Chamber and committees

However, the budget is not flat in real terms. In real terms, it has gone down, has it not? We have spoken about flat cash; the amount of money that has been given to the sector has been static, although there was an in-year cut in the amount of revenue funding that was available. Again, in the budget that was announced just before Christmas—and after the evidence session that we had with participants on 30 November—it was proposed that there would be an 8.4 per cent cash cut this year, which is, if you like, worse than the situation in the previous two years.

Okay—that is great. On that note, I invite Graham Simpson to put some questions to you.

Good morning. Welcome to the 33rd and, I assume, last meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2023.

The first item on our agenda is a decision on whether to take agenda items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Do we agree to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

Presumably, you concede that taking nearly £30 million out of the budget, on top of taking £38 million out of it last year, will have an impact on services.

Thank you very much indeed. I think that you alluded to it, but, for the record, I ask you whether you accept all the key messages and recommendations in the report.

Again, I go back to the point that I made earlier, which is that the Scottish Government made increasing mental health funding by 25 per cent to ensure that 10 per cent of all spending on the NHS front line is on mental health services a priority. I would therefore expect the Scottish Government to take some responsibility to ensure that those outcomes are being met.

I think that the answer to my question is no. Although that will be mopped up as part of the national care service review, you do not necessarily expect any fundamental reform of the architecture of adult mental health services.

I go back to a point that I alighted on very briefly, which is based on the evidence that we took from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. You seem to paint a picture of things going pretty well, but we were told that the system is hugely overreliant on locums. Do you have a strategy for tackling that?

A particular occupational group that we have not yet spoken about explicitly is community link workers. When Christiana Melam from the National Association of Link Workers gave evidence to the committee on 16 November, she basically said that link workers feel quite undervalued in the system, and cited their not even being listed as a group to be consulted in relation to statutory guidance for the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019. Caroline, what is your view on the role of community link workers?

I do not know whether you were sitting watching that 16 November evidence session with a cheque book in your hand, because the rise in funding for community link workers was announced at the same time as we were taking evidence on that issue.