Chamber and committees

I chaired the most recent Low Emission Zones Leadership Group on 8 September 2021. The LEZ Leadership Group comprises of myself, the Minister for Environment, Biodiversity and Land Reform, along with the four LEZ city Local Authorities of Aberdeen City Council, Dundee City Council, City of Edinburgh Council, and Glasgow City Council, and senior officials from SEPA and Transport Scotland.

Due to Covid-19, the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) have a backlog of Power of Attorney deeds awaiting registration. The Scottish Government has provided funding of £238,000 to the Office of the Public Guardian to fund the power of attorney Covid recovery plan.

The Scottish Government’s position is expressed in the joint statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and the BMA, published on 5 October.

For many years now, in person face-to-face appointments form part of a hybrid model of options that are offered to patients including video consultations, telephone consultations and in person face-to-face appointments. The pandemic changed the balance between these appointment types. We are clear that our expectation is that face to face appointments will increase, however we also recognise that for a number of patients they will wish to continue with telephone or video consultations. Changes to physical distancing guidance will assist practices to safely increase more face to face appointments.

Importantly the type of appointment offered should be agreed through shared decision making, balancing patient choice and autonomy, and practice circumstances/capacity and clinical judgement.

The Scottish Government’s corporate travel strategy actively promotes the sustainable travel hierarchy. For example, it sets an expectation that people will limit travel by using video conference technology in the first instance. Where staff need to travel they should walk, cycle or use public transport before considering travel by car. We will shortly be reviewing our business travel policy and will assess the potential for a multi-modal approach in the light of operational lessons learned during Covid.

Government agencies are responsible for their own business travel and fleet policies. The information requested is not held centrally.

Phase 1 of the upscale of the NHS SARS-CoV-2 Genomics sequencing service from 200 samples to 684 samples/week is complete. Phase 2 to further expand the service will continue throughout the rest of the year to achieve an increase of up to 1000 samples/day.

In phase 3 of the project, due for completion by April 2022, a service review and options appraisal will be undertaken on future development beyond the immediate priority of sequencing for SARS-CoV-2 and how this will support Scotland’s wider public health service.

In line with our support of Genome UK, the Scottish Genomics Leadership Group, our expert group in genomics medicine are providing advice to the Scottish Government to plan our long-term agenda for genomics medicine in Scotland. The group will consider any learnings from the pathogen service and how they may apply to our work on human genomics.

As you know, our Mental Health Transition & Recovery Plan, which sets out over 100 actions in response to the mental health effects of the pandemic, is supported by a £120 million Recovery and Renewal fund.

This year, around £40 million has been allocated to NHS Boards to improve the mental health care that children and young people receive through Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and also includes funding for NHS Boards to build professional capacity to support children and young people with neurodevelopmental support needs.

Since October 2020, we have also allocated £30 million of additional funding to local authorities to deliver locally based mental health and wellbeing support for 5-24 year olds in their communities. This includes £18.75 million to fund new and enhanced community mental health and wellbeing services for 5-24 year olds with a focus on prevention, early intervention and the treatment of distress. The remaining £11.25 million was made available to support children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing issues that have arisen as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In addition, we continue to prioritise support for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing in schools, including developing and delivering new mental health training and learning resources, and £16 million per annum in funding to ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the population of Scotland’s mental health and wellbeing; ensuring everyone receives the best possible care and treatment from our health and care services. Delivering service improvement can only be achieved with the right workforce capacity and capability.

This is why we have committed to develop a long-term Mental Health Workforce Plan in the first half of this Parliament and will ensure that by 2026, 10% of frontline NHS budget is invested in mental health, with 1% directed specifically to children and young people.

Since May 2021 we have committed £27.23 million to support NHS Boards to implement the National Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Service Specification. Through this funding, NHS Boards have started to recruit additional staff to implement the Specification and to build professional capacity to support children and young people with neurodevelopmental support needs.

In addition to this work we continue to support our local authority partners providing £16 million in funding to ensure that every secondary school in Scotland has access to counselling services. Since the beginning of the 2019/20 academic year we have also invested more than £7 million to support our commitment to introduce more than 80 additional counsellors in colleges and universities with over two thirds of these now in place.

Since October 2020, we have also allocated £30 million of additional funding to local authorities to deliver locally based mental health and wellbeing support for 5-24 year olds in their communities. This includes £18.75 million to fund new and enhanced community mental health and wellbeing services for 5-24 year olds with a focus on prevention, early intervention and the treatment of distress. The remaining £11.25m was made available to support children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing issues that have arisen as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We are working with industry, local government and environmental groups to develop a route map to deliver our waste and recycling targets for 2025. This work will also be critical in determining how the waste and resources sector will contribute towards lower carbon emissions in the period to 2030 and beyond.

Pension Credit is reserved to the UK Government. The Department for Work and Pensions publishes an estimate of Pension Credit take-up, annually, at a UK-wide level only. The latest figures published (covering 2018/19) show that 76% of the maximum amount of possible Pension Credit expenditure was claimed.

We are working with industry, local government and environmental groups to develop a route map to deliver our waste and recycling targets for 2025. This work will also be critical in determining how the waste and resources sector will contribute towards lower carbon emissions in the period to 2030 and beyond.