Cabinet (Meetings)

– in the Scottish Parliament at on 26 November 2015.

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Photo of Willie Rennie Willie Rennie Liberal Democrat

3. To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the Cabinet. (S4F-03081)

Photo of Nicola Sturgeon Nicola Sturgeon Scottish National Party

Matters of importance to the people of Scotland.

Photo of Willie Rennie Willie Rennie Liberal Democrat

I agree with what the First Minister just said about the carbon capture and storage project up in Peterhead, and I know that she agrees with me about the chancellor abandoning his plans for tax credit cuts. Will she agree with me on something else? A cross-party campaign led by my Liberal Democrat colleague Norman Lamb has persuaded the chancellor to add £600 million to mental health spending in England. Bearing in mind the news that we have heard this week about child and adolescent mental health services in Grampian and Tayside, will the First Minister guarantee that she will use the new national health service money for mental health services here?

The First Minister:

I thank Willie Rennie for raising this important issue. John Swinney is due to announce his budget in three weeks’ time. Parliament will hear the Government’s spending plans in that budget and will have a chance to scrutinise and debate those plans.

Willie Rennie is right to point to the importance of mental health. He will be aware that we are already committed to investing an additional £100 million, over the next five years, to equip the health service to provide the support and treatment that are needed. That funding will deliver a three-year programme to support the child and adolescent mental health services workforce, including through further training and more specialised supervisors. It will invest money to improve mental health support in primary care and will also support the development of innovative approaches to the delivery of mental health services, including the provision of support for people who need mental health care in community settings. In addition, we are developing a new improvement programme, which is working with all NHS boards to identify how their performance can be improved and to plan for that.

We are doing all that, but I recognise the need for us always to look to do more. The fact is that more people today are accessing mental health services. That is a good thing, because we should encourage people to come forward. Nevertheless, when they do, we must ensure that the NHS provides the services and treatments that they need.

Photo of Willie Rennie Willie Rennie Liberal Democrat

I look forward to the budget, but I gently say to the First Minister that we have heard an awful lot of that before and it simply is not enough. We asked the Minister for Sport, Health Improvement and Mental Health in June about the shocking waiting times back then. He said that he had a recovery plan. However, since then, the problem has worsened. In Grampian, 50 per cent of young people are not seen on time. That figure rises to a staggering 70 per cent in Tayside. Hundreds of teenagers are waiting for months to get help that they need urgently.

Does the First Minister accept—I hope that she does—that matters cannot carry on in that way? Will she give an early commitment that the new NHS money will be committed to mental health?

The First Minister:

As I said, we will bring forward our spending plans in our budget—I think that that is a reasonable thing to say. Willie Rennie will have the opportunity to ask questions about those spending plans when John Swinney outlines them to Parliament in three weeks’ time.

I am trying to be consensual, because the issue is important. I am determined that the plans that we have set out and will set out will be commensurate to the scale of the challenge that we face. Willie Rennie talked—rightly—about a number of health boards that are facing significant challenges. We are establishing an improvement team to work with them to address those challenges.

I will not repeat what I said in my previous answer about the money that we have committed over the next five years, but we are seeing progress towards what we need to achieve. In the past year, for example, we have seen a 4.5 per cent increase in CAMHS clinical staff and, since 2009, the CAMHS workforce has increased by more than a quarter.

Those are the steps that we need to take. We must ensure that we continue to have the capacity in place in our health boards to meet the increase in demand for mental health services.