Mr. Robert Morton:

There are two interesting issues around that. For example, if we take the three-month winter period when our call volume pretty much doubled and look at the concentration of the period over the festive season, on some days we had more than 2,000 calls. We saw a dramatic increase in lower acuity calls during the day. One could associate that with the availability of other health services. A reasonable correlation can probably be drawn between the availability of GPs and people accessing ambulance services. The second matter is probably indicative of a trend. When we look at our sources of demand - an AS1 call is basically a 999 call - 999 calls are growing exponentially. In our ten-year review from 2017 to 2027, we are projecting a 107% growth rate across 999 call volumes. However, call volumes that come from GPs are in decline. We have seen a 6% reduction in the number of calls we receive from GPs. The numbers suggest that more people are accessing healthcare through 999 calls than would have traditionally ended up with us via a GP.