Chamber and committees

As set out in the Emergency Budget Review (EBR), published on 2 November, the Scottish Government’s mental health programme budget has been revised to £252 million. This has resulted in revisions to this year’s Mental Health Recovery and Renewal Fund budget line, which now stands at £104,754,000.

Actual expenditure will not be available until after the end of the financial year.

Following the EBR publication, we are engaging with those organisations which have been incurring spend in order to formally confirm the remainder of the 2022-23 funding allocations.

The £7m loan provided to Liberty Steel Dalzell Ltd in March 2017 was in fact provided by the Scottish Investment Bank. This was a Scottish Enterprise scheme that pre-dated the launch of the Scottish National Investment Bank (November 2020). I have written to the Presiding Officer to highlight this error and request an amendment to the Official Report.

The terms of the loan provided are commercially sensitive and therefore confidential. However, I can confirm that the loan was provided to cover general working capital.

Repayments of the loan have not been made on time, however debt forbearance is not uncommon in the current market and the company is meeting the current interest payments. The current capital balance owed on the loan is £7 million and Scottish Enterprise remains in negotiation with the company over repayment.

The Scottish Government is committed to sourcing innovative solutions to address key challenges that face our NHS, that have been trialled and validated to work across the health ecosystem in Scotland.

In order to encourage and contribute to the delivery of innovation in general across the Scottish public sector, the Scottish Government have worked closely with NHS National Services Scotland to develop a new, national, business led innovation service called Scotland Innovates. The new service provides a central portal for suppliers to submit innovative solutions for assessment across the entire public sector, including Health.

The Scottish Government recently launched the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) Pathway. This aims to provide a once for Scotland approach to the identification, assessment and accelerated adoption of innovative health technologies, including medical devices, that could have a transformative impact on recovery, reform and sustainability within health and social care in Scotland.

It is for NHS Boards to decide whether to procure health technologies. However, Boards receive support from the Scottish Health Technologies Group (SHTG) who provide evidence and advice on the use of new and existing health technologies when they are likely to have significant implications for people’s care.

The requested breakdown of missing person investigations by NHS Health Board area is provided below. This is based on the same snapshot of data as used by Police Scotland to answer PQ S6W-11619. The information covers investigations of a person going missing from the NHS (for those cases that were reported to the police). The data is drawn from the Missing Person’s Database and is available on a consistent basis from April 2019 onwards. The figures relate to a count of investigations rather than a count of people going missing. As such, the same person may appear multiple times within any year if they have been reported missing on more than one occasion during that period.

It should also be noted that the data covers all NHS grounds and not just hospitals.

Missing Person Investigations by NHS Board, “Missing From The NHS”, Police Scotland

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-12369 on‎ 2 December 2022. 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

Full details of active travel funding for the next five years has not yet been agreed and will form part of the annual Scottish Government’s Budget process. The Active Travel budget for 2022-23 increased by £35 million to £150 million and the Bute House Agreement committed to increase the proportion of Transport Scotland’s budget spent on Active Travel initiatives so that by 2024-25 at least £320 million or 10% of the total transport budget will be allocated to active travel.

The total number of bikes issued to date is 2857. The bikes include adapted and non-standard bikes to cater for a range of needs.

In addition, fleet bikes delivered by Sustrans Scotland to participating schools, but not given to any individual child, have been used 4448 times.

The following table provides the information on how much was spent on active travel in each of the past five financial years:

The Scottish Government is in regular communication with the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) about the effective maintenance and operation of the prison estate, including at HMP Barlinnie.

SPS have contingency plans in place to respond to issues arising in parts of the Scottish prison estate, including, if necessary, the placement of prisoners in other Scottish prison sites.

The exact locations and the extent of the impact for each individual prison would be reflected in the outcome of a detailed and dynamic risk assessment and resource consideration completed at that time.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-12369 on‎ 2 December 2022. 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