to data, I touched on the Public Health Scotland Scottish cardiac audit, which was released yesterday. There is an iterative process to ensure that we are collecting the right data, and the scope has been extended, as this is the first year in which the audit has contained additional information on congenital, if I can use that word—

When the First Minister and I met the Hill family, one of the outcomes concerned the need to understand clearly what sportscotland is doing. Sportscotland has some guidelines, and Scottish Rugby and the Scottish Football Association have clear pathways to ensure that people who are participating in sport have the right healthcare monitoring that they need. In that meeting, I was struck by the work that the Hills have been doing on monitoring young children who have been playing sport. We have been looking at that in preparation for any change in the UK NSC guidelines.

I understand the concerns that you have raised, Mr Ewing. That response prompted us to start thinking about, if that decision was changed, what we need to do in Scotland to work with clinicians to ensure that we have the right processes. Those questions prompted us to review whether we would change what we do if the UK NSC’s decision changes in three years.