Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-34347

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 28 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to address the reported workforce crisis in relation to psychiatry, in light of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland Locum Psychiatrist Survey, which states that Scotland’s psychiatric workforce is not growing sufficiently to keep pace with the rising scale of demand for services, and that workforce gaps have led to the widespread recruitment of locum psychiatrists, raising patient safety concerns.

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.

Question reference: S6W-34364

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 28 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many full-time equivalent contractors it has employed in each year from 2021-22 to 2024-25 to date.

Question reference: S6W-34345

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 28 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it is (a) tracking and (b) providing support for any demand for diagnosis, assessment and support for neurodevelopmental conditions in children and young people, in light of the child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) waiting lists having been separated to remove these conditions.

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.

Question reference: S6W-34365

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 28 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has spent on employing contractors in each year from 2021-22 to 2024-25 to date.

The following data shows the expenditure on Contingent Workers, of which Contractor would be a subset, but in conjunction with other categories of contingent workers. It is not possible to isolate Contractor expenditure within this data set.

The Scottish Government moved to Oracle Cloud in October 2024 and further data reconciliation is required. YTD data is therefore provided until September 2024.

Financial Year	Expenditure (£k)
21-22	£49,753
22-23	£51,286
23-24	£49,633
24-25 (April -Sept only)	£19,919

It is relevant to note that this data showing expenditure on contingent workers cannot be directly compared with the number of contractors (requested in S6W-34366 and S6W-34364 answered on 28 February 2025). The two data sets have been extracted from different systems and therefore cannot be viewed as perfectly connected, due to different hierarchical structures and definitions of how workers and salary costs are categorised.

The Scottish Government implemented an Oracle Cloud enterprise resource planning system in Autumn 2024, replacing our legacy HR and Finance systems. Though the data capture of temporary workers remains an area requiring some further development, the implementation of a combined HR and Finance system will in time improve the data we hold on workforce costs.

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.

Question reference: S6W-34349

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 28 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what steps are being taken to ensure that NHS boards meet the target to spend (a) 10% of their budget on mental health and (b) 1% of their budget on child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

We remain committed to delivery of the 10% and 1% spending targets, for mental health services and CAMHS respectively.

Latest data published by Public Health Scotland on 25 February 2025 shows total spend on mental health in Scotland has increased by £179.6 million to £1.486 billion in 2023-24. That is 9.03% of total net NHS expenditure, up from 8.53% in 2022-23. Spend on child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) has increased by nearly £19.4 million to over £134 million. This is 0.82% of total spend, up from 0.75% in 2022-23.

The latest data shows good progress is being made towards delivering the targets, however, as we all know, there are continued and unprecedented challenge to the public finances. That means that achieving the targets in practice will depend on the outcome of future budgets.

NHS Boards will allocate funding for local mental health services from the overall funds provided to them by the Scottish Government. Boards have responsibility for working with their partners to ensure local budget decisions deliver local and national priorities, including for mental health.

We will continue to closely monitor our progress towards both the 10% and 1% over the remainder of the Parliamentary term.

Question reference: S6W-34981

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 February 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 26 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the Treasury regarding the allocation of VAT revenues raised on Scotland's independent schools.

Question reference: S6W-34982

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 February 2025
Current Status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 26 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made regarding whether the Treasury has proportionately allocated VAT revenues raised on Scotland's independent schools to the block grant to allow for this revenue to be spent in the education sector.

VAT is a reserved power of the UK Government. Under the Barnett formula the Scottish Government is not entitled to a proportion of revenues raised by the UK Government under reserved powers. Changes to the Block Grant are calculated by reference to UK Government spend in devolved areas.

The UK Government had initially indicated that funding raised from the removal of the VAT exemption on independent schools would be ring-fenced and applied to the budget for the Department of Education in England to increase teacher numbers in England.

Under this arrangement the Scottish Government would effectively have received a population share of the total funding raised under the Barnett formula.

Following discussions with HM Treasury we have now been advised that there is no ring-fencing being applied to this funding stream by the UK Government. While additional funding was applied to the Department for Education as part of the UK Government’s Autumn Budget, on which Barnett consequentials were received, we cannot confirm the extent to which this has been funded by the removal of VAT on independent schools.

Question reference: S6W-34983

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 17 February 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 24 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made on any financial impact of the displacement from pupils in Scotland moving from the independent schools sector to the state sector as a result of the imposition of VAT on fees and associated charges.

Local authorities have statutory responsibility for education in their area. Officials have met with education leads within local authorities to understand the impact on the Scottish state sector to date. Scottish Government has received assurance from local authorities that they have the capacity to support increased school rolls.

Scottish Government continues to engage with local authorities and the independent school sector, including the Scottish Council of Independent Schools (SCIS), to understand the impacts of the UK Government policy since its implementation. The independent school sector has conducted its own assessment of financial impact, which is available here: Economic-Impact-of-SCIS-Member-Schools-in-Scotland-2022-23-8Feb24.pdf.

Question reference: S6W-35096

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 20 February 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 6 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what research it has conducted or commissioned into the behavioural impacts of income tax policy, and when the reports of any such research were provided to its ministers.

Question reference: S6O-04319

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 February 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 19 February 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to support the Scottish dairy sector.

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