Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government continues to prioritise funding for health, providing increases year on year and funding of £18 billion in 2022-23, as set out in the Scottish Budget.

However, the scale of the financial challenge across the Scottish Government and health and social care is unprecedented, as a result of rising inflation and energy costs and the ongoing impacts of Covid and Brexit.

The UK Government’s Autumn statement provided no additional funding this year to support health and social care in addressing these challenges or to support fair pay deals, with the funding outlined over the coming two years falling massively short of the combined impact of Covid pressures, energy costs and inflation.

It is vital that further funding is provided by the UK Government to address the backlog in care caused by Covid and to help our NHS and social care staff deal with the cost of living crisis

We have revisited the NCS financial memorandum assumptions and, based on a revised recruitment profile and revised investment in data and digital work, £15 million of funding in 2022-23 has been reprioritised. We are taking time to get this right, ensuring engagement through events such as the Forum and launch of the Lived Experience Expert Panel. As a result some costs that would have been expected in this financial year will not occur.

Legal costs incurred by the purchase of Glenprosen amount to £47,495, inclusive of Registers of Scotland fees.

Establishing a Rehabilitation Governance Board is one of the delivery outcomes of the Rehabilitation and Recovery: A Once for Scotland Person-Centred Approach to Rehabilitation in a Post-COVID Era. The approach paper states that we will “Develop clear reporting and accountability arrangements to ensure delivery of the recommendations”. The Scottish Government is in the process of establishing the Board, which will help to identify local rehabilitation leads, ensuring appropriate appointments to take forward the aims identified in Rehabilitation and Recovery. Recruitment to the Board will begin in the New Year and it is expected members will represent a broad-range of rehabilitation workforce and may be drawn from NHS Boards, Health and Social Care Partnerships and third sector partners.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-12059 on 30 November 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

There have been no discussions between Scottish Government and NHS Highland regarding the sale of Lochbroom House, Ullapool. The statutory duty for the delivery of care homes resides with the Local Authority.

Scotland’s Wild Salmon Strategy commits to publish an accompanying Implementation Plan. A Stakeholder Advisory Group is advising on the development of the Implementation Plan. The Plan will set out the detailed actions to be taken by Government, industry and the third sector to achieve our vision of flourishing populations of wild salmon in Scotland.

I would be concerned about reports of this nature. I’m happy to take further representations from the Member and I will ask officials to follow this up with the Board.

The Scottish Government publishes an annual report on marketing spend in each financial year, which can be found at https://www.gov.scot/collections/marketing-spend/ .

The Scottish Government ran a smoking cessation campaign in 2017-2018. The costs for this campaign totalled £370,978.50. The total media spend for this campaign was £253,352.78 across TV, radio, digital and outdoor advertising. The digital advertising included £23,252 on Facebook advertising in support of the campaign. No other social media advertising was used as part of the campaign.

Local Authorities undertake tobacco control through tobacco sales enforcement and tobacco and electronic cigarette control.

The Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on tobacco control, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The Scottish Government has increased local government funding by over £1 billion in 2022-23, a real terms increase of 6.3 per cent, despite a 5.2 per cent real terms reduction in the overall Scottish Budget.