Chamber and committees

No portfolio budgets are being cut in the Summer Budget Revision and all reprioritisation amounts within portfolios are set out in the detailed tables within the budget revision document. All funds are being redeployed to support the industries and infrastructure necessary to support the Scottish Economy.

All of the £255m reprioritisation amounts relate to areas where services have experienced reduced demand over the lockdown period and so funds have been redeployed to service providers to best support the Scottish Covid-19 response.

For example, £105m that was originally earmarked for domestic efficiency loans will now be used to provide funding for SME housebuilders with liquidity issues as a result of the temporary closure of housebuilding sites.

I am in no doubt that significant budget challenges lie ahead and work is underway to ensure that Scottish Government resources are targeted at stimulating a safe, swift and sustainable recovery for our public services and our economy.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of New Lanark as one of Scotland’s six World Heritage Sites, and we are committed to doing everything we can to ensure it can continue to thrive.

My officials attended two online meetings on Friday 29 th May, hosted by Aileen Campbell MSP as the local Clydesdale constituency MSP, to discuss its situation including concerns surrounding the recent potential redundancy announcements, and its financial situation. We have offered the Scottish Government’s full support to work alongside the Trust and other partners to address these issues including consideration of specific short-term funding needs.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES), our lead public body for the historic environment, and Scottish Enterprise are also supporting the New Lanark Trust to conduct a strategic review of its business operations which is designed to ensure the long-term viability and sustainability of this important asset.

Contractors delivering capital investment and maintenance programmes for Scottish Water operate under contracts that use the recognised New Engineering Contracts published by the Institution of Civil Engineers. These contracts include provisions relating to costs when unforeseen events occur. The shutdown as a result of COVID-19 is such an event.

During the COVID-19 crisis, contractors have made use of the UK Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme where their employees have been unable to work which has mitigated the cost to Scottish Water during the COVID-19 shutdown. Scottish Water is currently working with its supply chain to establish and ensure only properly due monies are paid in line with the aforementioned contracts and taking account of the Job Retention Scheme. It will take some time to complete assessments as the supply chain staff return from furlough but an early view is a cost of £9-15 million in total for the months of April and May. These costs will be subject to a full commercial audit and scrutiny when they are fully presented.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-28437 on 27 April 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

In addition to the UK Government’s COVID-19 business support measures, such as the Coronavirus Job Retention, the Scottish Government has granted airports including those operated by HIAL, as well as ground handling services providers and Loganair, 100% non-domestic rates relief for the 20/21 financial year.

This question involves a broad range of policy areas and my answer focuses on Health & Social Care.

A range of measures are now in place to ensure Health & Social Care are well placed to respond to any second wave of the virus. This includes more digital tools, roll out of our test & protect system, and advance modelling to maintain our stock of PPE supplies.

NHS Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships have developed local mobilisation plans in response to the COVID-19 emergency. We have also established a Care Home Rapid Action Group to monitor development in the care home sector.

‘Re-mobilise, Recover, Re-design: the framework for NHS Scotland' was published on 31 May. It sets out how health boards will follow national and local clinical advice to safely and gradually prioritise the resumption of some paused services, as well as ensuring we have the capacity that is necessary to deal with the continuing presence of Covid-19.

The biggest single factor in controlling the virus, will be how well we all continue to observe public health advice and we continue to take account of modelling and expert advice to ensure our plans are tailored. In addition, lessons already identified have allowed us to adapt our response and we are now better prepared than ever to manage any possible second wave.

Data on testing is published on a daily basis by both the Scottish and UK Governments. The only like for like comparison available across the four nations is the Pillar 1 NHS/Public Health England (PHE) lab data.

As at 2 June, 1,731,901 tests had been carried out at NHS and PHE labs across the UK, giving a testing rate of 25,927.90 per million.

In Scotland as at 2 June, a total of 175,180 tests had been carried out in NHS labs, giving a testing rate of 32,064.87 per million.

Therefore Scotland has a higher testing rate from NHS lab testing than the overall UK figure.

Additional testing is carried out by commercial partners in Scotland including Regional Testing Centres and Mobile Testing Units. This data is collected by the UK Government and is not broken down into totals for the four nations to enable any valid comparisons.

Capacity continues to increase in Scotland to support the delivery of the Test and Protect programme.

These data were published by National Record of Scotland on 3 June. Up to 17 May, there were 1,623 deaths where confirmed or suspected COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate either as the underlying cause or as a contributory cause. A further 154 care homes residents died in hospital with a confirmed or suspected COVID-19.

The 2014 Future of Residential Care for Older People in Scotland report made a number of important recommendations to help shape the future of the care home sector in Scotland. The Residential Care Task Force Implementation Group was established to take forward the report recommendations. Whilst many of the recommendations made were taken forward and were implemented relatively quickly, there were some longer term recommendations which required considerable development, planning and potentially funding. At the time the Taskforce anticipated that the integration of health and social care would open up opportunities for the care home sector to be developed through strategic commissioning based on local need, with an increase in intermediate care in care homes and at home, alongside a greater provision of extra-care housing as an alternative to care homes. In this context a number of significant recommendations, including the development of strategic commissioning plans, were made which are now being implemented by our Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs). Some of the most significant recommendations were around support for the workforce, in particular with the implementation of the real living wage for all social care workers. As a result of this work, the Scottish Government has since October 2016 provided resources to enable all social care workers to be paid the real living wage for day time hours and that this was later extended to overnight support. However work to address the workforce challenges doesn’t end there. The Scottish Government has committed to working with national and local partners to take forward the recommendations set out in the Fair Work Convention’s Social Care Sector 2019 report to improve fair work practices for the workforce. Having reflected on progress within the care home sector five years on from the residential care taskforce report, the Scottish Government launched the adult social care reform programme last year along with COSLA. As part of that programme, the Scottish Government had started, prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, to look at ways to improve care home sustainability. While the current focus needs to be on supporting the care home sector through the COVID-19 crisis, it will be important to reflect on the lessons learned during this pandemic and identify what that means for the future of care home provision.

The Scottish Government is working closely with NHS Boards during the pandemic to monitor the impact of Covid-19 on demand and capacity. We wrote to NHS Boards on 14 May highlighting mental health as a clinical priority and asking them to set out plans for reinstating services and to work with partners to estimate the anticipated rise in mental health need in the population and their response. These plans will allow us to understand where Boards are now and what they need to do to address the mental health needs of their population as we move into the next phase.

Although clinical advice and available scientific evidence suggests that it is too early to predict the long-term mental health impacts of Covid-19, in anticipation of increased demand for mental health support, the Scottish Government has invested heavily in services, including more than £1 million to expand the Distress Brief Intervention (DBI) programme to help people in distress and £3.8 million to increase the capacity of NHS 24’s telephone and online services and extend digital therapies available through the NHS.

Clinical advice and available scientific evidence suggests that it is too early to determine exactly what the long-term physical and mental health impacts will be for those who have had COVID-19 or whose mental health has suffered as a result of long-term isolation, reduced contact with family or friends and economic adversity.

However, through the remobilisation process we have asked all territorial NHS Boards to provide a local assessment of demand for mental health services following the COVID-19 lockdown and their plans to respond to this. We will continue to work closely with Boards to monitor the impact of Covid-19 on demand over the coming weeks and months.

Our approach will also be informed by wider evidence. The Mental Health Research Advisory Group has been established to follow research developments to understand the medium and long term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health. This will help us to put evidence-based services and support in place to help meet the mental health needs of the population.