Reckless hoax callers have targeted ambulance staff across Scotland almost 1,400 times in the past five years, new figures reveal.

A total of 1,368 malicious calls have been recorded by the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) since 2019, with over 300 occurring last year alone.

Scottish Conservative MSP Maurice Golden, who uncovered the statistics through a Freedom of Information Request, said the calls are “risking lives.”

It comes as under-pressure ambulance crews attended 1,136 of the incidents since 2019 that turned out to be false alarms.

This wasted over 767 hours of ambulance service time.

Want to see more SNP fails? – Health Matters