Thank you very much, convener. I have provided the committee with a written update on the significant progress that we have already made and our next steps in supporting general practice and transforming primary care.
It is fair to say—I have said it before—that general practice is at the very heart of our NHS. With over 90 per cent of healthcare being delivered in primary care and more than 24 million consultations in general practice every year, we must ensure that Scotland’s GPs get the support that they need in order to flourish.
However, we know that, as you have heard, general practice is under significant pressure. The scale and nature of demand are changing, with an ageing population, increasing complexity and the continued impact of health inequalities. To meet such challenges, we cannot continue to look back; instead, we have to focus on a vision for the future.
Last December, therefore, I set out in Parliament my vision for a community health service that is at the heart of Scotland’s NHS. In that vision, a wider range of services would be provided by a wider group of highly skilled professionals, who would work as integrated teams and deliver care in and out of hours, tailored to local needs. Scotland’s GPs would provide leadership within those teams, and there would be an enhanced leadership role for Scotland’s nurses, pharmacists, paramedics and other allied health professionals.
In my written update, I have set out the outcomes and actions that will deliver that vision. We have increased investment in our primary care fund to £85 million over three years. To ensure that that investment makes a difference, we are testing new models of care in every health board area, with a focus on improving primary care mental health and out-of-hours services. More than 80 tests of the new model are already under way.
We have also committed to increasing the share of NHS funding for primary care year on year throughout this session of Parliament. As investment grows, we will use it to support local areas in rolling out the most successful tests. That is a measured and evidenced approach to change. After all, if the future of primary care is multidisciplinary, the bulk of our investment should be in the primary care workforce.
Of course, we have already taken a number of actions. We have increased GP training places from 300 to 400 per year, we have invested £2 million in GP recruitment and retention, including for a rural medicine collaborative and the deep-end practices, and we have committed more than £16 million to recruiting 140 whole-time-equivalent pharmacists in general practices. Moreover, in the programme for government, we have committed to increasing the numbers of GPs and nurses who work in our communities. We are recruiting 250 community link workers to work with GPs in the most deprived communities, and we will over the next five years train an additional 1,000 paramedics to work in community settings.
I think that that is the basis of long-term change, but we know that general practice faces pressures in the short term. That is why, in March, I committed an additional £20 million for immediate support to GPs and their practice staff. That money provided an uplift in GP pay and expenses, supported the introduction of GP clusters, introduced occupational health cover for GPs and ensured fair parental-leave arrangements for GPs. All those issues and priorities were raised by the profession itself.
The longer-term changes that we seek cannot be delivered through the GP contract alone, as they require changes to the wider workforce and infrastructure, but we are working effectively with the British Medical Association to deliver a new GP contract from 2017. That collaboration has already allowed us to abolish the bureaucratic quality and outcomes framework and to introduce GP clusters.
I know that everyone around the table is committed to the future of general practice in Scotland. We recognise the challenges, but I am ambitious for the future of general practice and primary care, so I welcome this opportunity to discuss the plans with the committee.