Chamber and committees

Following the UK Chancellor's July statement, the Scottish Government continues to face the most challenging financial situation since devolution.

We have sought to protect mental health funding, despite difficult decisions about reductions which affect all of Government.

Despite this reduction to the 2024-25 budget, we remain committed to taking forward our work across mental health, working closely with our key delivery bodies, partners and stakeholders. Our collective focus has to be on making as much difference as possible with our funding.

No elements of the Distress Brief Intervention (DBI) programme will be discontinued in 2024-25. Savings were realised through pre-agreed changes in funding to the original pilots, which from 2024-25 will be funded by local areas rather than centrally by the Scottish Government. The DBI programme continues to grow – it is now live locally in 29 of the 31 Health and Social Care Partnership areas, with the remaining 2 actively preparing to go live in October 2024. In addition, 3 national pathways to DBI are live – via NHS24 and via call handling centres operated by Police Scotland and the Scottish Ambulance Service.

Over the past four years, the Scottish Government provided a total of £12.13 million of additional funding to address Mental Health Officer (MHO) shortfall across Scotland. Under the Training Grant Scheme alone, we provided £1.93 million for local authorities to train 83 additional MHOs. This funding exceeded our original commitment to invest £1.5 million over three years to train MHOs. Under the Capacity Increase scheme, the Scottish Government provided another £10.2 million for local authorities to increase MHO capacity. These schemes were intended to run for a limited number of years to alleviate system pressures raised specifically from the pandemic and to allow local government to undertake statutory duties.

Since 2022-23, the Scottish Government has been providing local authorities with an additional £22 million per annum to increase social work capacity in adult services. Given the close links between social workers’ and MHOs’ duties, this additional £44 million in funding is thought to have also benefited MHO capacity.

We monitor the state of the MHO workforce through the annual MHO Report published by the Scottish Social Services Council. The most recent report, published in August 2024, showed an increase of 27 individuals (headcount) working as MHOs, compared to the previous year. This figure represents the net headcount after considering the MHOs who have left the sector. The actual number of MHOs who have joined the workforce over the previous year, therefore, is higher.

In addition to providing funding, the Scottish Government is working closely with partners to improve MHO capacity, for instance, we have set up a Joint Social Services Taskforce with the aim of exploring opportunities to deliver improvements for the adult and children’s social care and social work workforce. This group is exploring options for a pilot exercise to increase capacity for the MHO workforce by reducing administrative burdens.

Since 2019/20, the Scottish Government has invested, in the pursuance of its Programme for Government commitments, over £19 million across five years to support student mental health and wellbeing in colleges and universities and to help institutions to transition to a more sustainable means of providing mental health support for students. The cessation of this funding – referred to in the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government’s letter – was extensively discussed with the sector, including when transition funding was put in place for Academic Year 2023-24.

Our new Student Mental Health Action Plan, published on 13 September, seeks to move to a mainstreamed approach to student mental health which will help students better access services. The Government will work with NHS Boards, CoSLA, Public Health Scotland and community based providers to join up support that is already available, embedding students’ mental health needs into the wider communities in which they live and study.

The Action Plan recognises the importance of each college and university having a Student Mental Health Agreement in place. To enable this we continue to support NUS Think Positive with £130,000 in 2024-25.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29572 on 17 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29572 on 17 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The extent of electrification required will be determined by the outcome of the procurement exercise.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29572 on 17 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

A full ScotRail fleet strategy is being developed and refined, taking into account the fiscal constraints as well as other relevant government policies.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29572 on 17 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Government continues to specify a requirement that all ScotRail services should have a second staff member on board to assist passengers.

The Scottish Government has kept fares comparatively lower, on average, than across the rest of GB network, and this has been the case for over a decade.

ScotRail offers a range of products and discounts to its passengers to make rail travel more affordable in Scotland.