Chamber and committees

The information requested on data held by the Scottish Government on the prevalence of postnatal depression over the past five years is not centrally available.

We are committed to ensuring equitable, coordinated access to mental health provision for women, infants and their families throughout pregnancy and during the postnatal period.

In recognising the distinctive challenges that services in the North of Scotland face in delivering care to the most severely ill women in the perinatal period, we have provided an additional £245,000 funding to develop intensive specialist support for these women, their infants and families.

In addition, we are working with NHS Grampian, Greater Glasgow & Clyde and Lothian to further support regional provision which will enable increased joint working around admissions and support care in remote and rural areas.

Between 2019 and March 2024 the Scottish Government invested £37 million in improvements to mental health services and support for parents, infants and families. As part of the Enhanced Outcomes Mental Health Framework we have allocated £123 million to Health Boards in 2024/25 to improve the quality and delivery of mental health and psychological services for all, including perinatal and infant mental health community services.

The Scottish Government does not centrally collect data on waiting times for accessing end-of-life care services across Scotland. Referral to specialist palliative care services for people living with serious health conditions and/or those who require specialist palliative care when they are dying is based on individualised needs assessments.

As a wide range of specialist and generalist staff in hospitals, care homes, primary care, social care, hospices and the third sector will be involved in providing palliative care to individuals and their families, and could all be considered as delivering palliative care, it would be challenging to gather this data centrally.

There is no community audiology service in Scotland currently, however consideration of audiology workforce capacity – within existing NHS hospital services – is integral to the work being taken forward to respond to the Independent Review of Audiology.

In addressing the Review’s recommendations, audiology has been flagged as a clinical priority area, with improvement work being progressed through the National Planning and Delivery Board arrangements, led by the Chief Operating Officer – NHS Scotland.

Bus services in Scotland were deregulated by the then Conservative UK Government under the Transport Act of 1985 and are mostly provided by private operators.

Our commitment to bus travel includes the investment of almost £465 million to support concessionary bus travel and to help ensure our bus operators can continue to provide access to affordable transport in the de-regulated market across all of Scotland. The Network Support Grant is aimed at keeping bus networks more extensive and fares lower than would otherwise be the case. This fund is paid on a per kilometre basis which favours longer distance routes more common in rural areas.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of ensuring that women in rural areas are able to access cervical and breast screening services.

The breast screening programme operates from six centres across Scotland and is supported by 21 mobile units to allow screening to be delivered more locally to minimise travel and distance as barriers for attendance. The latest statistics released by Public Health Scotland (PHS) show that for the breast screening programme, the NHS Health Boards which include the highest level of rural areas saw above-average uptake in Scotland, and also met Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s acceptable uptake standard of 70% for the three-year period 2020-23.

The Scottish Government supports women to access the cervical screening programme by funding GPs to deliver it in their communities. As with breast screening, the latest PHS statistics for cervical screening also show a higher than average uptake in NHS Health Boards that have the highest level of rural areas.

To strengthen the delivery of comprehensive, sustainable and accessible services, the Scottish Government is developing a Route Map for Primary Care to further enhance sustainability of Primary Care, aligned to wider reform of Health and Social Care. This encompasses evaluation of both how the Primary Care system operates currently, including across rural areas, and how it will operate in the context of wider reforms. Under a shared vision for Health and Social Care, the Route Map will set the strategic direction for Primary Care as a whole.

In addition to this, the Scottish Government has annually made £1m available through our Inequalities Fund. Boards are allocated funding for use in developing local initiatives taking into consideration specific barriers for individuals. For example, NHS Highland’s partnered with the North’s Scottish Breast Screening Service to deliver telephone reminders targeted at individuals invited to take part in screening for the first time. During the initiative's second year, uptake among individuals living in 'Remote Small Towns', 'Accessible Rural Areas' & 'Remote Rural Areas' (all categories within the Scottish Urban Rural Classification), was statistically significantly higher among those who were contacted relative to those who were not contacted.

Our 2018 Diet and Healthy Weight Delivery Plan set out ambitious and wide-ranging action to deliver our vision for a Scotland where everyone eats well and has a healthy weight. We are taking forward a range of action across five key outcomes: giving children the best start in life; creating a healthier food environment; better access to weight management services; leadership and reducing health inequalities.

We continue to support convenience stores to increase the accessibility of fruit and vegetables in more deprived areas and support businesses to reformulate their products to make them healthier.

We have maintained funding to community food networks, enabling them to increase access to affordable, healthier food to their communities and to promote the health benefits of nutrition and physical activity.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of our children and young people. All food and drink served in schools must comply with the Nutritional Requirements for Food and Drink in Schools (Scotland) Regulations 2020 which are designed to provide children and young people with an appropriate amount of energy and nutrients to support their health growth and development.

In addition, food and health education is a key part of Curriculum for Excellence helping to ensure that our children and young people are provided with the skills and knowledge they need to make positive food choices that benefit their health now and in the future. To further support this holistic approach, more children than ever before are being offered balanced and nutritious free school meals as a result of our free school meal expansion programme.

The Scottish Government has committed to improving access to NHS dental services with a £65.2 million(14%) funding increase for primary care dental services in the 2025-26 draft budget, bringing the total funding to over £500 million.

Recent data from Public Health Scotland indicates nearly 4 million courses of dental treatment was delivered from November 2023 to September 2024, showing positive performance nationally after reform.

However, access remains a challenge in certain rural areas despite significant investment. To help address this, the Scottish Government provides the Remote Areas allowance which pays out up to £9,000 to dentists providing NHS dental services in qualifying areas. Additionally, the Recruitment and Retention Allowance is in place for certain areas where there is a particular and protracted issue with the recruitment of dentists. This pays dentists £25,000 over two years, and £12,500 paid over one year for dentists undertaking vocational training.

I am also working with other nations to enhance the NHS dental workforce capacity, including reviewing international recruitment pipelines.

NHS Boards will allocate funding for local mental health services from the overall funds provided to them by the Scottish Government. Boards have responsibility for working with their partners to ensure local budget decisions deliver local and national priorities, including for mental health.

The 2025-26 draft budget provides record total investment in health and social care services of £21 billion – and includes £16.2 billion for health boards, representing a 3% cash uplift.

NHS Scotland expenditure on mental health is published annually in arrears in the Scottish Health Service Costs book by Public Health Scotland. Latest available data is for 2022-23 and can be found here: https://publichealthscotland.scot/population-health/mental-health/. Data for 2023-24 is expected early in 2025.

Guidance is covered under The National Fire Chief Council's (NFCC) Grid Scale Planning Guidance for Fire and Rescue Services which covers the UK. These guidelines detail, amongst other things, minimum standards with fire safety systems and design features, water requirements for firefighting and access requirements.

Myself and the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity have not met formally with the Scottish Wildlife Trust whilst the fishing industry were present as part of the discussion, since we were appointed to our roles in May 2024.