West Scotland MSP Jamie Greene has urged the cabinet secretary for justice to commit to preserving the current 101 system, after it stepped in for 999 during a UK-wide outage over the weekend.

During topical questions on Tuesday, Mr Greene asked cabinet secretary Angela Constance what the Scottish Government could do to increase the resilience of Scotland’s emergency telephone service.

In response, Ms Constance noted that 999 was a UK-wide system operated by BT. She said that Scotland was not disproportionately affected by the incident due to quickly implemented business continuity measures.

Following up on his question, Jamie Greene told the cabinet secretary that deputy chief officer David Page, from Police Scotland, had told the criminal justice committee just nine months ago that the 101 service was under threat of being removed in Scotland as a result of SNP funding decisions.

“Thankfully”, the Conservative MSP noted, “the Scottish Government listened to that warning and kept the service open.”

Mr Greene then pressed the cabinet secretary, and asked if she was willing to commit to preserving the 101 service in its current form.

Ms Constance said that the Scottish Government will continue to ensure that arrangements for the 101 service “work well”.

Mr Greene praised “the call handlers and emergency service workers who responded so quickly to events".

He said that in the last five years, over two million 101 calls had been abandoned, mostly due to long waiting times.

In 2022, over 30,000 calls to 101 were disconnected each month, a shocking 24.8 percent of all 101 calls.

Just last month, in May 2023, 36.6 percent of calls to 101 were disconnected.

Mr Greene said: “When it comes to our emergency services, robust infrastructure must be in place, both from a technical and resource point of view, so that emergency calls can always be responded to.

“I’m very grateful that 101 was able to step in so quickly at the weekend to respond to emergency calls, and I hope the Scottish Government takes note of the importance of this service as a result.

“Just last year, we heard the service was under threat from the SNP government’s budget decisions.

“I guess what I’m looking for is some reassurances to the public that that all of our blue light services will be there for them when they are needed.”