SNP MSP for Glasgow Anne McLaughlin today welcomed news that Scotland's Ambulance services are meeting their targets for responses to emergencies across the country, with Greater Glasgow seeing improvements against last years figures.

In 2008-09 Greater Glasgow is up 8.2% compared to 2007-08 for Category A calls and for the same period is up 2% for Category B calls.

Commenting on the news, Anne McLaughlin MSP said: "This is fantastic news for the people of Glasgow and is testament to the excellent work that our ambulance services do on a daily basis and in some very adverse situations.

"Having spent a night with an ambulance crew in Glasgow, I have seen first hand what they have to deal with. They do a job that is of huge importance to the people of Glasgow and I'm sure everyone will welcome these figures.

"On the Saturday night I spent with the ambulance crew almost all the cases we saw involved alcohol. Whether it was people hurting themselves in drink-related accidents or alcohol fuelled violence, it was obvious to me that night that something had to be done about Scotland's relationship with alcohol. If we want to see more improvements like this across the NHS then opposition parties must get behind the Scottish Government's proposals for minimum pricing on alcohol. That is something that can help every Scot in the country and help our Paramedics do their job more effectively".

Notes:

The Scottish Ambulance Service national response time target for Category A (life threatening) calls is 75% of all incidents on mainland Scotland be reached within eight minutes.

For Category B calls (serious but not life threatening) across mainland Scotland it is 95% of all incidents within 14, 19 or 21 minutes depending on population density.