Chamber and committees

You can have a final quick question, Mr Kerr.

My colleague will ask about that support later, but, with regard to the timing of the announcement, why were colleges and universities not informed sooner?

Do you feel comfortable that you have almost pitted teachers against colleges and universities? You are perhaps saying, “Sorry, colleges and universities, you can’t have this and you are not as important as teachers.”

Will the minister take an intervention?

This week is mental health awareness week, and this year’s official theme is anxiety. More than half of Scots who were surveyed said that anxiety interferes in their daily lives, and, although it is natural to be anxious, for some people those feelings might not go away. They might get worse or not have a particular cause and become a problem, especially if people do not know what the feelings are or why they are happening. Everyone’s experience of anxiety is different, and not everyone who has anxiety will experience the same symptoms.

Anxiety can become debilitating and affect a person’s performance at work and their personal life. In 2008, that happened to me. There was not one cause but several challenges that I faced—physical pain from an injury, pressure at work and the death of a close friend. I needed time off work. I was lucky—I received support from my employer through their employee assistance programme and, after six weeks, I was on a phased return to work. As I said, I was fortunate. The counselling was arranged quickly and the sessions happened in regular succession.

On the SNP’s watch, Scots across the country are waiting far too long for mental health treatment. CAMHS is the main route to assessment and treatment for children and young people seeking help with their mental health, but we should remember that the SNP has never met its CAMHS target and adult waiting times are still nowhere near good enough. In 2022, almost 9,000 children were refused mental health treatment. Between January and June this year, 4,640 referrals to CAMHS were rejected. Long delays in accessing treatment can lead to more entrenched difficulties by the time a child or young person is able to access a service. Failing to solve the CAMHS crisis today will lead to poor mental health outcomes for future generations, further compounding the issue.

However, it is not just CAMHS that is in crisis under the SNP. The SNP Government froze the mental health budget for 2023-24. Just this weekend, the outgoing Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, Bruce Adamson, said that Nicola Sturgeon had failed to address the issue of children’s mental health. The First Minister, Humza Yousaf, pledged to recruit an additional 1,000 mental health specialists when he was the cabinet secretary for health, but that has been delayed. There is a shortage of mental health beds across Scotland, and there are 190 CAMHS vacancies in Scotland.

Let us not forget that our existing staff are absolutely critical to delivering these services and they are clearly working at the extreme end of their professional capacity, so we must be hyper-aware of their mental wellbeing. Knowing healthcare professionals as I do, I am well aware of how low down the priority list they put their own health and wellbeing. That is evident in the data that was presented in the press over the weekend. Between 2018 and 2022, almost 75,000 NHS staff members missed work due to anxiety, stress, depression or other mental health issues.

As the largest staffing group in the NHS mental health workforce, nursing staff play a key role in the delivery of services. However, current levels of staff absence due to anxiety, depression and other mental health-related illnesses are extremely worrying. Nursing staff across NHS Scotland are telling us that staff shortages are impacting on their ability to provide safe care for patients and on both their own and their colleagues’ wellbeing.

After 16 years in government, the SNP seems to be out of ideas when it comes to tackling mental health. We must look after our existing workforce and help them to keep well so that they can look after the wellness of our population. We need a fresh approach that incorporates modern, efficient, and local solutions into healthcare.

I thought that I had five minutes.

I move amendment S6M-08955.1, to insert at end:

“; raises the issue of increased levels of mental illness among NHS staff, with almost 75,000 staff members being absent due to anxiety, stress, depression or other mental illness between 2018 and 2022; notes that the outgoing Children and Young People’s Commissioner said that the former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, had failed children on a number of issues, including mental health, and reminds the Scottish Government that failing to solve the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) crisis today will lead to poor mental health outcomes for future generations, further compounding the issue.”

Audit Scotland will publish its report on adult mental health services next month. Is the minister confident that the report will be positive for the Government?

Does Michael Marra also accept that, uniquely, access to data and clinical papers was given free during that time so that the medical community across the world could share the information very quickly?

Does the member agree with my colleague, Dr Gulhane, who said that we have far more to do in attacking the approach to those areas with minority communities to ensure that we get the same vaccination uptake that we saw in wider Scotland?

I wonder whether the member has read my speech—if he can hold on for a second, I will come to that precise point.

The Covid-19 vaccines manufacturing task force played a key part in supporting efforts to access UK supply chains and get ready for the mass vaccination effort that would be needed upon the identification of a suitable vaccine. To reinforce how successful that approach was—as other members have stated—the development of a vaccine takes, on average, 10 years from being discovered to being accessed by patients.

While the UK Government had success, however, we cannot ignore the SNP’s mistakes during Covid. For example, the SNP wanted to join the European Union’s vaccine scheme, which failed. The SNP U-turned on its vaccine passports, and the launch of the vaccine passport scheme was a disaster. In addition, John Swinney was reported to the UK Statistics Authority for sharing a false Covid graphic on his Twitter account.

The accelerated vaccination programmes from AstraZeneca and Oxford have had a positive impact on delivering life-saving vaccines for other diseases, too—there you go, Mr Kerr. For example, the new world-changing malaria vaccine, which was invented at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, marks the culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at Oxford with the design and provision of a high-efficacy vaccine that can be supplied at adequate scale to the countries that need it most. Ghana has recently taken up the vaccine and is delivering it to the country’s young children.

Although we fully appreciate the value of the vaccine and the positive knock-on effect that it has had, there are several issues in the health service that we would rather the SNP Government focused on. Those are the issues that matter now and that are causing distress and anxiety across the country.

Scots across the country—adults and children—are waiting far too long for mental health treatment. Our children and young people, many of whom suffered significantly from the unintended consequences of the response to the pandemic, are still being failed by the SNP. Child and adolescent mental health services are the main route to assessment and treatment for children and young people who are seeking help with their mental health, yet, to this day, the SNP’s CAMHS target has never been met.

In the first half of 2022, more than 4,500 children were refused mental health treatment and, between January and June this year, 4,640 referrals to CAMHS were rejected. What support is there for those people? Social Work Scotland has said that

“long delays”

in accessing treatment can lead

“to more entrenched difficulties by the time”

a young child or person is able to

“access a service.”

Drug deaths are another issue that we want the SNP Government to focus on. Under the SNP, drug-related deaths have spiralled out of control and Scotland still has the highest drug death rate in Europe, which is 3.7 times higher than the UK rate. The SNP’s strategies to help those struggling with addiction have failed and are still failing. The target to have medically assisted treatment standards fully embedded across the country by April 2022 has passed, and those seeking treatment are still waiting. Annmarie Ward from Favor says:

“You keep talking, we keep dying.”

That scandal is Scotland’s national shame. Lives are being lost and families are being torn apart. The SNP Government must finally start listening to front-line experts and must back our right to recovery bill.

After 16 years in Government, the SNP seems to be quite out of ideas for tackling those issues head-on. We need a fresh approach that incorporates modern, efficient and local solutions to healthcare.