Michael Matheson: It is for territorial national health service boards and their planning partners to organise and provide high-quality services that meet the needs of local people, in line with national guidelines and frameworks. Clearly, those services are developed over time to account for factors such as changes in clinical best practice and significant technological developments. When it comes to the...
Michael Matheson: Jamie Halcro Johnston will be aware that some of the changes that have been made to specific services in the Highlands have come about as a result of safety issues. For example, the issue of the midwife-led service in Caithness was the result of the death of a full-term baby in 2015. The independent review of that made recommendations on why changes had to take place in order to improve...
Michael Matheson: I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to make a personal statement to Parliament. I want to address the significant level of interest in the data roaming charges associated with my parliamentary iPad during a family holiday in Morocco between 27 December 2022 and 3 January this year. First, I want to apologise to the chamber for the cost of the roaming charges. As I set out in my...
Michael Matheson: In my statement, I was clear that, at the time when I was notified of the high charges associated with my iPad, the Parliament’s IT department contacted the network provider to try to find out more details about how the costs had been associated with my iPad. Unfortunately, the network provider was unable to provide that information to the Parliament, and, therefore, we were unable to...
Michael Matheson: I wholly accept that the data usage and the cost associated with it are my responsibility. That is why, last Thursday, we as a family made the decision to reimburse the Parliament for the full costs associated with that. My use of the iPad when I was on holiday was purely for constituency and parliamentary purposes. That was my understanding of all that had happened with the iPad when it...
Michael Matheson: I am aware that the Parliament is undertaking a review of the existing arrangements that it has in place. With my own painful experience of the matter, I am more than happy to engage with it to offer it any assistance that I can from that experience in order to ensure that no other member experiences this type of difficulty at some point in the future.
Michael Matheson: I set out the information that I provided to the First Minister in my statement. When I engaged with the Parliament’s IT department on the difficulties that I had with my phone not operating, the advice that I was given was that I could use the iPad for hotspotting purposes. I had not used a hotspot before. My son helped to facilitate that provision. That is how there was the ability to...
Michael Matheson: The cost was accrued to the Parliament’s IT provision, not through my office allowances, and it was funded centrally by the Scottish Parliament. Therefore, there was no claim for the £11,000 through my parliamentary office. I volunteered to make a contribution to the cost, given the costs that the Parliament faced as a result of the high roaming charges.
Michael Matheson: I have been in the Parliament for 24 years and have always sought to maintain the high standards of the Parliament in how I conduct myself—not just as a minister, but as an MSP—in how my constituency office operates in supporting constituents, and in how we utilise the public resources with which we are provided in order to undertake our job. They are standards that I have always sought...
Michael Matheson: Our winter plan, jointly published with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on 24 October, sets out a whole-system approach to respond to surges in demand for health and social care services and actions to relieve pressure points across the system. The new funding measures include a £50 million boost for the Scottish Ambulance Service to assist with recruitment and up to £12...
Michael Matheson: The additional £12 million of investment for this winter, which will provide for the expansion of hospital at home services, will assist constituents in the member’s constituency and throughout the country by providing additional capacity for a range of services, including those for children and people with respiratory conditions. That will help to support boards that are taking forward a...
Michael Matheson: We have taken forward a range of measures with our winter plan. We started its development earlier this year, and we have taken a partnership approach to its development. That is why it takes a joint whole-system approach with COSLA to meet some of the pressures that we know exist and expect to develop in our health and social care system. We have also engaged with the social care sector in...
Michael Matheson: As Jackie Baillie will be aware, the plan is to help to meet some of the challenges that we will face over the winter months. I have not hidden from the fact that A and E performance is not where we would want it to be. A big part of that is because acuity rates are greater and because we have numbers of people staying in hospital for longer periods than previously was the case, with greater...
Michael Matheson: The Scottish Government has provided £50 million above baseline funding to support the Scottish Ambulance Service this year. That investment supports on-going work to recruit 317 front-line staff, to help to increase capacity to respond to emergencies. That includes 18 additional clinicians in the integrated clinical hub who, through additional triage, can offer patients alternative...
Michael Matheson: I join Jackie Dunbar in paying tribute to the incredible work that is carried out by our ambulance staff throughout the year, and particularly during the winter months, when we see demand at its peak. The £50 million in funding that I announced last month will assist the Scottish Ambulance Service to further develop its demand and capacity work, which will help it to continue to build on the...
Michael Matheson: That is why we are providing the ambulance service with additional funding so that it can recruit more staff and provide additional clinical staff in its clinical hubs, who can support paramedics on the ground when they are dealing with patients. The purpose of that funding is to provide additional staff capacity.
Michael Matheson: We are working closely with NHS boards to reduce long waits and to deliver the commitments in our £1 billion NHS recovery plan to increase in-patient, day-case and out-patient activity. In each of the next three years, we plan to provide NHS boards with £100 million to help to reduce in-patient and day-case waiting lists by an estimated 100,000 patients and to deliver year-on-year...
Michael Matheson: I recognise the concern that the member has raised on behalf of his constituent. I deeply regret that someone has had to wait an extended period for treatment that they clearly require. Decisions about priorities are for clinicians to make, but the member will recognise that a significant backlog of elective work has developed as a result of the pandemic. We can see the impact that the...
Michael Matheson: We have provided in the region of £20 million to support the introduction of robots, and we now have 16 in operation across NHS Scotland. Data provided by Public Health Scotland shows that, last year, there were 230,000 NHS operations and that, of those, some 3,180 were undertaken by robot-assisted surgery. We have 90 surgeons trained in a variety of techniques who are operating across the...
Michael Matheson: I recognise that a wait for anyone for an extended period is not acceptable, which is why we are investing an additional £100 million in each of the next three years to see sustained reductions in waiting lists across all specialties, including where children are waiting for procedures. That will allow us to increase the number of procedures by 100,000, and it will result in sustained...
