Supported by: Colin Smyth* *S5M-00346.1 Alex Cole-Hamilton: Taking Scotland Forward - Delivering a Healthier Scotland As an amendment to motion S5M-00346 in the name of Shona Robison (Taking — Scotland Forward - Delivering a Healthier Scotland), leave out from first believes to end and “ ” insert notes that funding for the NHS in Scotland has slipped and believes that it must stay ahead “ of inflation and keep pace with that in the rest of the UK; notes that the share of the NHS budget spent on primary and mental health care has consistently fallen under the last two SNP administrations; believes that only record levels of funding for mental health, including doubling the budget for services for children and adolescents, will ensure the step change in provision that Scotland needs; demands that a new mental health strategy is urgently developed and is frustrated that the previous strategy was allowed to expire, causing around half of the additional £150 million announced for mental health in 2015 to remain unallocated; considers that this must also be accompanied by initiatives including putting mental health on the same statutory footing as physical health, more staff to increase the availability of therapies and continued work on suicide prevention; believes that people in every community are already seeing the consequences of the GP crisis and therefore calls for an increase in the proportion of NHS funding allocated to primary care and the trebling of the Primary Care Fund to train, recruit and retain more GPs working in a safe NHS; believes that health and social care professionals must be empowered to exercise their skills and deliver excellent services, and agrees that tackling health inequalities will require an approach that looks beyond the NHS and roots activity to address inequalities across government".