Chamber and committees

Ministers and Scottish Government officials regularly meet with the leadership of all NHS Boards to provide support and scrutiny whilst reinforcing national priorities, including further action to reduce waiting times.

Scottish Government officials do not routinely engage with speciality clinical directors in territorial boards. They do meet with the Scottish Association of Medical Directors with representation provided by the Executive Medical Director for each board, both special and territorial rather than individual clinical directors.

In addition, the Scottish Government commissions the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) manage a Rheumatology Specialty Delivery Group, which includes nominated multi-disciplinary representation from all Health Boards providing Rheumatology services.

Finally, Scottish Government officials and the CfSD national planned care team meet monthly with Chief Operating Officer and/or Acute Directors from all mainland Health Boards to review performance and delivery across all Planned Care specialities, including rheumatology. Meetings with island Boards are generally on a bimonthly basis.

Published national statistics on CAMHS waiting times captures children who meet the CAMHS criteria. Children who require neurodevelopmental support are not reported in these statistics unless they have co-morbid mental health issues. We do not currently collect data on length of waits for neurodevelopmental services centrally.

However, the Scottish Government are working closely with NHS Health Boards and Local Authorities to improve services and support for children and young people and their families and will continue to ensure long waits are appropriately addressed, as well as continue to provide tailored support to NHS Health Boards.

Our National Neurodevelopmental Specification Children and young people - national neurodevelopmental specification: principles and standards of care - gov.scot places an expectation on NHS and Children’s Services to work together to provide the support required by children and families, which may include assessment, diagnosis or other intervention. The Specification makes clear that support should be put in place to meet the child or young person’s requirements when they need it and should not be dependent on a formal diagnosis.

This year we have provided health boards with £123 million to support improvements across a range of mental health services, including neurodevelopmental services. We have also provided local authorities with over £65 million since 2020 to fund community-based mental health supports and services for children and young people aged 5-24 (26 if care-experienced) and their families, including supports for neurodiverse children and young people.

This year, we allocated £123 million to NHS Boards to improve the quality and delivery of mental health and psychological services, including neurodevelopmental services, for both adults and children and young people.

Baselining this funding within NHS Board’s core budgets from 2025-26 will allow NHS Boards and IJBs greater stability and improved longer term financial planning, increasing their ability to support longer-term sustainable improvements and reform.

The Scottish Government is also providing more than £16.2 billion in financial year 2025-26 for Health Boards to deliver front line and other key services.

We are continuing to work closely with NHS Boards and other partners, including local authorities and the third sector, to develop and redesign services to improve access to diagnosis and support.

For example, we know that 78% of autistic adults supported have reported improved wellbeing as a result of accessing community support services funded through our £1 million Autistic Adult Support Fund. The £15 million we have invested annually in local authority community-based mental health supports has also benefitted many neurodiverse children and young people.

Spend on locum psychiatrists is managed locally by NHS Health Boards. It is our expectation that Boards should always be seeking to secure best value whenever they enter into arrangements regarding use of locums.

We recognise that the use of temporary staff in an organisation as large and complex as NHS Scotland will always be required to ensure vital service provision. However we are taking forward work in partnership with NHS Health Boards, overseen by two national oversight groups, to agree measures designed to reduce our reliance on agency staff, with a view to filling more shifts with staff in either NHS substantive or bank roles.

To address specific challenges in the recruitment and retention of permanent psychiatrist posts in Scotland, we have established a Working Group which is actively considering locum usage and complements the work ongoing nationally. The working group will make a series of recommendations and is due to report to Ministers in Spring 2025.

The Scottish Government established the Psychiatry Recruitment and Retention Working Group as committed in the Mental Health Workforce Action Plan (November 2023) to address recruitment and retention challenges facing psychiatry in NHS Scotland.

The working group is actively considering the pipeline of trainee doctors as well as issues such as the use of locum staff and how we can encourage and support applications to permanent positions within NHS Health Boards. We also continue to invest heavily in our future consultant workforce and have created additional training places in psychiatry.

Representatives from the Royal College of Psychiatry in Scotland and the Senior Medical Managers in Psychiatry Group are critical partners in this work.

The working group is due to report to Ministers with recommendations in Spring 2025.

The Scottish Government has developed statistics on primary income flows and gross national income (GNI) for Scotland.

The GNI estimates produced by the Scottish Government are classified as official statistics in development and are reported at the level of totals for the whole economy. It is not possible to produce breakdowns of these statistics for specific industries, such as the whisky industry.

The regulation of private equity funds in the UK is overseen by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), ensuring compliance with financial and investment laws and is therefore a reserved matter.

The Scottish Government does not hold this specific data.

There are two key performance indicators outlined in the Tenancy Deposit Schemes (Scotland) Regulations 2011 that relate to the return of deposits. The return of any undisputed deposit, is to be completed within 5 working days.

The figures provided are based on the proportion of the deposit that is to be returned to the tenant following a landlord starting the deposit return process.

The Scottish Government remains committed to delivering the changes that are required for people with Learning Disabilities as detailed in the Coming Home report and subsequent implementation report in 2022.