HOAX calls to the Scottish Ambulance Service have almost doubled in the past five years, new figures show.
Malicious emergency calls rose by 84 per cent – from 881 in 2012/13 to 1,622 in 2016/17.
The figures, obtained through a freedom of information request by the Scottish Liberal Democrats, also show the number of emergency incidents rose 11 per cent in the same period to 570,354.
Party health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton warned that hoax calls to the ambulance service risk lives.
He said: "The people in our ambulance service do an incredible job which saves countless lives. The service has responded to approaching three million call-outs during the last five years and services are busier and busier. It is therefore concerning to see that hoax calls have doubled in the same time frame.
"Anyone who maliciously calls for an ambulance should be ashamed of themselves. These calls are putting lives in danger. An ambulance that is diverted to a hoax is one that is unavailable to save a life elsewhere."
A Scottish Ambulance Service spokesman said: "Anyone who calls 999 without a genuine need is potentially putting lives at risk by tying up valuable resources that could be needed to respond to a life-threatening call."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here